“…You all. Past that? Nothing concrete, more like feelings than memories. Fear, sadness, cold, grief. Is that… ?”

Rarity finished his sentence for him, “Normal. Sorry to say, darling, but it won’t be fully going away anytime soon.”

Junior frowned and shrugged, giving the dark mass sealed in the cutiemark containment jar Rarity was keeping in her saddlebag an idle glance. The situation had calmed down significantly, even if the group hadn’t removed themselves from the now smoldering wreck that had once been a town before Nightmare Godzilla carved and burned a path of destruction through it. Xenilla and Starlight Glimmer still hadn’t regained consciousness from exhaustion, Night Glider was making use of her restored flight speed and strength, scouting out the best route to take everypony down from the plateau safely. Moonbeam Glimmer, having taken some medical training alongside her psychology studies, was giving the two incapacitated ponies check overs. Poor Chibi Moon, who hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep after a long night of training and then foalnapping, was currently curled up between Rarity and her sensei, still not daring to take her hooves off the latter’s forelimb.

Rarity sighed, “Nightmare brings out the worst one can fear. The important thing is knowing it’s not the real you. I was lucky that my little sister and my friends managed to ‘chink the armor’ as it were and help me break free."

Rarity glanced over to see Junior looking at her with an unreadable expression. Odd in tone as it was, she could at least take comfort in that it contrasted like night and day with the nightmarish echo she’d seen. Junior pitched his head down at the resting Chibi Moon nestled between them, then at Xenilla, Moonbeam, and then back to Rarity. He gave a subtle nod that gradually begat a tiny, but warm smile.

“And I was lucky for others to set the example for me… If there is something I can do to make up for-!”, he was cut off by Rarity tapping a hoof to his muzzle.

She flashed a stern visage, “Don’t you start pitying yourself again now, I don’t dare risk the thought it could draw out and get this fiend free again… Listen, this?”

She motioned to the destroyed town, something that gave Junior much more pause than her. On Terra a wrecked town meant wrecked lives, but in Equestria it was less so. This sort of thing happened to Ponyville at least twice a year anyways.

“It’s just possessions, it can be replaced. Lives can’t. And before you go off worrying on our account, you certainly have a much higher track record of saving lives than taking them!”, she punctuated her tone with giving Junior a playful whack across his sternum; expressing mild surprise at the deep ‘thumd’ sound that indicated just how dense he was.

“… Right. Point is, you ultimately beat it. Not us, even if we did give you some push of course.”

“Just like you confronted and sealed Nightmare more or less by yourself… With ‘some push of course’…”, he muttered with a slight tease in his tone while mimicking her words, “Even humans who know I mean them no harm run in terror the moment I show up. You saw me specifically on a rampage and stood your ground. And that’s on top of confronting Nightmare, something I can’t imagine you’d be too fond of. Never underestimate yourself, Lady Rarity.”

Rarity pursed her lips and let her ears flop against her head in a small moment of bashfulness at the praise, capped off by the ‘Lady’ title. She didn’t care whether it was Junior just mimicking what Luna addressed her as, or if it was earnest praise.

“Oh please, I was only able to capture Nightmare with Princess Luna’s aid and teachings!”

“You’re still the one to succeed with the spell, and against something I recall you justifiably being disturbed by. Tonight will only end as well as it did because many pitched in,” Junior noted solemnly while looking over their group. Had fate handed him any other party… he much preferred to not consider that scenario.

“As a good friend of mine once said, the most powerful thing in Equestria is magic; and friendship is magic after all.”

Godzilla Junior gently nuzzled the top of Chibi Moon’s head, earning some hushed mewls from the filly, who still had her face buried in his limb, as the adrenaline wore off over the lot of them. Junior sighed, nudging her aside as he quietly looked upon an approaching Moonbeam Glimmer. Both of them were loomed over their respective sibling, Moonbeam still cradling Starlight and Xenilla slumped against Junior’s feet. Godzilla’s gaze shifted to how she held her sister, letting his mind think back to how he’d realized Xenilla’s last charge had been less a headlong tackle and more the older kaiju throwing his arms around his brother to hold him. The whispers of Xenilla’s apology rang true in Junior’s head, as did the relief the latter felt when he thought of the three simple words that changed his whole life. Three simple words he learned from his mother and these ponies’ example.

It was like a mountain, no, a continent had been taken off his shoulders. His bliss was palpable. Not only from the release of all that frustration, rage, and confusion; but of the sheer joy he’d felt to be relieved of it all. The dark stains upon his psyche had been washed off in a renewing rain; an emotional baptism if he knew of the word.

The hideous, destructive monstrosity wasn’t who he was deep down; not from the circumstances of his birth nor from the life he led after.

Moonbeam Glimmer saw him slowly nod to her and a tear streamed down her smiling face. She reached forward and put a hoof on Junior’s cheek as their foreheads touched. Junior felt them all now. Chibi Moon, the one who sought to be like him, nestled up against his side. Rarity, the one who sought to help him, walking up from the other side and rubbing up against his shoulder. Night Glider and Moonbeam, the ones who turned to him for help, patting him on the back and touching foreheads with his. And a radiating heat to indicate Xenilla, the one he saw change in ways he never expected, who while out cold was still clinging to Junior’s arm.

That last form wasn’t the real him. It never was, and never would be. It was just a nightmare. Just a stupid, arrogant nightmare. And he'd finally woken up.

A tear rolled down his muzzle. Junior was in a good mood in ways he hadn’t been for years, not like since before 1995 when he found a mantle and its power thrust upon him without warning. He was at peace.

He was unmoved when the sky opened up and an all-too-familiar stench filled the sky. Not of scent in nose but scent in mind, the kind of reek that caused all creatures born of Terra to instinctively recoil from it because of what their ancestors endured millions of years ago. Godzilla Junior stood up and stoically leered at Grand King Ghidorah’s form as it levitated down to the ground and violently shook the earth with his footfalls.

He put himself between everyone else and the King of Terror, watching on as the others who were conscious looked up and gawked at the sight before them. Junior’s gaze locked with Ghidorah’s three red-eyed glares, leaving nothing to the imagination as to who was on the King of Terror’s mind.

-He’s come for me. He wouldn’t have come here from whatever hole he crawled out of otherwise.-

Junior regarded Grand King Ghidorah, half expecting him to charge immediately. He knew this titan and he knew that while subtlety wasn’t his strong suit, Ghidorah was never to be underestimated for both raw power and sheer intelligence. Typically foregoing strategy and being stupid were two very different things. And the intelligence in Ghidorah’s eyes piqued Junior’s interest as he glared back.

King Ghidorah wasn’t alone in his arrival. Shifting free from the portal was the curiously broken remains of his biodome. When it landed on the far side of the plateau, near the caverns, the stress cracks Monster X’s assault rendered upon it spread before the whole structure partially shattered. Now only half-standing from several feet upwards, the cutiemark slab within it glowed and pulsed brightly much to Night Glider’s recognition.

Rarity and Junior quickly looked at each other and to Ghidorah, both noticing but not making discussion on the fact that the golden titan wasn’t attacking instantly; instead seizing the opportunity. They both remembered the presentation Twilight Sparkle and Mothra Lea had given, how magic freely given was the only thing that could change one of the six altered kaiju back to their original state. They knew what needed to be done, looking back to the Glimmers and Night Glider.

“Get to the caves or over the edge of the mountain pass! We can carry Xenilla and Starlight, now go!”

Moonbeam Glimmer looked like she had something big to say, be it at the shock of the situation or a question as to who this new kaiju was. But whatever she was about to utter, it died in her throat looking at Junior. She gulped and deeply inhaled, nodding her head. Positioning Starlight into her forelimbs with Night Glider’s help, the trio started to make for the mountain pass with Moonbeam looking back at Godzilla.

The elder glimmer mouthed a prayer as she turned back around to make for the pass, “Stay safe… Please stay safe.”

Junior paid her a fleeting glance and slight nod before shifting his attention to the enemy briefly. Sure enough, the titanic monstrosity hadn’t budged; all but confirming Junior’s sneaking suspicions. Knowing he had a moment of time, he looked to the filly partially burrowed into him and lifted her up between his hooves.

Even before he had the time to say his words, his student was already gaping at him and shaking her head, utterly aghast. She was realizing what he was about to say and wanted no part in it.

“No, no! You just c-came back!”, she yelped while struggling in his grasp to try and conjure a teleportation spell.

She sobbed and flailed, trying to paw at her sensei’s muzzle and hooves, “You need to st-stay with-!”

“I need- listen!”, his tone was being tested from Chibi's frantic pleas cutting him off.

Chibi Moon froze. Instantly Junior’s tone softened and he shifted, briefly pulling her in close just like how his father had done with him once. Feeling a larger body heat up against them, the beat of the heart in the chest to show signs of life, and the knowledge of the power the greater one possessed. It was a quick, instinctual way to assure a young one that they had a powerful protector, be it sibling, parent, or guardian. In some ways, it was Chibi Moon’s sensei doing for her what she did for him just a few minutes ago.

Mariner Chibi Moon was pulled away after returning the hug briefly, set back down on the ground quieted and attentive.

Junior sighed as he crouched down to her level, “I can handle this one, won't take any longer than a few gyaos. Remember how I beat them?

Chibi gulped back a tear and nodded a few times, having been in Canterlot that fateful night.

He strained for a moment, but pressed on, "Now listen, your Sensei needs you to do something very important to me. I need you to watch over Xenilla and the others for me. Keep all of you safe, okay?”

Chibi Moon’s lip quivered and her eyes were still damp with tears that made her look even more stressed and disheveled, compounding the state she was in after her foalnapping. But in a show of strength and spirit that made her sensei proud, she stood up straight and bowed her head and neck respectfully towards Junior and Rarity.

“Go join the others Deary, we shall catch up shortly,” Rarity noted while the filly impressively lifted Xenilla’s still body with her magic.

As Chibi departed, Rarity looked to Godzilla Junior and steeled herself. Just as she was readying to eject as much magic as she could onto him with a plethora of good memories at her disposal, a deceptively quiet voice seeped out of the giant stallion.

He sighed in solemn resolution and muttered in a half hushed tone, “Whatever you do, don’t let Chibi look back…"

Rarity paused and her brow furrowed in confusion, momentarily caught off guard by the almost remorseful tone coming out of somepony with typically such a deep voice. She also couldn’t help but notice Junior wasn’t looking back at those fleeing this time. Now with the child gone, he didn’t need to keep it all up.

“Once you get out of here, get help as fast as you can. Get everyone, even Destroyah.”

Her eyes slowly widened and her reply came in a dead quiet voice, “…Can you beat this one?”

Rarity furrowed her brow and flattened her ears, “J-Junior… Can. You. Beat. Him?”

Junior only chuckled dryly while shaking his head, this time giving half a response; “I’ll do what you all did, got a good example to follow.”

Junior looked at the unicorn and despite a wet drop rolling down from the corner of his eye, he smiled honestly. For the first time in his entire life, Godzilla Junior, son of a bold mother and courageous father, student of a king, ally to the many, savior to millions and terror to the vile; called himself for what he really was.

“Being brave means you’re scared too. I’ll just have to do what heroes do.”

The Element of Generosity flared and the plateau was filled with brilliant light. Grand King Ghidorah watched on as what he’d been waiting years for was finally before him.

With the ponies fleeing, they were alone. The King of Terror against the King of the Monsters. The cackling of a million upon billion trapped souls and the thundering roar of Odo island battled it out across the airspace before the two lunged forth at one another.

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

Kaizer Ghidorah blindly lunged for the remnants of the portal Grand King Ghidorah had long since exited through, snapping all jaws shut on the frigid Zenith air. He thrashed and roared violently, visibly broiling like a volcano about to explode. And when he whirled around and saw the three kaiju before him, one hybrid bat and two alien cyborgs, the sheer wrath radiating from his countenance was practically visible. Three pairs of eyes locked onto Gigan’s form in particular as the three began to back away with the oldest cyborg putting his arms out beside and behind him to beckon Irys and Megalon further away from the maniac.

Kaizer’s hiss stung the air and he remembered the three times he’d seen Gigan while being in charge of his and X’s body. Once was decades prior, the first time Kaizer had met a much younger and much less robotic Gigan; after the cyborg got in the way of his attempts at revenge upon Grand King Ghidorah. Another time was when he first took control of Monster X’s body after Sonata’s song and Ghidorah’s mental intrusions helped to rouse him with his strife-fueled melody. And now Kaizer saw him once more, the same being whose every appearance resulted in Grand King Ghidorah getting away.

The third time had all but condemned Gigan in Kaizer’s mind, whether Gigan being related to King Ghidorah getting away each time was logical or not. There was no coincidence at this point.

Kaizer Ghidorah let out a shaking roar that rattled Zenith. Runaway gravity fluctuations swung out of him, alternatingly crushing, levitating, and cracking the grounds around him in a whirlwind of force. Truly titanic gold and black wings spread and Kaizer kicked off the ground to lunge forward with speed betraying his enormity. Half-flying and half-sprinting, he closed the distance of several hundred meters in less than half a second. The trio began shouting something, no doubt pleas and prayers to get through to Kaizer’s alternate personality who lay comatose and dormant in the ruins of the prison Kaizer had been confined to all these years.

Gigan saw the miliseconds tick by and remembered two promises he’d made to his best friend. If Kaizer Ghidorah broke free, Monster X had entrusted him to do what was necessary. That one he’d accepted with an incredibly heavy heart and the binding of that duty had burdened his mind all through his upgrade sequence. The other promise however, Gigan had taken up without pause. If X wasn’t around to do it, someone had to look out for their team. Gigan didn’t have the time nor focus to teleport, so he had to resort to cruder means. He swung to the sides, whacking both Irys and Megalon with the blunt sides of his scythes and knocking them off balance and away from him to get out of Kaizer Ghidorah’s path. Seeing the charging ghidorah like one would see an oncoming train, Gigan could only brace for impact and jump backwards to reduce the sudden acceleration as Kaizer slammed into him. Unyielding in his charge, Kaizer Ghidorah focused all of his attention onto Gigan; just as the cyborg had wanted, and slammed the both of them into the back wall.

The blow fractured the entire wall on impact, with a crater formed around the stunned cyborg who now slumped back, half buried in the obsidian. Gigan sparked and bled artificial blood, crossing his scythes before him to block against the lunging heads of Kaizer Ghidorah. The dragon’s heads snapped at the air about Gigan’s face and neck, forcing the cyborg to push back with all his safety level’s power just to hold Kaizer back at his throats. Seeing a ghastly golden glow begin to form in the dragon’s central maw and knowing he was too close to use the cluster shot, Gigan resorted to another weapon system; a recent addition. Two slots opened up just below where the collar bone would be and a mechanical whirl heralded a loud hiss as two projectiles flew out of Gigan’s collar at high speed. Circular in shape, they whirled past Kaizer Ghidorah’s middle head and glanced off in a shower of sparks, before boomeranging back and managing to cut the dragon across the brow; one getting shallowly embedded in that spot and revealing it to be a sort of mixture between a circular saw and shuriken.

Kaizer Ghidorah shrieked, reaching up and clutching at the saw to try and rip it out. A blur of white swooped down from above and the ground behind Kaizer Ghidorah exploded to reveal Irys and Megalon respectively. They grabbed at Kaizer, Irys with her prehensile feet by Kaizer’s shoulders and Megalon around the massive drake’s hindquarters. Gigan would have been thankful for their dedication and bravery in facing such a foe, heck in some ways he was very proud of the little brother he so rarely complimented; even if Megalon knew he didn’t have to. But as Kaizer was wrenched off of him and he started to pull himself free of the wall, the only thought on his mind was pure blind panic at that same hated glow starting to come from Kaizer’s side heads and wings while his body was tensing up to lash out. Gigan could see how it could happen.

Irys, trying to fight Kaizer like she would King Ghidorah, wouldn’t expect to dodge the grabbing arm the former had and would be wrenched off from her position. Megalon would be grabbed at by Kaizer’s broad tails and stomped underfoot to pin him. They’d both then endure a point blank broadside by all of Kaizer’s energy projectiles, unable to dodge or block. And that went against Gigan’s promise.

There was one credo the Nebulan knew of as a mercenary and he intended to use it, even if he panicked and in hindsight thought himself insane.

Gigan dropped his chance to fly away or teleport to safety, instead firing his grappling cables out and snatching Kaizer by the necks just below the head. Forcing the monster to point everything at him, Gigan’s glowing visor spewed out a burst of red plasma fire. But no return fire came despite the threat. Gigan’s mechanical eye widened. He expected Kaizer Ghidorah to reactively fire back with his own energy attacks, the combining collision of plasma and gravitons would set off an explosion at point-blank range and thus stun or damage Kaizer enough for Irys and Megalon to get clear. But that sort of reaction was something Grand King Ghidorah would do, either trying to smite something with his rays or behaving reactively to a threat before him. Irys wasn’t the only one who’d forgotten Kaizer Ghidorah didn’t behave like that. Despite the rage, bestial appearance, and almost psychopathic behavior, Kaizer Ghidorah was still as trained a fighter as Monster X. For one reason or another Kaizer didn’t fire back like Gigan gambled he would, instead he wrenched an arm up and slammed it into Gigan’s head in hard enough of an uppercut that it bashed the cyborg’s head back and into the wall and kept it pinned there. Gigan screamed as his beam fired into his own face point-blank and his senses flatlined.

With the frontman down, Kaizer’s piercing red eyes settled upon Irys and Megalon. Blood trickled onto the cracked earth and a taloned paw of walking thunder smashed against the ground to claw its way to them.

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

Night Glider zoomed back to Rarity and company from over the edge of the plateau with a solemn expression.

Night Glider frowned, “Mountain pass up ahead is half-covered in boulders, rock slide probably. Going to be very rough trying to cross by anypony not very fit. It’s practically blocked off!”

Rarity nevertheless pressed on, all too familiar with the titanic battle behind them they most certainly did not want to get near.

“Well I guess it’s never been easy on these sort of excursions… Get ready for a rough jaunt everypony!”

They neared the caverns and pass, but soon found themselves at a halt upon getting close to a particular curiosity that came through the portal with Grand King Ghidorah.

“What in the world?”, Rarity gasped upon seeing what had been inside the odd dome that had arrived with Ghidorah. They had been making their way over to the mountain pass when the cracked dome dissolved and revealed what was within.

Dozens upon dozens of ponies of all ages lay upon the ground, slowly coming to. Looking them over, Rarity couldn’t help but notice half of the group was duller in coloration and sporting Starlight Glimmer’s dark magic induced equals sign cutiemark. One small group of that latter cluster seemed to notice Rarity’s party and looked like their eyes were about to pop out of their heads.

“N-Night Glider?!”, a pale stallion gasped and perked Night Glider’s attention.

“Double Diamond, Party Favor, Sugar Belle?!”, Night Glider squealed as the quartet rushed up to one another and joined into a four way bear hug.

Party Favor nearly recoiled when he saw Night Glider’s hair was undone, her color had returned, and a very familiar cutiemark was clad across her flank, “Wh-What the?! What's with the weird cutiemark? What happened to you?”

Night Glider shook her head as joyful tears peaked out of her eyes despite her friends’ shocked expressions, “Haha, long story, what happened to you?”

“I-I don’t know!”, Double Diamond muttered while pawing at his aching head.

“First it was just a day in the town, then the sky just seemed to open up and this… thing moved us all to some place… cold… After that, we all blacked out until just now,” Sugar Belle strained through the migraine.

“Like that?”, Night Glider deadpanned as she pointed back. Peaking over the ridge behind them, one could see the enormity of Grand King Ghidorah swooping up and hovering over a portion of the plateau before a beam of blue plasma surged into him.

Sugar Belle gulped as her face became even paler than it was before, “…That’s the one…”

Rarity, having been busy helping up the Leaf couple, sprinted over to the group.

Night Glider backpedaled momentarily, “Wait, can’t King Godzilla beat him?”

Rarity paused before gulping. She took a deep breath and hardened her face; not sure if she was about to tell a white lie or spout out a hopeful truth.

“He can, but he wanted us to get clear of the crossfire. We need to get everypony down that pass-,” Rarity yelped as she motioned to the pathway off the plateau and down into the foothills below her, “-and work their way down, back to the train station to get everypony safe and get help. Everypony who can’t move too well will need help.”

Night Glider gulped as she looked about them and saw how many ponies were drained and having trouble moving. With the sounds of titanic clashes ringing out across the plateau like walking thunder, there was a very real possibility they couldn’t get everypony out in time with the pass blocked up the way it was. So many ponies not fit to navigate the steeper slope and so many ponies too weak to move the obstructions.

The Our Town ponies, sans Night Glider, listening winced, feeling the weakness in their muscles, horns, and wings due to their lack of cutiemarks.

“W-We’re drained after being equalized… W-We’re-,” Party Favor gasped as his face visibly turned horrified, “-slowing everypony down…”

By chance however, something caught Sugar Belle’s eye from the edge of where the dome had once stood. A familiar slab of glowing rocks.

“I-If Starlight could open the doors to put the marks in, she can open them to take the marks out! And then all the cutiemarks will return to their owners!”

“B-But-,” Double Diamond stammered, “-that would take away the equality, the friendship we worked for! It-it would- be… ark!”

He strained, clearly fighting both the mental conditioning and logic. A white hoof placed itself upon his shoulder. He opened his eyes to look into Rarity’s as she slowly bobbed her hoof up and down, breathing in tandem with the slow motion to get him to mimic her and slow his pulse.

“Listen, a very smart princess helped teach me that friendship comes in all colors; not just one equal tone. We’ll be happy to help you out with this friendship ordeal after this has blown over, darling. But for now, these ponies need your help.”

She kept her tone slow, a bit stern, but still carrying a strong warmth that infected the ponies around her.

“Generosity is giving up for others what you could keep for yourself. None bigger than giving up what you think is best for the sake of others. Want friendship? Try that. Generosity is a core element of friendship after all… Trust me, I tend to know more than a few details about it!”, she said with a brave face and warm smile as her cutiemark seemed to hum with a slight glow.

The Our Town group mulled, murmured, and puzzled. But one by one, second by second, they all looked up to the Element of Generosity; at first stoic, then nodding.

“C-Come on everypony! Let’s not just wait for it to happen, find who needs help and give ‘em a hoof!”, Double Diamond yelped as he waved to several Our Town ponies behind him and marching off to lend aid with the others.

“U-Um, Miss Rarity? I hate to spoil the magic but… Starlight can’t open the slab. She’s out cold and kinda passed me her mark. And I don’t think I can do unicorn magic,” Night Glider muttered with a chewed lip.

Rarity didn’t look back to her, instead picking herself up straight as she looked upon the slab and saw more of Godzilla and Ghidorah’s beams light up the dark clouds and sky above. She hid her dread, the near overpowering fear, and crippling shudder wanting to seize her legs. Part of her mind started to recall not more than a few minutes earlier when she was the one questioning Junior about staying behind to confront King Ghidorah. Now she was in his hooves, she found herself following the example he’d attributed to her.

She was about to get closer to a kaiju fight, a hurricane fighting a volcano. She stood on the precipice of terror and was terrified, just as Junior had been.

She asked herself that question this time, grappling with it. The sounds of the ponies trying to flee were still audible, palpable. Godzilla had hurled himself into a fray expecting to cover for just a handful of ponies. Now he would need to do so for several dozen, half of which couldn’t move too fast and lacked strength. The sobering realization hit Rarity like an icy lance through the chest. Be it a stray bolt of energy, a shaking of the ground beneath the steps of giants, or Ghidorah getting away from Godzilla for just a moment, many ponies had a good chance of not getting off this plateau alive.

The question and fears came to her again, bringing back many memories of all the times she and her friends, Element Bearers or otherwise, confronted danger or evil. Alone or in a group, this feeling was not new… Neither was the retort born of both personal experience and Junior rubbing off on her. After confronting Nightmare both in her dreams and reality, Juliet Rarity Belle had little time to let fear grip her much more.

Equestria or Terra, a true hero’s courage could move mountains. Rarity’s face hardened and she sported a calmed, confident, almost cheerful facade. She started to advance towards the slab as she spoke, “Leave this ordeal to me, get the others as far back as you can; I need you to do that.”

“W-What? What are you going to do exactly?”, Night Glider piped and tried to tug at Rarity’s hoof.

Rarity calmly stepped out of the grasp and looked back with a perked brow, “You were this town’s scout, so you’d know the way down this plateau best. Go on now, the group needs you to lead them with you being the fittest of your settlement. I and King Godzilla shall join you shortly. Step lively now deary, mustn't tarry!”

Night Glider stood still, almost flabbergasted. Slowly her agape expression closed and she gave a subtle nod. Rarity smiled and nodded back before advancing opposite the direction the crowds were fleeing. She thought she heard Night Glider whisper a prayer and stole another moment to steel her resolve. The sounds of Godzilla’s battle with King Ghidorah echoed like thunder, and Rarity whispered her own prayer as she advanced closer.

She was unaware someone, or rather, something else was creeping towards the slab.

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

Gigan didn’t know how long he’d been out when his visor flickered back on to life, but the time spent had clearly come to a toll upon him. He struggled against locking up servos and joints to free himself from the wall he’d gotten slammed into, having to tear his sparking head free of the partially melted obsidian. Managing to pry loose his head from its imprint, the cyborg’s world was darkened from his systems taking a moment to reboot. But when he beheld the world about him through his cracked visor, his mind was drowned into a horrific panic when he saw the state of affairs around him.

Evidently his explosion ploy had indeed hurt Kaizer Ghidorah, even if it ended up hurting himself far more, because the dragon’s front half was covered in char and bleeding from several spots where the scales had been torn away. But his team’s fates had left him stunned, having been forced to fight the likes of Kaizer Ghidorah in a two on one right after facing Grand King Ghidorah for Tanaka-knew how long.

Irys was clearly in dire straits. After a point-black graviton burst to the chest, she was thrown back and smoking across half her body. The gyaos was grounded and grabbed by her chest, screeching while defiantly raking her beam across Kaizer Ghidorah’s chest. Kaizer Ghidorah bellowed and swung the smaller kaiju around like a ragdoll, tanking the blow that splintered against his armored sternum. At first Gigan thought she might have a broken wing to not be airborne but a second glance at her intact forelimbs spoke otherwise even if she was half covered in scuffs, bruises, and a few bite wounds. Instead she hung close by and recovered from a midair tumble after Kaizer Ghidorah threw her. She dove back towards him without a hint of stealth. She was spreading her wings and keeping directly in front of him to both make herself look more intimidating as she shrieked an earsplitting shrill. Such a scare tactic was useless against the crazed dragon she was facing and Gigan knew Irys was smart enough to know that.

Because, Irys wasn’t trying to scare him away, she was intentionally trying to keep his attention. A gambit akin to a constantly squawking mother bird feigning a broken wing to a predator. Or in this case, Irys trying to incur Kaizer’s wrath so that he dropped the limp form he was carrying in his other paw. Megalon. The youngest cyborg was held in Kaizer’s right arm around the middle and by the right jaws clamping down on his shoulder and elbow. And judging from his wounds of cracked chitin and leaking hydraulic fluids, Kaizer Ghidorah had been mauling him… Seeing his brother’s split carapace, chipped horn, and shattered left drill renewed the older cyborg’s efforts to get free as much as seeing that hated colossus toss his sibling at Irys’s feet to lunge at the bat. The giant bat scrambled closer and spread her wings to physically shield the groaning cyborg behind her.

They were all injured. Gigan himself was far from optimal condition either. His front half was scorched, artificial blood and oil were leaking from multiple breaches, sparks flew out from most of his joints; and the huge, jagged, blurry line in his vision was a sure sign both his visor and artificial eye were cracked. Still, though, he struggled and snarled, managing to rip his left arm free from the half melted crater he’d been caved into with a showering deluge of obsidian boulders rolling past it.

His attempts to access some systems resulted in a myriad of warning displays clogging the peripherals and edges of his vision. Multiple warning alarms, harsh diagnostics, and urgent notifications demanded attention Gigan didn’t give them. He was too focused on two of his teammates about to get trampled on. Fighting a locked servo in the elbow of his still trapped right arm, the Nebulan cyborg didn’t give any heed to the warning heads-up window that tried to obscure his vision.

-Repairs Required. System Override Necessary For Continued Function. Non-Life Support Operations Shutti-

Non-life support was code for anything and everything not directly related to keeping the remaining skeleton and internal organs he had left alive, which included the musculature systems and numerous armaments Gigan was mentally snatching up in a bid to protect his brother and Irys. His computerized commands became more and more glitched as he resisted the safeties.

-”Override and re̵mo͘ve ́saf̡ȩty lo̷cks o̶ń c̸ombat ҉system҉s̀!”-

Another shower of sparks accompanied a jolt of motion as Gigan pulled his other arm free. Locking on to the approaching three-headed monstrosity, the computer system lady tried to again be reasonable.

-Mass Override Can Cause Critical Failure In This State. Limit Operations For Safety. Which Combat Operations Do You Require?-

There was one big rule he followed in life as a mercenary, one he was living now. Use any means necessary to get the job done!

Gigan felt multiple systems and machinery within his body whirl to life, heat vents beginning to work overtime as he pushed the measured units on numerous display dials into the red zone. Jumping up a tiny distance, Gigan swung his arms out to the sides before disappearing in a flash of light that appeared in front of Ghidorah with a teleport.

He shrieked out both in the virtual world and real one, forcing control away from the safety modes and restrictions installed into him. It was do-and-die time and he was going to do his best to make Ghidorah just do the latter. Gigan’s voice was as loud as it was full of radio-like static.

”E͞͏̡̀̀V̸̢͝É̛͞R̢̛̕͟Y͏̷͠͡T̴̵͘͡H̴̢͘͝I̸̧̕Ǹ̀Ģ̀!”

In an instant, the cyborg’s visor ignited from intense amounts of energy being charged up across Gigan’s body. He brought both tips of his scythes down onto the sides of Kaizer Ghidorah’s middle head just as the new explosive tips were primed. Ghidorah groaned in pain from the double detonations that engulfed his head in smoke, but he wasn’t able to react and block or dodge when Gigan let every weapon system out at once.

Gigan landed between Ghidorah and his downed teammates, walking forward while firing an incendiary beam so wide it engulfed the entirety of his visor. His forehead emitter was spewing forth one concussive shotgun burst after another. The chest ports launched loose one barrage of zooming buzzsaws after another, the rest of the explosive tip clips were loaded onto his grappling hooks which shot out back and forth to deliver the explosives even if they were rapidly destroying the hooks in the process. Even older weapon systems were brought forth in the final gambit, Gigan opening his mouth to reveal a metallic box with a nozzle loading into place that soon was spewing free a massive jet of napalm as a flamethrower. Amongst the onslaught, Gigan’s sails glowed and sizzled from the sheer heat they were trying to vent off; but the cyborg ignored the fact that it was too much already and pressed the attack. Even while hosing down the dragon with every ranged system he had, Gigan activated his rocket thrusters to get in close enough to bring his scythes into play.

The Nebulan cyborg shrieked aloud as he pounced upon his foe with a glowing visor and burning thrusters, Kaizer’s enraged bellows meeting him with golden energy crackling out of each eye and maw.

Sparks flew in every direction with the blurred flurry of swings that intended to carve up Ghidorah like a Christmas turkey. Gigan was moving far too fast to track visually, teleporting and using his thrusters at full blast to rapidly reposition and lash out. The friction from the blows and the speed was causing the Nebulan alloys adorning his scythes to glow red hot, leaving glowing trails in the air every time they were swung. A few swings were even drawing broiling blood. Not ignorant to the fact the cyborg was actually managing to hurt him, Kaizer Ghidorah shrieked and managed to force its leftmost head out of the beam assault to get a clear shot. He bit down on Gigan’s left scythe to stop a swing and fired a graviton blast point-blank. The stress fractures born from impacting against something as solid as Ghidorah over and over again made the beam of gold too much for Nebulan engineering, with half the scythe snapping off and sailing away into parts unknown. Even through the melee of managing every single weapon system at once, Gigan didn’t miss a single second and compensated. With a titanic swing that probably broke several servos in his joints, Gigan hacked at Ghidorah’s shoulder with his remaining arm and managed to shallowly bury that scythe into the dragon like an ax in a tree. Jets of steam and sparks shot out from the seal that bound Gigan’s scythes to his forearms and the scythes detached at that point. Now with stumps of arms, Gigan lifted a knee up and kicked against Ghidorah’s chest, using so much force he actually managed to stumble his foe as he himself was launched backward.

The ejected scythes, one jammed into Ghidorah’s torso and the other still in the drake’s jaws, rapidly beeped from both of their remaining explosive clips being set to blow. Before Ghidorah could tear the first out or throw the latter away, Gigan skipped the arming process and dragged the flamethrower stream across them both. The resulting explosive and flying shrapnel, along with the resuming onslaught of plasma beams, shotgun blasts, and napalm earned an extreme rarity. Kaizer Ghidorah shrieking in pain. Getting his feet beneath him and digging trenches into the ground, Gigan exerted his legs to their limit to launch himself upwards. His back jets were firing off so extremely they clashed with the radiator fins for which would be brighter, the exhaust flames looking almost like a pair of giant wings. With a mighty push, Gigan leapt back and landed in a readied stance. Twin bursts of light identical to Gigan’s warp teleportation fired off just above the cyborg’s raised forearm stumps. Teleporting into existence and locking onto the limb were a pair of massive, dual chainsaws set in a U shape each.

Gigan crossed them and revved them up to full speed. Kaizer Ghidorah stomped upon the ground, smoking, charred, and enraged beyond all reason. Gigan, like a skilled swordsman, assumed a readied stance as the dragon charged. Perhaps aware of who was observing him, Gigan briefly glanced back and locked his cracked visor looking upon the shocked Irys and Megalon as he turned around. Gigan stood still, leering at them a single silent command.

Just before Kaizer could reach him, Gigan swung himself around and teleported out of the way to the space beside the dragon. The warrior kicked off the ground and ignited his thrusters to meet his foe, partially tackling Kaizer to the side before engaging in a voracious close quarters brawl.

Had the Nebulans and Xilians witnessed what their creations did, the feats would be passed down in legend for centuries. Megalon could only watch on in total awe of his sibling, pride and cheers welling up inside him in a zeal that would have spurred him to rush into the fray to join the glory had Irys not held him back. He relished seeing the big brother he admired so much in action, and he was seeing his sibling do the virtually impossible. This was Gigan’s real fight and he was giving Kaizer Ghidorah something the dragon only had experienced from the King of Terror and the combined force of a siren princess and xilian knight, a challenge in a fight.

He was standing up to Kaizer Ghidorah, he was winning. Gigan weaved around Kaizer’s blows and counters only for Kaizer to retaliate with thundering strikes that the cyborg shrugged off. Like a pair of boxers going at it in the final round’s last breath, the blows rocked the air and blurred in speed. Terrain all around them was smashed and carved to pieces.

Inside Gigan’s system, monitors meant to safely limit his muscle strength to keep him from breaking down his own structure spewed out their warnings. Kaizer smashed away one chainsaw and caused Gigan to cut a trench into the ground.

Gigan cocked back and swung the other saw into Kaizer’s sternum in an uppercut, soon following it up by spinning around and unleashing a flurry of blows.

Beams were fired at close range, narrowly dodged or just tanked through depending on the target’s dedication to follow up. Gigan’s movements were as rapid as they were heavy hitting. Glowing metal hissed in blurry swings and dark talons shattered the sky. Gigan didn’t slow down. Each blow hit harder, cut deeper, and swung faster than the last; the teeth on each saw glowing white hot with the friction and heat.

Gigan at this point being little more than a blur of blades and red lines given off by his visor. In the battle between a cyborg that could feel no pain and a monster that never stopped at such, it was as brutal as it was a spectacle.

Rocketing down towards Ghidorah with both arms cocked back to swing, Gigan gave everything he had left aimed at Ghidorah’s chest. The buzzsaw launchers fired until they clicked from emptiness, the shotgun bursts punched against the dragon until the forehead emitter broke and flashed from exertion, the napalm launcher practically drowned the dragon from head to toe in flames that stung on open wounds and blotted out its vision before it went empty and only fired smoke; and the optic blasts that fired out of the entire span of Gigan’s visor rather than a singular point screeched and sparked against his foe until the growing stress crack from earlier spread so much it shattered the lens. The exertion was taking an obvious toll. At this point, Gigan’s “heat proof” radiator sails had caught on fire, indicating his systems were well beyond the event horizon. The momentous effort was tearing his body apart from the inside.

Sparking, bleeding out, and with most of his systems offline, Gigan put everything he had into his thrusters. Cackling in rage, Kaizer Ghidorah rose up from the cloud of napalm smoke. With speed betraying his great size, the three-headed dragon timed its move and swung down with its feet in a combination kick and stomp. Gigan was caught in the chest, the blow so strong is reversed his momentum and pinned him to the ground under Ghidorah’s foot. The force of impact left massive fissures in all directions that only grew as Ghidorah ground his heel into this painful nuisance. Such a sheer impact would have probably put many living creatures into shock from the pain of a shattered ribcage or broken spine, but Gigan had long since burned out any pain sensors. Shrieking a mechanical cry, he revved up the other two weapons systems left. The first was obvious, being the trio of saws he sported across his arms and chest. The chest buzzsaw screeched against Ghidorah’s armor plating and it whirled around at three times its normal torque. Every single tooth was snapped off in the process, but they sacrificed themselves in tearing a gash into Ghidorah’s foot that covered Gigan’s midsection in golden ichor. The other weapon system activated as Ghidorah’s eyes widened and he recoiled from getting his foot sliced open; teleportation.

He only had enough juice for one jump and his fizzling vision made it difficult to target a spot, but he made it count. Ghidorah stumbled back, smoking, burning, riddled with cuts and char. A skyward shriek caused all three heads to look upwards in unison just as Gigan crashed into him. The cyborg, who had teleported high above and fell into the dragon to give him momentum, brought both chainsaws down across Kaizer’s torso in a whirlwind of sparks and smoke.

The monitors broke in showers of sparks. The twin saws roared, Gigan only briefly pausing his strike to rotate one of the saws around to use the fresh set due to how many saw teeth he was losing per second. In a fantastic show of force the cyborg tilted his arms upwards and all 100,000 tons of Kaizer Ghidorah had his momentum reversed and he was lifted off the ground. Gigan screamed in exertion and battle fury even as his body broke down all around him. In desperation and agony, Ghidorah lit up both wings and all three of its jaws and aimed inwards with a golden tsunami. The resulting explosion engulfed both alien kaiju.

Gigan was sent tumbling through the air as a sparking, smoking mess that crashed through several towers of obsidian; half buried in the ensuing rubble. One of his chainsaws and half the arm it was attached to plummeted down from the sky and crashed not far away. The twisted, half-melted metal of the saw embedding itself in the ground; the sparking forearm it was attached to revealing exposed wires and both real as well as artificial bone sticking out of it. Gigan didn’t get back up, likely on account of his other saw being buried in his stomach up to the hilt. The sparking, cyclopean eye set behind his shattered visor blinked weakly.

When the smoke cleared, Ghidorah shakingly rose to his feet. Heaving for breath though, he wasn’t standing for long. He stumbled upon a knee and was forced to brace himself against the ground to avoid collapsing. Gigan was down or worse, but the cyborg had gone down swinging and did a number on the dragon. The most prominent of which, amongst the plasma burns, cut marks, bruises, and bleeding feet; was from Gigan’s final strike. In the ultimate statement of defiance, Gigan had left a signature in Kaizer Ghidorah’s very flesh. Smoking, bleeding, and cut to the bone, Ghidorah’s chest now bore a massive “X” carved into it.

Gigan’s blinking eye began to dim as his brother screamed. A weak, staticy voice electronically filtered itself into Megalon’s head.

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

Irys screeched sharply as she was thrown through a section of obsidian wall, fumbling down in a torrent of broken debris that half buried her after she hit the ground. Kaizer Ghidorah bit back the pain of Gigan’s assault and stomped forward despite the dark gold ichors spilling out of his deep chest wound, intending to finish the bat off after he’d smacked her out of the sky. The ground in front of, and soon beneath, his feet rattled and shook. Suddenly in one of his steps, his massive paw shot down into the ground and caved into a hollow burrow. A loud drilling sound shrieked out of the dirt, the ground cracking and fracturing around Kaizer Ghidorah’s placement. Megalon soon shot out of the ground, whirling about as he unwound from his drill form and landed on his feet as Kaizer Ghidorah stumbled into his pitfall trap and sunk a full two hundred meters into the void opening up under him. A quick burst of the cyborg’s thunder cannon and a few spat napalm grenades and the ground around the pitfall caved in to bury the dragon under partially melted glass.

Seizing the moment he’d bought them, Megalon turned back around to see the source of the noise beside him. Irys had dug herself out of the debris field and flapped her wings to hover over next to her sole remaining ally.

“NO!”, Megalon barked in such a strong tone it left the gyaos stunned; even if she begged to differ. This wasn’t the first time she’d seen what she considered family go mad in a bloody frenzy, such was practically the default for all the experiences she’d had until meeting X and company.

Irys strieked in as much frantic worry as she did anger born of said worry, “Megalon I’m trying not to lose you too!”

“And we didn’t lose X yet, we can get him back! We just gotta get Kaizer to see his reflection!”

“MY BROTHER!”, Megalon roared in a manner whose tone was illustrated by the artificial fluids leaking from his eyes in the manner that made the cyborg look like he was crying.

Irys’ tone and expression softened some as she whispered, “M-Megalon. We don’t know if we can do that… I really want it to but-”

Huffing and shaking, Megalon soon followed up while pointing a drill at the enormous blast mark Kaizer and Gigan’s battle had left in it’s climax.

“He- he told me… Cyborg message,” Megalon whimpered while tapping at the side of his head, “My brother was amazing. He could have won. He wouldn’t have wasted a shot at taking Kaizer out if he didn’t think it would work.”

Irys struggled with it for a moment, resisting the urge to try and comfort the shaking entity she saw like a little brother of her own as the time and place weren’t right. But she let a flicker of hope well up inside her, and a Shadow of Atlantis knew even the smallest brightness can be seen in the biggest shadow; something she ironically symbolized from the old days of her flock with her albinism. In her old life, cynicism was the easy way out, even if it seemed logical.

Megalon muttered, “If we get him to see, the only one of us who can beat Kaizer will…”

It seemed crazy, insane even. But, Irys steeled herself. The risk was great but the reward, the reward of having her team; her family back in a more complete state. She could hope for that-

A golden light crossed her face. Her eyes widened and she rushed sideways, “LOOK OUT!”

The ground exploded in a brilliance of golden rays as Kaizer Ghidorah blasted and smashed his way free of his prison, barreling at them with ignited jaws bared and roars thundering. As the milliseconds ticked by, Irys had done the only thing she could manage to do. She shoved into Megalon and pushed him aside just as he was reactively firing a napalm grenade while spinning from Irys’ push. Kaizer Ghidorah slammed into her like a freight train as both he and the grenade threw themselves forward. Irys winced as she felt teeth score across and cut open her stomach, the wind knocked out of her by an impact that echoed through her whole body. Just barely lacking precise enough aim to land a bite, the bleeding and stunned bat was hurled back.

The whole world was deafened when she hit the ground and skid across it, bleeding and barely able to see. Her eyes rolled about involuntarily, vision fading in and out. She glimpsed movement and thought she heard Megalon cry out as he launched himself into Kaizer Ghidorah’s side. She could only hear her own shallow breathing and heart beat and was unable to move as an object bounced across the ground and rolled past her face. If she were lucid, she’d have recognized it as a napalm grenade rolling over and tapping her belly before all became fire.

There was brightness, there was sensation, there was the clogging, gagging smell of smoke; and she couldn’t feel the agony.

…Because there was no pain. Irys gagged and winced as she tried to weakly rise. The moment she saw herself, she’d nearly died of fright when the near-blinding, flickering lights across her confirmed that she was indeed on fire. She’d been burned before, by plasma fire; that Mothra probably left a mark on her somewhere, but she’d always made a point to avoid flames. She saw them first early on when humans came upon the cave. She knew full well, be it then with a flamethrower at that cave or in years of conflict after against Gamera, that gyaos burned. And yet, she wasn’t.

Irys touched at the flames apprehensively with her hand to check and make sure she wasn’t in some bizarre state of mind after Kaizer collided with her. The fires flickered and reacted to her touch, but didn’t burn her. Quite the opposite actually, the tingling she was feeling felt like how she would after gorging herself and mending a wound. The fires seemed to die down rather quickly for napalm and when Irys looked to see why, she found herself gazing at the source of the tingling. Her stomach wasn’t cut open anymore, sealing shut as it seemed to almost vacuum up the fires in tandem with the healing. Soon there wasn’t a jet of fire or embers left, just smothered remains of some napalm crust. She could have sat there questioning it, but when she looked up to see Kaizer Ghidorah and Megalon in a deadlock, she didn’t.

Megalon strained as his heels sunk into the ground, trying to brace his drills against the massive paws that gripped them. Sparks shot out of the cyborg’s shoulders. Panicking as he could physically hear the metal twisting and bone starting to fracture, Megalon opened fire with his thunder cannon and commanded his drills to spin at high speed. But lacking time to charge, the resulting ray of lightning only scorched a line across Kaizer Ghidorah’s middle neck. The dragon retaliated by roaring and chomping down on the horn, crunching down on it as his paws gripped the drills. Despite his palms bleeding against the sharp edge, they halted the spinning. There was a horrible screech of metal, Kaizer’s grip crushed handprints into the drills and fractured their surfaces as he snapped off the top of Megalon’s horn. A shower of sparks and fluids shot out of the now screaming cyborg’s horn and drills, but he stubbornly refused to pull back.

Instead Megalon pushed to the side, trying to direct Kaizer’s view to a large slab of reflective obsidian on a nearby wall.

His knee gave out under him, punching into the ground and stopping his attempt cold. Kaizer Ghidorah bellowed and smacked the cyborg across the side in a thunderous backhand that sent him hurtling back. The cyborg slumped out of the ditch he’d carved out from getting ragdolled, and in a show of defiance that would leave his sibling proud, sucked in. He made a sound like he was preparing the biggest loogie in the world, and spat a barrage of napalm grenades at the advancing Ghidorah. He soon came to regret that decision when a white blur flew over him and directly into Kaizer Ghidorah. Grabbing onto his left head to divert it and the graviton torrent it was spraying away, Irys smashed her flattened head plate into Kaizer’s middle snout before beating her wings hard as she could to try and force him back with her forward momentum. Megalon’s eyes sparked and he cried when the napalm grenades hit Irys in the back and exploded.

His scream was answered by a loud shriek from the now obscuring fireball that had engulfed both Irys and Kaizer Ghidorah from the grenade cluster.

Megalon was so stupefied that his friend wasn’t screaming about being on fire that he almost forgot to worry that it was happening, seeing a now flapping inferno before him in the form of Irys’ immolating wings.

Kaizer Ghidorah bellowed and raised his right head to fire upon the now burning interloper, only for an extremely surprising amount of strength in a burning wing to smack it aside. His forward charge at last was stopped, met by a similarly awesome force.

Megalon watched in awe as Irys’ body started to absorb the fire, practically drinking it up as wisps of flame spun into tendrils that seemed to seep and pour into her. Whatever it was doing, he knew it wasn’t hurting her. And if it was the only thing left at his disposal, even if it was a Hail-Mary gambit, he was taking it. Throwing caution into the wind, he opened up the clip and started emptying grenade after grenade into the two kaiju; aiding Irys and managing at least some chip damage on Kaizer’s open wounds.

Irys rammed her forehead into Kaizer’s, gritting her fangs as she amazingly managed to give the, admittedly weakened, dragon a physical run for his money.

“You guys are the most insane posse I’ve ever seen to think some miscreant mutant like me belonged with you all, to give me a second thought!”

Fire exploded across Irys’ form over and over again, getting siphoned into every wound and the numerous lines that flashed across her body. Odd symbols started to light up and her force seemed to magnify. In a feat few had ever achieved, Irys budged Kaizer Ghidorah backwards. The dragon roared, reeling his necks back and swinging a forelimb in a hammerfist that shattered the ground and would have shattered Irys if she didn’t dive out of the way; only to arc back around and ram back into her foe.

“You throw around power like this, but you’re not half as great as X is! He said you wanted to avenge someone close, but you don’t even know what love is anymore; I should know because I didn’t!”

Graviton beams were fired at close range, spread wings and projected barriers of sound blocking and redirecting them up towards the ceiling. Debris rained down in torrents from above, mixing with the seas of smoke and flame.

“All of them… All of them are greater than any souls I’ve ever known before or will after! They’re more than just my team, and they’re something you’d never understand!”, Irys screamed as she pushed on forward.

“Gigan, he led a charge against the scariest thing I’ve ever met just to save my hide even when I had a death wish! My old flock would have left me for dead and picked the bones clean and yet here he goes throwing his body into the trash to save all of us!”

She winced, backstepping briefly from the onslaught. But as more flames streamed into her, the glowing markings, runes, started become more solid. She felt more power than she’d ever imagined before, but hardly paid it any mind.

“Megalon, he’s the most persistent dolt I ever met! He didn’t care if we were screw-ups, he just kept everyone’s morale up enough that we’d care about him like he did us! Devoted to making others happy? Being happy?! That’s not something I ever had before, because I never had a little brother before!”

Irys growled and shoved forward, forcing the energy wave back and slamming it into Kaizer full force. Ghidorah bellowed and stumbled, smoking all over after being engulfed in light. Unfettered for all but a moment, his attempts to trample the small gyaos before him were met by her pouncing into his face and whirling around onto his back. Irys strained and snarled, her bones risking breakage despite the remarkable power coming over her. The runes flickered in and out with increasing frequency, almost staying on entirely.

“And X, what would make a guy like him with that many problems give a damn about me, give a damn about anyone enough to start this whole team? He saved my life doing what he did so others could too. I owe him now and I’ll owe him until the day my blood runs dry!”

Irys screamed as she grabbed onto Kaizer Ghidorah’s side necks with her feet as he thrashed and grabbed about with his arms, back, and wings to try and throw or snatch her off.

The gyaos were Atlantis’ attempt to forge a Guardian Beast in the same vein that led to Gamera, Yonggary, Raiga, Baragon, Varan, and Rodan based off Anguirus’ design. It was a resounding failure with numerous genetic errors working like glitches in the system, shortening lifespan, lowering intelligence, decreasing power, and driving them insane with hunger. But after dozens of generations, some fluke incidents had a way of correcting past mistakes. Runes lit up across Irys’ form to a continued finish, casting her in a brilliant pink hue as she drain in the fire, the lifeblood of a Guardian Beast. Just as Rodan was unharmed by Sunset Shimmer's fire and Raiga walked through Agon's flames, she was the opposite of harmed. A stylized “Eta” symbol appeared on her wings.

“I’m surrounded by a group that actually cares about me, more than just a flock, more than just a team; and they’re all batshit crazy!”

Irys screamed out in a booming voice of magnified sound as she managed to lift Kaizer Ghidorah off the ground, “I don’t know what I ever did to deserve them but I’ll die before I ever let them down!”

The Eighth Guardian Beast began to arise, awakened at long last, spread her wings and slammed Kaizer Ghidorah into the ground as the latter opened fire upon her mid fall. The true battle was just getting started.

Megalon’s grenade belt clicked dry; meaning he could only watch in awe as he physically felt Irys’ power radiating out. But empty with explosives as he was, his heart was filled with hope at seeing his friend’s new might. They might just have a chance at winning this. He winced and punched a broken drill into the air.

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

Rarity hurried along to the slab as fast as she could, only cocking an eyebrow during her approach when she found somepony already present before the rock. The cutiemark stone’s sheer numbers took the Element of Generosity off guard, storing what had to be the equivalent cutiemarks, and thus magic, of a good four dozen or more ponies. Her first instinct was to call out to the pony observing the stone to tell them to get to safety and try to help the others, but seeing that they were a unicorn and seemed to be studying the slab gave her hope that out of the random assortment of ponies coming out of the dome, perhaps one of them might have some magic school training and be able to help after all.

“Hello over there, deary!”, she yelped as she rushed up to the yellow and red mare, “I don’t suppose you know how to get this blasted vault open?”

She nearly backpedalled when she got close to the pony. Despite the fiery hues and sunny cutiemark that made one think of warmth, the moment she got within a meter of the mare she felt a biting chill that stabbed into her.

The mare slowly turned around and Rarity cringed. At first it was subtle, an almost subconscious concern that there was something very off and wrong with this pony. But that became extremely evident when ‘she’ stopped being a pony in the traditional sense. Enjin had noticed two things. The slab of cutiemarks would make for a valuable prize, one she intended to claim now that it was revealed Ghidorah had been hiding it. And the second was the aura coming off Rarity. The ponies not sporting the equals signs on their flanks had power to them, each in a way different to the other such that Bagan hypothesized it was related to the mark. But this unicorn compared to them? It was like comparing a bonfire to a candle. Harmony’s traces were obvious in Rarity’s element, as was the residue of some sort of dark magic that Enjin could sense more of nearby in Rarity’s bag. There were no Equestrians around on this region of the plateau, they were too busy trying to scramble down and unblock the mountainside. It was just Rarity and her, and she acted upon it.

Sunset Shimmer took a step forward as Enjin’s influence became more obvious. Inky black mass like a living shadow drenched over her body as fiery energies in the hues of magma washed up her hooves and formed a pattern of glowing runes. She grew in height, doubling so and becoming more robust. Her horn grew in length, becoming sharp and craggy. Magma blazes overtook her eyes and wings of ash and rock formed out of her back. Soon what stood before Rarity resembled a hellish mixture of the demonic form Sunset took during the Fall Formal and a living volcano. And it approached her on burning earth that seemed so hot it chilled the bone as it seared the skin. With a stomp of the hoof, a crack raced across the ground towards Rarity and she wisely jumped back just as a spire of rock burst out where she had been standing. Sunset Shimmer, Enjin, whichever one wished to call her, let out a deafening cry that sounded like a mixture of a horrific roar and a banshee scream that rang in Rarity’s mind to cloud the world in terror.

Rarity screamed and backpedalled while trying to conjure up magic, blue glows flickering on and off across her horn due to fear.

“N-NO! STAY AWAY!”, She cried while wincing to try and force her magic up. She managed to levitate a hoof sized stone and lobbed it at the incoming monster, but despite the force she’d telekinetically pitched it with the stone just shattered against Enjin’s sternum.

Rarity gasped and forced her magic to work again, trying anything she could. She might have been skilled in telekinesis, both for precision in her seamstry and even carrying Tom around, but she wasn’t a magic school entrant. The things Twilight could do always amazed her as much as they would an earth pony or pegasus. She kept stumbling back, lobbing any loose rock, gravel, or other miscellaneous object she could get at Enjin to try and force it back. Gritting her teeth, Rarity drew up a table sized boulder and forced it forward with a shout. Enjin regarded the oncoming projectile and raised a hoof, holding still and letting the boulder crash into it. The moment the hoof made contact, Enjin made use of a combination: Its own earthshaping and Sunset’s magical knowledge, more specifically fire spells.

The boulder glowed and hissed with smoke and steam. A red hot indent appeared on the far side just as it started to break apart. It spread, melting stone into lava that spilled across the ground and broiled the air so much it ignited the nearby shrubs in a flashpoint. The fire and lava spread quickly, the latter through cracks in the ground from Enjin’s hoofsteps and the former from the windblown embers. Rarity coughed from the smoke as sweat ran down frayed bangs. She heard something that made her take her attention off Enjin and look behind her. The fires weren’t stopping, instead traveling to the edge of the plateau near the blocked paths and some of the ponies were noticing it, shouts and cries of alarm calling out from over the edge.

-The fire! It’ll chase them down, get to them before they can clear the path!-

Rarity winced and looked back at the cutiemark slab, then to the monster between her and it. There was no way she could get to the slab and figure out how to open it in time, and stopping the wildfire would take a mage. She couldn’t do it, Juliet Rarity Belle couldn’t do it.

Enjin advanced and Rarity backed up to a darkened boulder, watching the Aspect of Earth step through the fires and become wreathed in the smoke. She took in a deep breath as fear threatened to choke her. But, perhaps by hearing his distant roar; Junior’s last words replayed through her mind.

-“Being brave means you’re scared too. I’ll just have to do what heroes do.”-

Like a drop engendering ripples in a pond, Rarity’s mind stilled to all but just that one thought. She opened her eyes even as a tear streaked out of one and took in all that lay around her. Crowds of ponies she was responsible for were noticing the fires creeping up on them and were screaming in fear, the smoke and heat was muddying her vision and stinging her lungs, the cutiemark slab she needed to activate was so far out of reach, her friend was locked in a titanic death match against a foe he confessed he couldn’t beat unless somepony got him help, and a monster who for all intents and purposes had come out of nowhere was bearing down on her.

Rarity was sometimes a fearful pony, for justifiable and silly reasons alike. She was afraid of an eternal night killing the sun and she was afraid of a bad mane day ruining her mood. She was afraid of a time-lost tyrant of the north returning and of having to eat her baby sister’s cooking. And of course, she was afraid of nightmares, figurative and literal. But fear led to effort. She’d plan around Sweetie Belle’s visits to take her out to eat, she’d study up on the best shampoos to use to keep her mane curled and bouncy, she’d play crowd control for hours in the Crystal Empire to keep morale up, she’d find herself chosen for a legendary power to help stop a night that wouldn’t end. And when she worried her dark echo would seize control of her again, she took the effort to combat it from the expert.

She felt the cutiemark containment jar in her saddlebag radiate with a dark power contained within.

Rarity drew up the jar and though scared out of her mind, she smirked as she prayed; smashing the jar open on the rock above her and letting the dark mass flood over her like a drawn shower.

Dark thoughts and fears seemed to trickle into her mind. Declarations of weakness, unfulfillment, and failure. But Rarity commanded them to cease, feeling the influence having been weakened from the recent excursion into Godzilla Junior’s mind. This time, she was the one in control and giving the commands; influenced but not superseded. Waves of black and sapphire magic shot across the ground in waves, blasting back smoke and snuffing out the flames as a glimmering haze took its place.

Eyes of starry sapphires, a flowing mane of jewels in purple and white.

A giantess statue covered in fur of the night.

Begat by a princess, with rushing magic carrying all of her might.

Nightmare Rarity stood tall, ready to fight.

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

Irys zoomed around Kaizer Ghidorah as the much larger kaiju swiped and snapped at her heels and tail. Spreading his own wings to take to the air, Kaizer Ghidorah filled the chamber with a rattling roar that could deafen all in earshot had his opponent not been sound itself. Irys, surging with power she never could have dreamed before, was the nimbler flier and made good use of it. Like a falcon chased by an eagle, she dove, swerved, and weaved to circle and flank her pursuer, not able to fully shake him off but still keeping a good distance. The Guardian Beast of Sound let out a single, high pitched ping as the ‘Eta’ symbol on her wings flashed. The wave of energy washed over the chamber and in an instant , it was entirely drowned out. Everything was muted by a persistent, unending static of sound that left one practically unable to hear their own thoughts. Kaizer Ghidorah could ignore it at first, letting it only invigorate him to rip the petulant bat wing from wing. But ambition for that outcome was snuffed out when the gyaos unleashed her smokescreen of dark haze, causing a complete blackout. Unable to see nor hear, he was forced to hover and halt his forward advance to avoid crashing into the ceiling or wall.

He sneered, trying to shake his head and clear the deafness. Unable to see in the haze, he had no way of dodging when a speeding blur of white blitzed towards and divebombed him in the face. He fired in the direction the gyaos, unsure if he hit anything on account of being blind and deaf. He got his answer through his still working sense of touch when Irys swooped in and smashed her empowered wing into his right head from another direction. Then another blow, then another. Wing strikes, divebombs, headbashes with Irys’ reinforced skullcap, kicks, and scoring with beams fired from out of the dark ether. Kaizer snarled, not really hurt but thoroughly annoyed by the onslaught. He tried to get free of the haze but everywhere he went just had more haze, not helped with the disorienting deafness and blows to the face making it hard to even tell which way was up or down. He started firing wildly into the haze, scoring every direction with graviton torrents and wing borne lightning to little success.

And Irys kept it up, using every ounce of this new power she had. Even with it she knew she couldn’t chance a full on assault, let alone up close, against Kaizer. But the ancients of Atlantis would be proud of their legacy, because by trickery to fight on her terms, cleverly striking at the areas Gigan had opened up, altering the terrain to avoid retaliation, and hit-and-run tactics she was managing to outpace one of the most powerful kaiju to ever exist. By luck, Kaizer Ghidorah happened to fire in a direction Irys was coming from, forcing her to stop her attempted divebomb and stop short, spreading her wings as a wall of projected sound shot out of her runic wing membranes. Mana-fueled sound and gravitons clashed, this time the former not cracking under the pressure of the latter. The dark haze was blown back somewhat, cluing Kaizer Ghidorah into the now oncoming shield which he poured more beams into. But by grit of fangs and the same steely will that carried her all these years, Irys simply refused to yield. She slowly pressed forward, trying to close the distance and shove the built up energy into her foe. Fortunately however, she wasn’t fighting alone.

Kaizer Ghidorah’s wing lightning arched back, almost vacuumed up by still-functioning magnets below. It hurt like Daiei for Megalon to draw in electricity on damaged drills, sending barrages of painful sparks out of the cracks marring his forelimbs, but it hurt Kaizer Ghidorah more when the overclocked thunder cannon ray smashed into his back. Stunned briefly, Kaizer Ghidorah wasn’t able to focus as the world of sound returned to him. The only thing he heard was Irys’ screaming war cry as she smashed the charged sound shield into him and sent them both rocketing to the ground. Irys skidded across the floor, carving a trench into it but managing to shakingly regain her flight mid-fall and swoop around on bleeding wings.

Kaizer Ghidorah instead found himself crashing to the earth with the grace of a meteor, impacting the ground hard enough to crater it. He gasped and bellowed in pained rage, hurt but his injuries weren’t debilitating. He could still fight with a broken leg, bleeding from forty percent of his body and burnt across almost as much. Half his skeleton was broken when he tore Grand King Ghidorah’s head out. Irys, Gigan, and Megalon’s assaults, while admirable and definitely damaging him, hadn’t given him significant pause.

What did was what he saw upon regaining cleared vision. Just outside the crater, standing tall in a location Irys had intentionally shoved him towards, Kaizer Ghidorah beheld a massive, smooth slab of obsidian that bore his reflection. When his eyes locked upon the enormous “X” carved into his chest from Gigan’s last act, along with the reflected forms of Irys, Megalon, and the downed elder cyborg; Kaizer Ghidorah did something for the first time in his life. He winced and paused.

Not by his own will, he still was crazed and bloodlusting enough to want to kill everything around him. But something, someone, gripped him in an icy grasp. A sensation trickled over him like freezing water droplets, first slow, and then drowning. Then the voice of Irys, Megalon, and Gigan’s teammate came roaring back into his head and now it was Kaizer’s turn to be mentally assailed.

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

Inside a shattered mind, Monster X’s consciousness twitched. He felt weak, so incredibly weak, like moving even a finger was a momentous task. Something was trying to call to him, a faint whisper that almost sounded like a voice but it was far too dispersed and tiny to make out what it was. He tried to listen, tried to move; but to no avail. That was, until a fantastic echo called out through the mentalscape. X looked up and saw the cause, able to see what the manifestation of Kaizer Ghidorah’s consciousness saw.

Kaizer Ghidorah’s reflection, marked by a massive “x” carved into his chest. X was puzzled, trying to figure out what had happened; only to gain his answer shortly after in a manner much to his horror. His team on the edge of death. Irys in a state he didn’t recognize along with a defiant Megalon making a noble last-stand. X’s brow furrowed.

-Only… only Gigan could have left that mark on Kaizer, he should be with them… Where is he?!-

He felt like he’d been run through when he saw the form slumped into a pile of rubble behind Irys and Megalon. His best friend’s body lay limp, missing one arm and having the other impaled through the stomach with not a sign of biological or mechanical life from his blacked out, mechanical eye to his exposed internals and sparks occasionally spraying from a busted joint. Gigan had definitely left that mark, no doubt fighting Kaizer as according to he and Monster X’s promise to protect their team from him should X fall. And the mark was deep, extremely deep, but aimed at a heavily muscled and bony part on the body. Monster X furrowed in confusion.

-Why? I-If he could get the power to swing that hard and c-cut that deep, he’d go for a weak spot. The belly, the underarm, the necks and faces! G-Gigan… Gigan would know that! And he promised he’d take Kaizer out! How, how he miss?! He should have-!…-

Monster X felt the cold of grief flood him when the realization hit him. Gigan hadn’t missed, he almost never missed and with such high stakes he couldn’t miss. His best friend had intentionally wasted a potentially mortal or debilitating shot. Gigan had carved X’s name into Kaizer Ghidorah as both an insult to his greatest enemy… and a message to his best friend. The cyborg’s words from back in team chamber were of recent memory.

And he saw the consciousness manifestation of his other half, the cause of three hundred years of pain and agony to those around them, trying to return to attacking Irys and Megalon. Monster X’s weakness left him, his fingers digging into the ground hard enough to form tightened fists that bled. All his will fought against any binding Grand King Ghidorah or Kaizer Ghidorah imposed, and shattered them all. By the time Kaizer Ghidorah’s avatar turned around after becoming alert to the scream of rage behind him, Monster X’s avatar was already upon him and smashing a graviton kick into the dragon’s faces. Gigan’s last act was sending a message to the one member of their team whom could stop Kaizer Ghidorah once and for all, and it had been received.

“Look, look what you’ve done!”, X shouted as he pushed Kaizer face first into the view of Gigan’s body.

Something spilled out of the memories and view, flooding the both of them with the myriad of emotions and sensations associated with any of them.

“Are you determined to prove yourself like King? What kind of sick creature,” Monster X shoved back against Kaizer’s attempt to free himself, flooding the both of them in the whirlwind of happiness from memories of friendship and grief from the present time, “-would murder his own friend?!”

“He wasn’t-… my… friend!”, Kaizer choked as he sneered at Monster X’s teary face.

Another wave of emotions hit him when Monster X chucked him into another wall of memories and forced him to experience them. Years, sometimes decades trapped inside asteroid Gorath and the only truly happy times Monster X had ever experienced in those years was the joint ventures with the Nebulans, where he got to see his oldest and then second oldest friends. In a life of solitude and service, it was his only respite. And now he was forcing Kaizer to see it all. Kaizer Ghidorah strained and snarled even as he gasped in pain and tried to clutch at his head to block it out.

“Those are your- memories, they’re not mine!”, he bellowed defiantly and started to lift up to his feet to rise.

Monster X’s cold, hardened gaze glared back as the Dragon Knight slowly approached. With each step, more memories of Gigan, Megalon, Irys, Aria Blaze, even Adagio Dazzle and Sonata Dusk, anyone X cared for that was at risk, started, to flood the world around them.

Kaizer Ghidorah flinched, perhaps only now feeling tears licking at his cheeks as the stabbing feeling in his chest intensified. In one way or another, he was feeling what X was for a being who was supposed to not care the slightest for. Grief.

“These memories, they aren’t mine,” Kaizer growled in flinching denial, “Once you’re gone they’ll never be a part of me anymore!”

He sneered and swung out. But whereas grief turned to stunned pain in Kaizer, that same grief drove Monster X further and further. Monster X blocked the strike, even if doing so resulted in him getting a shoulder pad torn off, and braced both forearms into Kaizer Ghidorah’s sternum to shove him back into the memory wall. He grabbed Kaizer by the central face and forced him to look, forced him to feel.

“Arrogant fool, I am you! These are your memories, they’ll always be a part of you!”

Several dozen decades flew by and Kaizer Ghidorah saw each and roared at what he saw.

“You lived a life of servitude and ignorance, living by orders alone. I wouldn’t have!”

The views all shifted to show Monster X’s loved ones, from fleeting moments in time including the dramatic and stressed to the quiet and calm ones. Stepping through a portal with Irys, taking battle positions side by side against Grand King Ghidorah to fight him as a team, resting together in a pile with Gigan and X back to back, Megalon half buried in the middle, and Irys roosting directly above.

“No one gave me the command to take them in, they were the only part of life we chose!”, Monster X yelled as he pushed forward and forced Kaizer into the memory, forcing him to experience it all.

Kaizer lashed out in a blind rage that had fueled him for over three hundred years, grasping at Monster X’s face and trying to claw, twist, or bash him away. But even as they struggled, even as some of Kaizer Ghidorah’s memories fought for space in their mindscape, Monster X didn’t quit.

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

In the real world, Irys cocked an eyebrow at seeing Kaizer Ghidorah flinch and grimace. His eyes were dilated but unfocused, and she could see the seams of them glisten. She stayed ready to fight, to protect what remained of her flock; and for the first time in her life, she prayed.

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

The sight of Irys and Megalon standing up at the ready with a fallen Gigan behind them from Kaizer’s real world point of view was overlaying a memory of Aria Blaze putting her hand to an unmasked X’s face. These in turn were combined with a much more distant memory of a young xilian man standing beside an older male and female, parents, and later memories of an xilian adult with a similarly aged woman, their rival, then friend turned fiance, then wife. The feelings that flooded out from the memories were the same for both Praetorian Guard 094’s family and Monster X’s team, much to X’s confirmation and Kaizer’s denial.

“Yet you’d throw them away for what’s gone! Tossed it aside like trash,” Monster X surged forward and smashed his glare into Kaizer’s as they struggled for supremacy, “If you destroy what you were trying to avenge, you don’t deserve to be free!”

Kaizer Ghidorah screamed from overloading memories as Monster X bowed his head. The world around them began to turn white, enveloping them both even as Kaizer started to fight back. Both of them started to change.

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

Irys’ prayer was answered in a way she didn’t expect. Tears began to stream down the gold and black dragon’s eyes. He tossed about and reared up in a mixture of blind stress and turmoil, before letting out a long, piercing call that permeated across Zenith. It was a mixture of cries. A wrathful roar of a dragon under attack, the grieving wail of a knight, and what almost sounded like a scream of a man not heard in over three hundred years. His aura flared, oscillating between three shapes. A three headed, golden dragon. An ivory hued knight. And a shape some would recognize as an xilian man.

Kaizer Ghidorah flared out his wings and took to the air, smashing through a backwall and flying off into the depths of Zenith.

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

Monster X and Kaizer Ghidorah’s mental avatars were in a deadlock, grabbing each other by the shoulders and trying to push the other back. As time passed in a struggle that felt like it was taking hours, the forms of a knight and dragon occasionally flickered out and the shapes of two humanoids briefly would take their place. The broken parts of a male xilian, Praetorian 094’s, consciousness were grappling in both their past and present forms.

Unseen by either of them, the broken cage that had held Kaizer Ghidorah’s personality back for hundreds of years outside of brief instances, started to shift. The bars disappeared into a haze, collecting back up into another shape. New memories started to flow into the mindscape, showing the Xilian homeworld during a golden age. Many of them were of Praetorian 094, but from a point of view looking at him rather than from him. A pair of eyes opened.

By now the two quarreling halves of 094 had beaten each other senseless, shoving the other back and collapsing to the ground. Monster X’s side, 094’s personality and mannerisms represented by a gray avatar, managed to rise even through tired heaves. Kaizer Ghidorah’s side, 094’s out of balance memories represented by a golden avatar, managed to struggle to his feet. But just as he balled a fist that crackled with graviton energy, something held him back.

Monster X flinched, the voice almost sounding like Aria for a moment before he noticed the differences; it being similar but not identical. This was someone else. Kaizer’s side looked back and saw a vaguely solidified cloud of fog wrapped around his arm. The mist collected, forming a violet-hued figure in the shape of an xilian woman both sides of 094 recognized from memory. One from direct recollection, the other from impressions and feelings that only resurfaced due to the actions of Ms. Blaze. After all, Controller 011 and the siren had more in common than just being violet.

Kaizer Ghidorah’s side ceased, his voice barely above a disbelieving whisper, “Y-You.”

Monster X’s side didn’t drop his tired guard, but he did manage to shake through his stupor and speak, “W-what? Who are you?”

011 sighed, turning her head and casting her hand to the mentalscape above them. She waved her hand to bring up some more of her memories.

It was of the battle with Grand King Ghidorah over 370 years ago, this time from her perspective. However this was far after she’d taken her fall from the skyscraper and Kaizer Ghidorah had first emerged, as the black and gold dragon was rampaging through the city to chase after the xilian military and leaving behind a comatose, now two-headed Grand King Ghidorah.

“I didn’t die from that fall, only unconscious and badly wounded. Controller augments made me out of sterner material so I awakened after a time.”

The view shifted to look about the ruined city, seeing the controller’s loyal soldiers dying at the hands of a husband whom was blinded by rage, grief, and overwhelming power he couldn’t control; lost to the destructive tendencies inherent to a ghidorah. Grand King Ghidorah, the catalyst of this all, had gotten back up and was attempting to flee with Kaizer Ghidorah noticing and roaring in berserk fury.

“I saw how you’d lost yourself, how I’d lost my beloved and thousands of our kind lost their lives. We were linked and I felt what you felt. I knew you avenging me by their and Ghidorah’s deaths wouldn’t sate such rage, it had to end.”

The view point showed two hands digging through the debris as Kaizer Ghidorah took off after Grand King Ghidorah. They drew up a sharp piece of broken metal shaped like a crude dagger.

“We were bonded, we’d have each other’s wounds. You were far too powerful to be put down, but me? I was just a mortal woman.”

The dagger was raised over the view and then plunged downwards into the chest, flashes of pain overcoming them all. Monster X reactively reached over and touched at his chest on the left, just above where the heart would be. In the memory, Kaizer Ghidorah paused and screeched in agony as a stab wound appeared on his chest at the same spot. X now knew how he got that scar.

The memory shifted to just after Kaizer Ghidorah had fallen, miraculously ending up right next to a mortally wounded Controller 011, who crawled up closer to him. The wound was fatal, though not instantly so.

“I was already wounded, so I knew I’d perish; but you’d survive,” 011 muttered in a muted tone.

In the memory, a dying 011 gently put her hand to a brow that bore scales taller than she was. She pulled herself closer and put her forehead to the now comatose Kaizer Ghidorah’s, a farewell kiss to a bounded husband lost to a monster she’d stopped. In the last moments however, it almost looked like the view was perplexingly dragged out of 011’s body. It started to go towards the heavens, only to be dragged back down and passed what looked like Kaizer Ghidorah’s jaws. Grand King Ghidorah’s words of him swallowing something right after speaking of souls was beginning to make a lot more sense.

Controller 011’s spirit sighed, “Grand King Ghidorah could devour the souls of those he’d consumed. Unknowingly, you did the same to me. And I’ve been here since, holding this berserk side of you back as your cage.”

Monster X was honestly intrigued and extremely grateful. It had been an effort to move heavens and earth to stand up to Kaizer Ghidorah, and this loved one from a past life had been aiding him to do just that from over three centuries. All the life he’d had thus far was thanks to her.

Controller 011 seemed to nod and smile at X’s avatar even as she shrugged, “But I can’t do it forever. I’m at my limit and I can’t persist as much as I wish to. You two can’t endure this life split and trying to vie for supremacy, I wouldn’t want that. I didn’t die for that. Something has to happen to end the cycle.”

Kaizer Ghidorah however, was lost for words. He tried to speak, maybe to apologize, plead, rationalize, anything; but all mental thought seemed to break. His entire world was shattered and he was dead quiet for a long time. Upon learning the very thing he’d been trying to avenge was also the very thing that protected X from him all these centuries, he couldn’t do anything else.

Movement before him finally spurred a reaction. Monster X’s avatar was storming up to them with a steely resolve on his face. Kaizer saw his tightened fist and thought he knew how his enemy wanted to “end the cycle”, especially after X seemed to notice he’d been spotted and rushed forward to no doubt attack now that his cover had been blown. Kaizer Ghidorah started to rise up and ready a counterstrike, but he was too slow as X dove forward. X wanted to savage Kaizer, wanted to rip him to shreds for what he’d caused their people, their comrades, their best friend. But that wasn’t going to amend this situation, not after the epiphany he’d gotten realizing Kaizer was a fractured piece himself and vice versa. No, this called for drastic action. Kaizer desperately swung a wide hook as X’s arms lashed out to seize hold of his neck and-

Monster X embraced his other half after spending years fighting him, pulling Kaizer into a bear hug. Numerous memories of Kaizer’s side, being trapped in the depths of X’s mind and unknowingly imprisoned by his beloved for centuries filtered through; as well as the joyous and happy memories of 094’s life that Kaizer still bore. Walking in between two caring parents, graduating from the military guild academy as a youth, quickly rising through the ranks, a punch to the cheek by another young soldier who’d one day be the eleventh Controller, a deceptively quiet wedding for two of such high ranks; and numerous others. Monster X saw them and took them all in, even holding back a chuckle at seeing the memory of a young 011 slugging 094 in parallel to how Aria reacted right after he pulled her out of the river. He tightened his hold on the frozen Kaizer.

“Hatred works in cycles of conflict, neither one of us can kill the other… So I’m trying something new to break that cycle…… I’m sorry,” he whispered and caused Kaizer Ghidorah to flinch.

“I’m so sorry I hurt you… because of everything I forgot. You’ve been locked away so long, you can’t really control yourself any more now than you could when you were mad from grief. But you can’t run rampant like this, not with what I have-… what we have now.”

The memories of Monster X’s happiest memories took prominence, some distant and some recent. Some only moderate like the time a certain ultra whose life he’d saved tried to free him once. Some more dear and intimate such as a sea witch’s hand upon his face and his forehead to hers in a snowy forest. Some from centuries past, like the first time he ever met Megalon during a half bungled mission involving the cyborg harmlessly setting his own foot on fire. Some very recent like bantering with Gigan and getting thwacked on the head by a best friend whom stubbornly refused to let him sulk. Times with his team, time with the sirens, times at peace before his new master. They merged with Kaizer’s recollections of 094’s experiences to paint one big portrait of a life lasting over three centuries. It had more than its fair share of issues, much more than its fair share of trauma, but it was far from hopeless for those too stubborn to quit on it. In some ways, it was beautiful even without a conclusion.

Controller 011’s spirit cupped Kaizer Ghidorah’s cheek and nodded to him while motioning towards the new memories Monster X had forged, “I chose what I did, so there is nothing to avenge for me. Don’t throw this all away because of me.”

Monster X sighed and smiled slightly, glad to meet the approval of 011 on all aspects. She must have been a great match for 094 for Kaizer to want to spend over three centuries trying to avenge her, as well as her not being sour about X unknowingly moving on to a second love. He readied himself for what he said next. Some of those memories she looked over included Aria.

Monster X backed away from Kaizer slightly, admiring their life and nodding to him, “This could all be yours too, if you’ll forgive me. Because I’ll forgive you…”

“The only way to truly end a vendetta, is to forgive. He’s not your enemy, nor are those around him,” 011 noted.

Monster X felt Kaizer slowly grip him around his torso, holding it briefly before pulling back. At last he spoke, this time in a voice very much like X’s. Free of hatred, free of wrath, just a voice of a man who’d just woke from a terrible nightmare he’d put himself through for over three hundred years. He sounded completely different than the raving maniac of before, surprisingly quiet.

“…You made this life, I tried to destroy it… There was a good reason you got to be the one outside for these centuries, you’re the better man,” he whispered before bowing his heads down and yielded, “I forgive you…!”

“But what of our friend? The brave cyborg who stood up to me?”, Kaizer noted in what sounded almost like a plea; especially after putting emphasis on the word ‘our’.

Monster X surprisingly smiled in recollection of a conversation he’d had with Gigan right before all this choas with Ghidorahs in the past few hours started, “As you’ll remember, this isn’t the first time this sort of thing has happened to him… I have an idea that just might work, if we hurry.”

Kaizer Ghidorah straightened himself upwards and nodded towards his other half while raising his hand, “Then make it so.”

Monster X clasped hands with his other half and Kaizer surged towards him. He advanced forward, but instead of running into Monster X’s personality and avatar, he melted into it. There was a flash of brilliance and as the light faded, only one of them stood. Back in their kaiju state, the embodiment of their conscious was largely Monster X’s figure, now sporting some golden accents, for the reunified mind clearly took more after him; but they were both present to some degree. Monster X beheld his new form in awe, feeling a sense of both power and completeness that had been alien to him except that time Aria managed to funnel Kaizer’s powers into him during the fight with Enjin. No more mental cages, no more struggling personalities, he was whole again.

-”Live this life for the both of us, largely in your state…. X, I’ll be with you when I’m needed.”-

Monster X or Kaizer X, whichever one prefered to call them, slowly looked towards Controller 011 as she strode up to them and cupped his cheek. X, moniker withstanding, smiled upon her while letting a finger run across her bangs before resting on her shoulder.

“Listen, I’m sorry if you worry with Aria. I do honestly love her, so I'm sorry if that is offens-”, he was shushed by the spiritual woman, who giggled.

“I’d have wanted you to move on and be happy even if you did remember me... My time with you was great, but it passed. This is her time. She’s good for you, I felt the love coming out of that song of hers even from in here. Protect her,”

X sighed and nodded slowly, “To be fair she does a good job of doing that for me too.”

“My task is done, it’s time for me to pass on,” she whispered to him as she drew closer, “Let me go…”

X swallowed a heavy breath as he closed his eyes and placed a hand upon Controller 011’s head, doing what no Ghidorah had ever done before in their eons of existence. Praetorian 094 was dead for 370 years, it was time for his wife to join him in whatever realm those that passed faded into.

Irys had taken off after Kaizer Ghidorah, both to try and keep him from rushing anyone else, possibly call for help from the rest of the master’s forces, and see if her distant wish was answered. She’d stopped her approach when she saw Kaizer, perched at the edge of a dark cliffside, slowly turn around. His face was free of the typical, scowling, snarling, rabid expression he typically bore. It was calm and collected, at peace. It looked like X despite the different body. That resemblance increased when it slowly started to approach. At first she was reactive, about to ready an attack and shout out to not make her do what she must. But the albino gyaos was in for a bigger surprise when Kaizer Ghidorah’s body began to contort and shift. He rose back up on two legs, bone armor replacing golden scales, two side heads shrinking back into shoulder pads. Aside from some scales persisting, including a golden ring of them around his eyes, and the presence of wings; what stood before her looked exactly like her first comrade. X looked to her, seeming to admire the glowing runes splayed across her body, and gave her a knowing nod while the edges of his maw curled up into a calm smile.

Irys was at first dumbstruck, spurring X to speak as he reached over and put a hand upon her head, stroking a claw behind her ears affectionately with a proud smile upon his jaws.

X smirked, “Not the first time this has happened to him. It was before your and Megalon’s time, let’s get going though. Lead the way, will you? I’m still new to this flying business and don’t think I can keep this boost up for long after the beatdown you and the guys gave me.”

Irys flinched, but soon enough her shocked visage slowly turned to one of joyous elation at the chance. They spread their wings and flew back to the temple as fast as they could.

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

A horn burning of molten rock met one blazing in dark magic. Even with her boosted power and strength to match her grown stature, Rarity winced and struggled. Crashing into and clashing with Enjin felt like hitting a train! She dug her hooves in as Enjin did the same, gem stones and shadows emerging from one side of the clash as magma and fires did the other side. Gritting her teeth, Nightmare Rarity surged her magic and grabbed hold of the monster in a wave of telekinesis. Grasping living things was harder than static objects for most unicorns and in her normal state Rarity couldn't hope to budge the monster, but matters change when one is infused with a thousand years of magic born of an alicorn. She grabbed hold of Enjin and with a terrific shout, ripped her foe off their hooves and slammed them into and through a boulder. Snapping her head to and fro while stomping her hooves, Rarity dragged Enjin through the earth, fires, and smoke before tossing it up into the air.

But Enjin remembered. It recalled the last time it had been defeated by a siren dame and dragon knight exploiting a weakness it had of being unable to regenerate when not in contact with or surrounded by earth. And with all of Sunset Shimmer’s magical knowledge to draw upon, it wasn’t letting itself fall into the trap the same way twice even if Rarity’s toss was less her knowing its weakness and more a lucky coincidence. It was an adaptable Aspect after all. Enjin disappeared in a flash of fiery magic and reappeared right in front of Nightmare Rarity, silently grabbing hold of her and sensing the ground beneath its hooves. They disappeared in another burst of magic and reappeared in the nearest open space below that the teleportation spell would allow their combined volume: a mountain cavern a dozen meters underground.

The cave would have been pitch black and in a way Nightmare Rarity almost would have preferred it that way, at least compared to the burning liquids spilling out of the walls and parts of the ceiling. When Enjin engendered the lava flows on the surface, the stores of molten rock had to come from below after all, melting holes in the walls and lighting up the surroundings with clashing shadows and burning heat. Nightmare Rarity grunted and managed to telekinetically and physically shove her attacker back. Enjin stumbled back into a pool of lava, but reacted as if she was a sponge in water, drawing in the molten earth and literally burning off its wounds. A burning sphere appeared on her horn and Nightmare Rarity reactively threw up a barrier shield, thankful she could draw upon a few of Nightmare’s previous hosts’ abilities, in this case Luna’s spell knowledge, to do so. The mana grenade exploded and shattered the barrier as it took the blow, sending Nightmare Rarity sliding back on her hooves.

She grit her teeth and kept her eyes trained upon Enjin before noticing she was sliding and leaning back dangerously close to a lava pool, unceremoniously windmilling her arms to throw her balance forward again; aided by a telekinetic shove into her back for stability while wrapping herself in a bubble of magic to avoid being set ablaze by the convection heat coursing through the air. She sighed in relief, double checking to make sure her mane and tail hadn’t caught on fire. Enjin took notice of this and acted upon it. She might already have a home field advantage, being away from any water source or skyline, but assurance was not something to be trivial with.

She stomped on the ground while charging up several smaller grenade bursts, launching them into the ceiling and walls. Glowing cracks erupted from the superheated earth that glowed and melted. Nightmare Rarity reinforced her aura of magic and turned into a dark mist, reforming across the chamber to avoid the shower of lava spewing out of the magma vein Enjin had created which gushed onto the floor space she’d been standing on. Seizing her breath, she stretched out tendrils of darkened magic, her starry blue contrasting with the burning seams of lava Enjin had created. Massive hunks of stone and crystal were ripped free and launched at Enjin, whom returned the projectiles by bashing through a boulder and hurling a swung wave of lava at her foe. Nightmare Rarity shielded herself with a massive crystal torn free from the ground to block the molten rock before crushing her shield into a barrage of shards she used as a salvo of flechettes; firing them rapid-fire at her enemy.

The two mares, Sunset Shimmer and Rarity, possessed by and using a dark force respectively, enacted a gun fight shootout of sorts. Dodging, blocking, and returning fire. Waves of lava and bursts of flaming stone on one side being retaliated against with boulders and crushed crystal shards, given apex when a mana grenade impacted a beam of dark magic in a clash that rattled the entire chamber.

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

Godzilla Junior braced when he clipped the mountain slope and tumbled down it in a shower of falling debris. Shrugging off the daze and rolling himself upright again, he shook and heaved with a hand braced against the bedrock as he looked up. Grand King Ghidorah had shaken the smoke and soot from his eyes, surprisingly quiet whilst he hovered above and started to land a distance away. Junior however couldn’t help but wonder why the dragon wasn’t his usual, laughing mad self.

-He didn’t attack outright when he first arrived either, waited for me to shift back. Something’s different.-

His suspicion was confirmed when Ghidorah did something else different from the usual cackling, he spoke to him in a voice so plain and dispassionate it honestly caused him to mentally backpedal.

-”You knew you couldn’t defeat me, only giving those spawn false hope. Why did you deny yourself your greatest power? The entity was there for your taking and yet you confront me without it?”-

Junior looked to Ghidorah’s faces, seeing an odd mixture of confusion and anger hidden under a thick layer of similarly out of character stoicism.

Junior mentally grunted, knowing Ghidorah could hear his thoughts. The dragon seemed to sneer, rushing at Godzilla and smashing both of his heels into Junior’s midsection, sending the dinosaur crashing through a hill. And even so after such a vicious blow that was followed upon by a rain of graviton beams, Ghidorah seemed more confused than enraged.

Wincing under the onslaught, Junior reacted as quickly as he did cleverly, swinging his tail through the hill’s rubble to launch a shower of house- to mansion-sized boulders at Ghidorah and obscuring himself behind a wall of dirt and dust. Grand King Ghidorah closed his wings over himself and snapped them back out, blowing away the debris. Stomps behind him clued him to look out, but Junior was quick and after running up a steep slope beside his foe he pounced off it and landed on Grand King Ghidorah’s back. 60,000 tons of flying dinosaur managed to knock King Ghidorah off balance and he stumbled, though did not fall.

Godzilla Junior viciously tore at his enemy, grabbing one of Ghidorah’s necks with one hand, a wing with another, and clamping his jaws down on his middle throat. It was a strain, but fantastic jaw strength and Junior going after a spot that, unbeknownst to him Gigan had slashed at, allowed him to spill a trickle of ichors through Ghidorah’s split scales. Grand King Ghidorah stumbled, trying to thrash and dislodge his attacker. He even lept back and slammed into a nearby mountainside, dragging his back across it; but Godzilla refused to let go. Ghidorah’s entire body started to glow with a building charge. Gravity distorted itself all around them with boulders to scale with small fortresses or castles getting levitated off the ground, then crushed to dust under the gravity pulses. Energy crackled across Grand King Ghidorah’s body, shocking and electrocuting Godzilla Junior; who wisely threw himself free to avoid the ensuing shockwave of gravity and lightning that flew free of the dragon. The blinding blast leveled a mountain and carried with it Ghidorah’s answer.

Rolling across the plateau and smoking all over, Godzilla Junior groaned as he put his feet and hands beneath him. The golden brilliance over took his vision and he lifted his eyes to gaze into it. Grand King Ghidorah was stepping out of the crater he’d made around himself, crushing boulders between his talons. Golden energy seeped from his eyes and jaws, shocking lights arced across each wing membrane, and his voice seemed to come from everywhere at once.

Grand King Ghidorah scowled and charged forward, kicking Godzilla hard enough to punt him off the ground and land several hundred meters away.

-”Of all those who stood against me, none have baffled nor annoyed me such as you. They all had fate bless them.”-

Godzilla Junior rolled over as his backspines flashed, firing a quick burst of blue plasma that Grand King Ghidorah walked into and kept walking through without slowing. His scales reacted to the energy, distributing it across the body and dampening the concussive impact even as sparks flew out from every which way and wreathed the King of Terror in smoke.

-”The Mothra has a pedigree to her family name, the last of two lineages of legendary guardians whom grow stronger with each generation. The Xilian creation was a blood after my blood, there was little chance it could have been weak. Even those beings during Final Wars had an excuse, the last desperate act of their world’s greatest civilizations. I have stood against folk whom became ultra and fighters of zones, people turned angels and archangels. I have walked upon a world and time tread upon by a god!”-

Grand King Ghidorah closed in, covered in light, sparks, fires, and smoke like a literal devil from the bowels of hell.

-”All had a destiny, a decree of fate for greatness. I have roamed this universe for a hundred thousand millennia, I know fate. Fate made me what I am, fate decided whom die and whom survive at my will. And such a grand fate as to face me always comes with a destiny to match. And what do you have?!”-

He loosed a barrage of graviton beams, snatching Godzilla Junior off the ground in a manner mimicking Kaizer Ghidorah’s technique. Continuously shocking and lifting his foe, Ghidorah continued his tirade of a rant.

-”You’re a mutation, an unnatural accident. You have no legend, no destiny. What made you worthy of being Terra’s champion? Your survival was either a mistaken fluke or there is something more. I almost hoped it was the latter…”-

Grand King Ghidorah added the wing lightning in, unloading on Godzilla Junior whom shrieked in pain from the combined onslaught. Soon a fantastic explosion engulfed him and Grand King Ghidorah cut off the flow, letting Junior’s limp, burning, smoking body drop to the ground and flop against the earth. Grand King Ghidorah watched it for a time, waiting. When a minute passed, he scoffed and kicked at the limp head of Godzilla Junior.

No response. Grand King Ghidorah slowly turned and shrugged, looking perturbed and thoroughly annoyed more than anything else. He was victorious and annoyed.

It was a rare feat for him to be bemused, practically get his hopes up, about anything. It meant disappointment was all the more bitter. He started off, wondering how much longer he’d have to try and salvage his plan before Bagan decided to strike him down. Falling back on his visions, he stole a moment to concentrate and try to glimpse the future again. Once again he focused, once again he turned himself into a gravity well, and once again the sight of what was to come was slippery and foggy.

He saw Bagan, or at least it was his best guess given he knew not of anything else that massive in such a shape. It was fighting something. That alone had been what spurred Ghidorah’s intrigue, the idea of something being strong enough to stand up to what he himself thought unstoppable. So far his only inclination was his hypothesis this Equestria bore a godly counterpart, a theory supported by the figure he glimpsed in the mental confrontation with the alicorns. That alone had been his reason to resign from that conflict, confident he’d done enough.

But this, this was something different. Ghidorah tried to home in more. If he could only-

A hand grabbed Grand King Ghidorah by the tail. Even before he snapped out of his vision and looked to see his attacker, the intense heat was all too obvious.

Godzilla Junior, now covered in burning white and blue meltdown markings, took hold of Grand King Ghidorah’s wing and in a show of titanic strength even for him, yanked the dragon off the ground. He threw his foe upwards, before ripping back with the tails and smashing Ghidorah against the ground again and again.

Refueled by his second wind, Godzilla Junior twisted and spun around while still holding onto Grand King Ghidorah’s tails. Around and around the dragon went, gaining speed until he was let go of. But even as he was sent hurtling back into a stone cliff face, Grand King Ghidorah retaliated and fired multiple streams of graviton beams behind him. Wounded but not reacting to the pain, Burning Godzilla Junior bulldozed through the attack and charged after his enemy. The two hit the cliff face, one after another, in a massive ball of rage, plasma, lights, and debris.

Getting in close, Godzilla Junior weaved around the beam onslaught and ignited his body. As he fought on like a man possessed with caution thrown out the window, Junior was focused only on what the stakes were. No matter what game Ghidorah was playing, he was still on the loose and putting those around Junior, those he cared for, at risk. The day he let a monster like this free to destroy what it saw fit was the day he died. And if that was today, he was taking Grand King Ghidorah with him.

At equal power, Godzilla Senior likely would have fallen to Grand King Ghidorah’s might. A similar theory could be poised for the first Godzilla. They fought only out of necessity or revenge, things which could only go so far. It was an uncanny coincidence both Xenilla and Junior agreed with one piece of logic. A monster who fought because they hated what lay before them couldn’t exceed a hero who fought because they loved everything behind them.

And by his own efforts and clairvoyance given by his mother, Azusa, his bonded, Luna, and his friend, Rarity; Junior had decided what he was.

If Grand King Ghidorah wanted to test him, see him at his best, he was about to give him a demonstration without some magical disease interfering. He didn’t need it.

Godzilla Junior grabbed Grand King Ghidorah’s left head by the jaws and in a motion he’d seen his mentor, King Kong, do time and time again; wrenched down and up in a specific sequence. A sickening pop cracked the air and Grand King Ghidorah screeched in pain from having his left lower jaw completely torn from its socket. It would heal and wasn’t too damaging, but it hurt every strand of his body. And despite the onslaught of graviton beams and lighting raking across the dinosaur’s body, the burning titan just kept up the attack. Godzilla Junior grabbed onto Ghidorah’s wings with either hand and pushed against the dragon’s thrashing. The heat around them spiked, melting the rock and igniting the air until it became too much for the damaged dragon scales to take. Much to his shock and agony, Grand King Ghidorah literally saw his scales melting off his skin into golden slag around Godzilla’s contact points and sear the flesh underneath. If Junior couldn’t blast or cut through the armor by beam or claw, he’d burn through it.

Godzilla Junior fell atop Grand King Ghidorah, radiating nuclear pulse shockwaves, punching, burning, and crashing into him as they rolled across the plateau grounds. Through the flashes of battles present and in the future, Grand King Ghidorah started to see more.

Minutes later, a mass shot out of the ground and into the sky almost like a reverse meteor.

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

-”I’m beginning to suspect I might have been mistaken before, so I’ll give you a secret!”-

Grand King Ghidorah managed to seize his foe with his two good jaws and tails, prying him off with a massive gravity surge. The two floated apart weightlessly, blood and ichor floating around and between them.

Battered, near exhausted, and still prepared to fight on as he was, Junior paused momentarily and looked upon the dragon. Devoid of any rage, confusion, or menace, Grand King Ghidorah almost looked… scared, unsure, solemn.

-”Sixty five thousand millennium ago, I met my first defeat. Thousands of lifetimes later I decided for the first time a battle with the Ultra wasn’t worth it despite striking down some of their number. Three centuries ago I was beaten to the ground, mutilated partly because I was caught off guard and partly because a race I’d written off managed to make something strong enough to face me. Then there was you with the Mothra and your allies on Terra a decade and a half ago. Just a few hours ago a group of failed experiments and cockroach creations nearly killed me… A million lifetimes of existence I’ve been on top, an arbiter to decide life and death. Sometimes I fancied fate gave me a role to play and ensure creation grew stronger each generation from my wrath. In some centuries I even fancied my purpose to be culling the herd until a new power could be discovered or evolve… And now, fate seems to finally have made a present time in which I’m not opposed by all but a few. Creation has caught up to me and I am no longer king.”-

Grand King Ghidorah motioned to the world beneath them, they were so high up even the curvature of the world and outline of its continents was evident.

-”Destruction seemed my only meaning, and I see it coming to an end. I've run out of time battering worlds into being stronger and culling the weak. Worlds can fight back against me now and I will eventually be overtaken. Even this world has forces capable of opposing my will. Sooner or later, something, be it born of Equestria or Terra, would kill me. This battle is my last will and testament.”-

-”I’ve told you before. You’re either a mistake to survive me, let alone this long, or fate has a reason for making you Terra’s champion. I want to know why before I pass. You hold such power, such as I’ve seen, yet you had no destiny decreeing you bear it for others’ sake!”-

Godzilla Junior exited his burning form and calmly watched the world below, almost thankful for the fantastic view. His eyes laid upon the central mountain range in the core of Equestria, and the pinprick of a castle he could see from this distance. His heart warmed upon memory and knowledge of who resided there. So visible, yet so isolated. They looked so vulnerable from this high up, like it could be plucked up in a hand and held. He could almost wonder if this vindicated Ghidorah’s world view to himself, seeing so many worlds from a view like this. Shrunk and helpless.

-”It’s an abomination that such power is wasted on your use of it, you should be ruling that planet of yours like a god, those vermin you call humans worshipping you or being destroyed! Yet you bleed for them, suffer for them, and what do they do? They cast you out only for you to do the exact same thing for this world’s filth. With your family’s history, you should have been everything you’re not! What changed it…? Tell me, tell me why?!”-

Grand King Ghidorah roared with a plea. Godzilla Junior only looked upon Canterlot as he floated over it, closing his eyes and chuckling. He thought one clear picture after another, ones so overt Ghidorah wouldn’t be able to miss it with his psychic sensing. A young woman in a lab coat holding a young dinosaur close, calming him as he huddled up against her in fear of the thunderstorm outside. That same woman was seen again, slugging an unruly coworker for daring to harm the son she led out of the CAT scan room. A tearful goodbye at a helicopter landing pad when she bid her baby farewell. An equally teary reunion when she marveled at the titanic, fully grown son standing victorious in San Francisco bay.

More memories flew by. Learning under another king whom he saw as much more deserving of the title than Ghidorah. Acts of valor with the faction he came to co-lead. Acts of tender kindness upon those grieving for their lost parents, be they future lovers or antagonists. The role of a stern, but content teacher with an energetic student. The displays of compassion and heroism in the face of an out of control nightmare, all by normal ponies who’d inspired him.

Junior looked to Grand King Ghidorah, meeting the dragon’s cold, unreadable visage with a content smile.

-”, she raised better. No destiny, no prophecy or fate, just a choice as my father would have wanted. Azusa wasn't fated to be my mother and the Old King my father, they chose it, and I chose to be a hero.”-

Grand King Ghidorah narrowed his eyes and sent a pulse of gravity into the dinosaur, shoving him back into the atmosphere.

The air began to heat up, igniting as Godzilla Junior started to burn from re-entry.

It sounded less like a coy dare and more like an instruction from a teacher. Godzilla Junior however didn’t intend that. He had enough power left in him to try one last trick, one last ploy to make good on his vow to ensure this king of terror could never again threaten anyone; for all the souls he’d murdered and all those he still could. And he took inspiration from two members of his family.

Burning lights crossed his form, growing in intensity as to rival the flames of re-entry. They coated his body before shifting from white-blue to bright red. Spiralling red lights lined Godzilla Junior’s jaws as he took aim at the distant, gold form high above him. Grand King Ghidorah made no effort to dodge, letting his mind drift to the future as energy collected across his body. If this was how his most peculiar foe wished to die, he’d face their threat head on. To disprove Godzilla’s survival as a mistake, or see it through as such.

But another spoke otherwise when a speeding, white and blue meteor of a blur broke free of the atmosphere and slammed into Ghidorah. In an explosion of crystal, the light quickly redirected and shot downwards. Godzilla Junior canceled out his spiral fire when, through the burning heat and searing light, he felt a hand grab his arm.

Back in atmosphere, he could only hear three simple words forming a roaring decree.

“Took your time,” he grunted casually as he canceled out his beam charge as Xenilla desired.

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

Earlier, at the Plateau

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

A hot wind blew past a crowded mountain slope that hung around the edge of the plateau and fed into a stretch of caverns leading to safety below in the foothills. The fires above that risked bearing down on their heels had been shouted out, but still many ponies teetered on danger’s cusp. The ground-shakes from the battling kaiju had only paused a moment ago, but they and their aftershocks were risking to collapse the mountain pass or bury it under a landslide. Many a pony helped their fellow Equestrians along, assisting those weakened by circumstance or lack of a cutiemark down the slope, trying to inch and budge obstructing boulders out of the way, and scouting about under Night Glider’s lead to try and find ways to creep down to sea level. Many paused to look up and gawk at the massive, near blinding mass that shot up from the plateau above and sailed upwards into the heavens of an illuminated night.

The gust of warmed air blew across an unconscious stallion’s bangs and his red eyes encircled in golden sclera snapped open, Xenilla choked and gasped a breath. Several ponies around him scattered back in surprise but much to Xenilla’s own surprise he didn’t find himself dropping to the ground. Instead he felt his hooves grounded but his mind and eyes gazed up. But instead of the awe or bewilderment of the equines around him, his face only paled with horror. The sensory ability indicative of his species was working strangely, picking up an additional reading almost like it was scrambled from his daze. But it indicated him as clear as a pointing compass that his brother was in that bright mass that was currently several tens of thousands of feet up and climbing.

“No,” he whispered breathlessly before curling his lips back and screaming a shrill roar that sent many ponies backpedalling.

Moonbeam Glimmer, one of the ponies who’d been close by and helping steady him, summoned her courage and tapped at Xenilla’s shoulder with utter confusion on her face.

Xenilla whirled around to face her, the sheer, wide eyed panic on his face being palpable. Moonbeam gulped.

Xenilla’s breaths became coarse through a strained grimace, “That… was…”

He gagged briefly after almost saying “Icka’brod”, having swore to never call him that again for Junior’s unspoken wishes, “Godzilla… Please,-”

He gulped before breaking into a shout, “-please I need your magic, I have to save him! Where’s the Element Bearer?!”

Xenilla swung himself around, trying desperately to pick Rarity out of the crowd of confused, worried, and saddened onlookers.

His roar was met by Night Glider’s cautious plea, “X-Xenilla, Rarity’s not here!”

Took a lot out of her not to freeze in place when Xenilla turned in her direction, but focus on holding an infirm Our Town pony helped keep her nerve even when she felt those burning eyes staring through her. He looked as terrifying as he did terrified.

“She went back up to release the cutie marks from the vault, but with all the fighting up there she could be anywhere!”

Xenilla shook, both with frustration and fear. Had he further lost it he might have started ripping energy crystals out of the ground while smashing them into himself in a desperate gambit to try and restore himself despite knowing it shouldn’t work. Instead he thankfully remembered Princess Sparkle and Mothra Lea’s presentation. The change didn’t just work with alicorn magic or an Element of Harmony, just that those seemed the best bet and had been the ones used so far.

He shot up into the air and roared out while looking every which way for possible salvation of his kin, “I-I need unicorns! The more magic you know the better! Please, if I don’t change he’ll die!”

Despite being fraught with worry, several unicorns stepped up. Unfortunately, every single one of them sported a grayed coat and equals sign cutie mark. By sheer dumb luck of Daiei, all the passengers onboard the S.S. Mermare when Grand King Ghidorah had abducted it were earth ponies and pegasi. Sporting magic for sure, but not able to project it like unicorns or alicorns could. And Xenilla could practically smell the diminished power across the volunteers that stepped up.

“Wh-What’s wrong with your magic?”, he half whispered and half blurted in disbelief.

“We-”, a turquoise stallion, Party Favor swallowed back the hollowness forming in their stomach, knowing the desperateness of the situation and feeling nothing but choking shame for it, “- we gave it up… She’s the only one with any.”

Xenilla quickly looked at the pointed direction of this “she” and instead of a grown mare with a full magic school degree as his wildest dreams could hope, he was looking at a small, eleven year old pink filly. Mariner Chibi Moon paced out from between the Our Town unicorns and looked up to Xenilla as he landed before her. Poor girl didn’t have a single dry eye.

“I c-carried you, I have my magic… back,” she winced after glancing back at her cutie mark to again confirm that it was there.

“B-But she’s a child!”, Party Favor yelped, “…she might not have enough magic for whatever you need!”

Xenilla frowned slowly as he got a feel for her energy radiating off her. It was much stronger than most fillies or colts he’d met, but her age clearly downscaled it compared to someone like Rarity or Prince Consort Shining Armor.

Chibi Moon’s teary eyes widened and she gasped, stomping a hoof to the ground. She remembered all too well how Junior took a fall at the end of the gyaos battle and his assurance to her he most certainly could not fly. When she tried to show him wrong in a spat of childish spunk by launching herself around with a half misfired beam or pulse shockwave, he described it in two words.

“No… NO! Take it! Take all my magic! Please! You gotta save him! He can’t die! HE CAN’T!”, she sobbed in half hysterics completely justified given her age and experiences.

Xenilla’s body twitched and strained under monumental dread and emotional agony as Chibi Moon flung herself at his hoof and beat on it.

Xenilla beheld the filly, beheld the unicorns, and beheld the onlooking crowd that had gone dead quiet. His thousand-yard stare turned into a scowl of iron. Energy surged off his shoulder pads as he drew up a hoof and created a spire of crystal he stabbed into the ground.

“Never!”, he roared as more crystals burst from the ground in spreading lines.

More crystals started popping up, much to the onlookers shock, next to almost everypony immediately in front of Xenilla.

More crystals spread across the pass, appearing before everypony with each crystal connected underground in a chain.

“We are kaiju of Terra, we do not know ‘impossible’!”, Xenilla roared in a selfless boast as he put Chibi Moon down next to a glowing yellow crystal that sprung up between the two of them. Xenilla placed his hoof onto the crystal and after a moment of observation, Chibi Moon did the same.

Xenilla looked over towards her before looking back at Chibi Moon with stoic resolve, “At their core, all decisions are based on two conflicting forces, love and hatred. And love, both in itself or in friendship, is magic. A lot of you gave up your cutiemarks, but you never gave up your sapience. You keep your mind, you have love, you retain some magic. Find it and project it towards this young heroine while holding onto the crystals!”

There were glances of doubt, looks of confusion, and clear signs of worry. But one by one, marked or markless, hooves were placed upon the crystals and thoughts were cast. Moonbeam remembered helping her baby sister fly a kite. Night Glider remembered her first time meeting her friends at a ski slope. Marigold re-experienced the joys of her first social case. The Leafs recalled both a wedding day and their own little filly the same age as Chibi Moon. Despite the lack of marks in a good portion of the crowd, the crystals started to chime and glow.

Xenilla thought up a prayer and held his breath, glancing down towards Chibi Moon.

He was cut off when he noticed her expression. It was steely and resolute, clear worry upon her mind but any hesitation was burned away under the bravery welling up inside the filly. If she seemed any more strong of will or fiery in courage, he’d swear she’d be a Godzilla. Instead, the apprentice to the King of Kaiju only nodded as her horn spirals lit up and sparked.

Xenilla held back a tear and nodded while flashing a faux smug smirk before the heart shaped beam fired out of the filly and seeped into him.

Seconds after a large body threw itself off the side of the plateau’s pass, a massive pillar of gushing, red light pierced the sky.

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

Xenilla dodged to and fro, avoiding the barrage of graviton beams chasing him across the sky. In his normal state, he could just outspeed the aim and avoid them entirely, but with 60,000 tons in his arms, he was slowed down and much less maneuverable. Something Junior was privy to as the King of Terror swooped down at them and unleashed another barrage Xenilla couldn’t fly through in time, forcing the latter to put up a strained energy shield. Xenilla grunted and winced, struggling more and more to hold back the tidal wave of gravitons, plasma, and lighting smashing into the crystalline barrier. Stress lines spread in cracks and the energy Ghidorah was putting out condensed into a glowing sphere.

Suddenly Grand King Ghidorah disengaged, leaving Xenilla to have to focus on holding back the blocked power as he dove under him and came up behind them. As he flew beneath the pair however, Junior noticed something. A wide, open, still-bloody gash across Grand King Ghidorah’s back on the middle torso. He studied it for the millisecond he could, not remembering either himself or Xenilla inflicting that wound, but the fact it was there left the gears in his head whirling. He eyed the ground and a tiny smirk formed across his maw.

Shoving off the initial sphere of destruction and letting it detonate in the high atmosphere, Xenilla shrieked in pain as multiple graviton beams raked across his back. He tumbled and spun through the air, leaving a large smoke trail as he went. As he struggled to stabilize, the eldest son of the old king was forced to intermittently try and return fire with his own beam and block the onslaughts coming from their foe; all while holding onto Junior and attempting to maneuver quick enough for Ghidorah to not close the distance. He couldn’t keep it up, even as he tried to descend and get them on the ground.

Then the youngest son of the old king called out the only two words whose context could stop Xenilla cold.

“WHAT?!-!!!”, Xenilla snapped before having to put up another barrier and block some wing lightning; something he was clearly having trouble doing one handed.

“I said, drop me!”, Junior snapped as he tried to pry Xenilla’s arm off him, only for the latter to desperately cling to him more.

Xenilla winced and strained, looking back down at the being he’d been trying to protect all his life and was attempting to do now.

Godzilla Junior locked eyes with Xenilla in a visage that was both stern, direct, and said so much. Words didn’t need to be spoken; gold looking into red.

Xenilla winced with the edges of his orbs glistening and shook his head disbelievingly, red looking into gold.

Junior put his arms on Xenilla’s, starting to pry it off and showing he could do what he planned do even if Xenilla fought him over it or not. Godzilla Junior slowly nodded to Xenilla.

Xenilla closed his mouth and sighed, starting to loosen his grip while praying to anything that could hear him. He could only hope if his father could see them, no matter how complicated Xenilla’s view of him was, that Senior would forgive him if this played out like he thought it would. They were over 80,000 meters up, the clouds below almost looking like a landscape.

Junior’s voice was almost a whisper when Xenilla let go of him and he started to fall, “Make sure his back is facing the ground, stay alive.”

Xenilla stole his breath as he saw his brother fall, looking back to Grand King Ghidorah through the barrier. He shook, tears evaporating from a growing heat. Glowing patches started to flicker across his body as he snarled. With a tremendous roar, Burning Xenilla tore apart his own barrier and launched himself at Ghidorah; tanking a fury of graviton beams to the chest to close the distance.

Godzilla Junior sighed as he watched the airborne battle, flashes of red and gold igniting the sky above in a brilliant dogfight. He watched on with pride until he fell through the highest clouds, turning around and facing the distant and closing ground below. His took in a deep breath while his back spines started to glow, remembering a speculation Chibi Moon of all individuals had and when she more than once went flying across the training yard from recoil during practice. It was just crazy enough to work.

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

“This not way to Pony Lands!”, Prince Rutherford roared as he looked up from the map he and his entourage had been using to try and navigate their way to Equestria.

They’d been journeying for a day now to find the quickest path south through the mountains so they could find which was the best route to go by later for the Canterlot gala and baby shower for the Crystal Imperial couple, having been sent an invitation.

Instead he found himself staring at a big pile of rockfall rubble a kilometer up the pass, likely loosed from one of the mountains on the side of the pass during an earthquake.

The yak prince grumbled, “Little baby princess pony will need strong yak gift to make sure they strong like yak when older, make better pony leader!”

The yaks accompanying him murmured and nodded in agreeance. One of the prince’s oldest and wisest advisors grumbled after rubbing his chin.

Spoken like a true yak philosopher and wiseyak, earning a rousing “YAK SMASH!” cheer from the entourage. But before the bellowing bovines could charge forward and do as they decreed, a blinding blue ray shot down from the heavens above and obliterated the rock fall. It continued in intensity and power, burning through the pass and melting the stone. Looking skyward, Rutherford saw a distant but massive form at the end of the beam rocketing to the ground. Its descent slowed, before stopping several hundred meters up. In the manner of a rising geyser, it started to rise back up. The beam shortened, lifting off the ground and fraying out like an exhaust of steam. Soon the beam and its spewer disappeared up into the clouds, leaving an opened pass now full of glassed stone.

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

The explosion of clashing mana and magic, shards of crystal, fragment of rock, and droplets of lava lit up the cavern. Nightmare Rarity shook her head and cleared her vision, temporarily deafened by the echoes of the blast. She looked about for her energy, but found nothing across the smoke and flaming debris across the lava flows she avoided. Suddenly, in a burst of fire magic and teleportation spell use, Enjin came charging out of nowhere to her side and bulldozed into Rarity.

The unicorn gasped from bruised lungs and tried to grab onto her enemy, lacking the focus from the explosions’ daze to melt into smoke and rematerialize, in an attempt to avoid getting bowled over or worse; pushed into the lava flow some meters behind her that Enjin was shoving her towards.

Rarity grit her teeth and struggled, digging her hindhooves in but she couldn’t stop on account of Enjin’s greater physical strength and having a lowered center of gravity based off how they were posed. Her hooves kicked and cut trenches into the dirt and bedrock, but failed to halt. Her magic strained with her. Thinking quick, Rarity grabbed at the ground beneath them with tendrils of telekinesis and crushed down; collapsing the floor and stumbling the both of them. Enjin sneered and lunged, pouncing upon the dark unicorn and pinning her beneath itself. The ground started to steam and char as it heated up. Lava trickled into the collapsed floor space several meters away and the convection heat set the fringes of Rarity’s tail smoldering past their flashpoint. Enjin stomped down, pinning Rarity’s face under her hoof and charging up a point blank mana grenade upon the tip of her jagged horn. Rarity gasped and coughed both from the sweltering heat and impact. The ringing in her ears subsided and started to shudder, parts of her body steaming off as dark haze. Knowing she couldn’t vanish in time, she did the only thing she could:

Grab Enjin by the face and force her to point her horn upwards just as the mana grenade fired. The glowing, compact sphere of fiery mana shot upwards and exploded against the ceiling, carving a path through the solid rock like a cannonball through a ship. The cavern quaked and groaned, massive stalactites falling from up high. Nightmare Rarity just barely managed to turn into her smoke form and shoot out of the depressed ground as several large, partially molten boulders collapsed on top of it.

She reformed some distance away, rolling across the ground and coughing up a lung as she staggered to her hooves. Heaving, Rarity prayed for a moment, only to see them go unanswered as Enjin did as she did best for the past endeavors of their battle. No matter how many magic blasts she was struck by, no matter how many tons of rock Rarity lobbed at her, she kept getting back up. The rubble and dust cloud it covered glowed and smoked, before melting in the manner of wax in a lamp. Enjin clawed her way free, emerging from the half-melted slag like it was just a shower. She exited her tomb and quickly locked glares with Nightmare Rarity, tirelessly marching forward. But this time however, something was different. It turned out Rarity wasn’t the only one showing wear from the battle, her dark fur being riddled in small bruises, cuts, and a few burns.

To Nightmare Rarity’s amazement, Enjin stumbled, if only for a moment. Enjin was an adaptive entity, even before the crisis long ago in the Permian period forced the original Enjin to fuse with the primordial Aspects of Air and Water, Doragon and Mizu, to form the being that one day would be called Bagan. It reacted to what was attacking it and adapted to withstand it. That held true here, as the dark mass making up a majority of the Enjin body was still adapting to Rarity’s attacks. But there was a part it couldn’t adapt, a part not originally part of its physiology. The mortal mare underneath that covering, Sunset Shimmer. On Enjin’s flank, a brief glimpse of bleeding orange was visible; Sunset Shimmer’s hips had taken a nasty bruise from Rarity dropping several tons of rock on her at sharp enough angle to hit her through the Enjin coating; hard enough to sprain a leg and cut into the muscle. It wasn’t enough to cripple Sunset Shimmer or Enjin, but the effect was obvious when it limped and Rarity heard a sharp, though muffled, cry of pain come out of her enemy.

Rarity’s eyes widened as Enjin looked to their injury. Previously the Nightmare user had seen what looked like a normal pony turn into the monster. But now it was beginning to look eerily familiar. She looked to her hoof and concentrated as hard as she could. Nightmare was resisting her, she could feel it. Nightmare after all was not keen on something else controlling their fused body, used to being the one in the driving seat for all but the briefest of times. But Juliet Rarity Belle bore a strong will and Nightmare was still mentally drained from her ordeal against Godzilla Junior’s typhoon of a mind. She managed to peel back the blackness and reveal her own hoof beneath it, showing an uncanny similarity to what she saw on Enjin. She didn’t recognize Sunset Shimmer’s cutiemark or coat on account of never meeting her, and Twilight’s tales of what happened in the realm beyond that mirror weren’t coming to mind, but Rarity could figure out enough.

Nightmare’s influence roared up again, demanding she strike at the weak point and slay the mortal beneath to stop the monster that threatened them, threatened Equestria. Her horn started to ignite and Rarity had to mentally shove Nightmare back, gasping and wincing from the psychological strain with all of her fortitude. She didn’t let the darker aspects control her, not again. She stood up to Nightmare in dreams and she stood up to her now. She had a better idea and they would use it!

Nightmare resisted and kept resisting, but was pushed back to unwillingly relinquish control again as Rarity got to work.

She refocused all her power at Enjin, but this time not needing to draw upon the impression of Luna for magical aid. This was a spell she learned from said alicorn all on her own. The dark magic banishment spell hit Enjin dead in the center as she surged forward, slowing her advance but not stopping it. Rarity wasn’t sure if this was a case of possession or the pony underneath using her coating as a power-up willingly, but she knew more than anyone how an outfit worked. The strongest armor to the most glamorous of dresses, everything had its seams. Enjin’s body was made of mana, something that mixed with Equestrian magic like oil on water. But it was tied to Sunset Shimmer through “seams”, and Rarity imagined her magic taking the role of the seamstry scissors. This was her master work.

Enjin pressed forward even as parts of it were flayed off, determined to get within striking distance. More and more of Sunset Shimmer became visible, causing Rarity to sweat and gasp from the effort. A massive surge of light engulfed the chamber from the hole in the roof, the result of the struggle of titans of stature in the skies above as two other titans of magic clashed beneath the earth. Even as Enjin was pried off more and more as Rarity cut its bonds to Sunset Shimmer, the Aspect of Earth refused to pause. It stretched itself out, first by hoof and then by a distorted version of its apeish hand when Sunset Shimmer’s limbs were freed.

At last the remaining threads connecting Enjin to the unicorn were severed, the poor mare collapsing to the ground unconscious. But just as Enjin was torn free from Sunset, it grabbed onto Rarity. Like a vengeful ghost, it gripped her horn and engulfed her body in its inky, tar-like body as tentacles of gold mana coiled around Nightmare Rarity’s neck and body. Rarity’s mind flew into a panic and she gasped, Enjin starting to spread down her face and neck to either smother or conjoin with her. Gold tendrils and tar started to try and force their way down her throat as she tried to scream, invading her body with the intent to gain hold over a new, stronger host.

But as Rarity’s magic grabbed it and tried to tear it off and hold it at bay, her focus was taken off suppressing Nightmare. The dark entity surged up again. But this time instead of fighting Rarity, she threw herself at the invader. Maybe it was to save her own existence, since Enjin possessing the same body as her might result in one of them having to go; maybe in her weakened state she had to guarantee the safety of her two main hosts as best she could. Or, maybe just as Nightmare had rubbed off on Luna and Rarity, as evidence by the aura reading, the same had happened in reverse as well. In any case, Nightmare pooled her memory of ability from all her prior hosts and sought the one she loathed the most.

She hated doing it, hated thinking about it, hated ever using such a source, but it was do or die. Nightmare called forth the powers and memories of who’d worn her an hour ago and Rarity’s entire body started to glow with a crackling energy. It was a magical duplication rather than a direct copy, but it got the job done. A massive surge of energy begat an even larger emission of it, beams of magical plasma firing out of Rarity’s back just before an enormous shockwave from the replicated nuclear pulse crashed into and fried Enjin’s glowing core. The crystalline central node that had possessed Sunset Shimmer cracked and shattered as Enjin was blasted upwards and back in a fantastic explosion. Nightmare, spent, reclined into Rarity’s subconscious and the unicorn followed up on the opening given to her.

She seized the dark,writhing mass in her magic and pumped more into it, overloading the attacker as indicated by the glowing cracks spreading across its form. Looking upwards at the battle high above, Rarity narrowed her brow and took aim at the golden side of the clashing powers.

“From me to thee, enjoy!”, Rarity barked as she shot Enjin out the hole in the roof and rocketing into the sky directly towards Grand King Ghidorah.

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

Gold tackled red in an ignition of the sky and if Grand King Ghidorah was any semblance of angered before, he was flat out enraged now. Lightning flashed, fangs gnashed, and shockwaves rang out as he did his best to maul Xenilla and Xenilla did his best to return the sentiment.

Xenilla recoiled from having 100,000 tons of angry dragon tackle him and was sent spiraling in the air with a cracked ribcage. Using telekinesis he righted himself and tried to repair the damage, only to have to brace against another oncoming meteor of terror. Rather than dodge, he met it head on; Ghidorah and Xenilla hurling themselves at each other full speed with a propulsion of psychic powers and gravity control to strike with more force or speed than one would think their mass be possible of. Crackling with energy, the full body graviton burst and nuclear pulse begat an explosion that rattled the sky and lit the night.

-”And yet you hurtle him to his death, deny him his final chance at victory!”-

Xenilla winced, but smirked even as he was being forced back. A point blank barrage of corona flares and graviton beams struck home on both of them, shattering one of Xenilla’s shoulder crystals and melting the scales off part of Ghidorah’s weakened midsection.

-”He’s my brother, I trust him now and I always will, even if he's an imbecile!”-

Ghidorah scoffed, having the opposite view of brotherhood to his opponent. To him, DesGhidorah had just been a future kill he had no need for at the moment. His return to Terra after his brother’s loss wasn’t for vengeance but to correct what he took as an insult.

-”He never seemed to call you as such, he’d kill you without a second thought on Terra.”-

Xenilla withstood the beam assault as he took a good hold on the King of Terror, fighting back against his foe’s movement with all his will.

-”Doesn’t matter, he was always the foolish son and he’s still better than me.”-

-”And yet you trust him so, you fling yourself wounded into a battle you can’t win?”-

Grand King Ghidorah loomed over Xenilla, overpowering the kaiju. Though at full strength he had the sense the astral saurian would be an equal to Godzilla Junior and could have given him plenty of trouble, clearly events prior had worn Xenilla down.

-”Because I thought he might be something I sought. He bore great power with no prophecy, I wanted to know why. I spent eons engineering struggle to breed or discover an ultimate. His otherwise inexplicable power drew my interest.”-

Grand King Ghidorah sneered and poured on the pressure, forcing Xenilla backwards with a breaking defense.

-”Either he’d be the success, or I’d kill him to prove him a failure. I culled the universe for eons because destruction is my purpose, sometimes I fancied myself to cull the weak in hopes of finding an apex. He intrigued and infuriated me enough to care. I came here to answer that one question, the only quest I’ve ever had. And that… Is what you have taken from me!”-

The mental sneer was carried by a deluge of hatred and power, burning Xenilla’s hide.

He was losing and Ghidorah knew it, already seeing his remaining shoulder crystal starting to crack as his hide was scorched and bloodied from the biting energies. Xenilla strained and gasped, fighting through the injuries that bore more agony than they did damage by Ghidorah’s will. But he didn’t relent or cave. A hot wind blew past, despite the coldness of the high atmosphere. Junior hadn’t been the only one to live up to their family’s indomitable spirit.

-”I once thought… a lot like you. That I could change events to cull weakness and cultivate strength. Hated every moment of it then, and I know I was wrong now.”-

Xenilla started to push against the onslaught, not even bothering to block as he inched forward to get Ghidorah within grasping distance. He focused on his mantra to work through the hurricane of pain and twisting energies that surged over him.

-”Any sentient being with the power of reason will inevitably commit both good and evil deeds. However at their core, all decisions are based on two conflicting forces, love and hatred…”-

He pressed onward even as an annoyed Ghidorah amplified his onslaught, but even so Xenilla only seemed to gain speed. Xenilla only saw images. Destroyah sporting the first smile he’d ever seen her with, the Empress and Prince Consort-… no, the Princess and Prince welcoming him back to the empire, Blade Dancer curled up against him, his sister Biollante on New Birth Island, the brother he’d dropped just a minute prior. Xenilla was possessed by a force that made the Crystal Heart seem to flicker even dozens of kilometers away.

Power was the deciding factor in fate to Grand King Ghidorah. He had more power than others, so he decided their fates. Sometimes he’d find himself wiping a planet clean, other times sparing the few who survived the initial onslaught. All in the goal to find a power suitable to do what he envisioned, be it in him or another. It had been done for millions of years in the realm Terra hailed from, going virtually unchallenged the whole time.

But this wasn’t the Terran realm. This was a world where powers of bonds, something Grand King Ghidorah never understood, were all too real. Both of Godzilla Senior’s sons had experienced them. The power of friendship to teach others to set the past aside and forgive. The power of love to forge a new bond or restore an old one and struggle together.

Xenilla let out a titanic roar and shot upwards and forwards, crashing into a dumbstruck Ghidorah and grabbing onto him. With a mighty heave he shifted them, forcing Grand King Ghidorah below him and holding him there whilst the dragon’s maws became enveloped in a golden light to unleash the final volley. Through the blood leaking from his nose, jaws, and eyes, Xenilla chuckled.

Godzilla Junior came rocketing up from below, flying into Grand King Ghidorah while firing a short ranged version of his beam to launch him along. His sharpened, largest dorsal spine stabbed into the dragon’s back in the manner of Saint George’s lance. It dug into the wound the Dark Hunters had made and impaled the King of Terror, the tip erupting out the chest wound Xenilla had opened up. A blinding light spewed out of the wound. Deep inside Ghidorah’s chest cavity, the crystalline sphere that functioned as both his heart and brain, the prison of the souls he’d consumed, had been cleaved in two.

Spent from their effort, both Godzilla and Xenilla fell away from the now shrieking dragon, falling to the stratosphere together.

Grand King Ghidorah thrashed and flailed, leaking ichors everywhere as more light shot out of his wounds. A cornucopia of voices cried out, millions of glowing wisps flew free of his body, their prison. The glowing light streaked up his body like fracturing glass as more spirits left him. All the souls he’d consumed were breaking free and starting to tear his body apart. But even as it happened, Ghidorah endured. He struggled, flinching and straining while glaring daggers at the two brothers as they fell away. His golden scales ignited in crackling energy that consumed his body in a blinding aura.

The graviton torrent that flew out of his maws and opened chest was a powerful as it was enormous, a continuous stream of gravity and plasma several hundred meters thick. All his beams below had merely been ventings of the power that lay within. Now in his death throes, Ghidorah had opened the floodgates in an attack that could level the small continent.

Godzilla Junior and Xenilla watched the milliseconds tick by, watching doom come. If this attack hit, they’d perish, the ponies below would perish, possibly everything as far as the Crystal Empire and Canterlot might perish. A hot wind blew past them, despite them being well above any gales. There was a voice in it, one they both recognized.

They were the sons of what had been the most powerful creature on the planet, and quitting was not in the dynasty’s creed.

Burning blues and orange-red power danced across their dorsal spines, arcing between the brothers in a bond.

Godzilla Junior and Xenilla let all go loose, continuing to fire their combined beams that spiraled and twisted around each other in a vibrance of orange and blue, clashing against Ghidorah’s torrent. The enormities were in deadlock, forming a new sun across the sky that all could see. Slowly but surely however, Ghidorah’s tsunami of a final gambit started to push back the struggle towards his opponents and country below, forcing the brothers to double their efforts just to push back enough to grind the advance to a crawl. Red light started to crackle between the two saurians’ dorsal spines, indicating a change. Sneering and not wanting to give them the chance so easily, Ghidorah directed some of the last of his spare energy onto his remaining good wing. A large sphere of energy formed, crackling and surging with condensed power he aimed at his foes to throw them off and win the beam struggle, to glass them and dozens of square kilometers of earth beneath them with anyone on it. But just before he could fire it around the struggle and seize victory, a mass of dark magic shot up in front of him and got in the way. He could only glimpse it briefly, as it’s unstable core made it blindingly bright and more importantly it collided through the massed energy, drawing it in and overloading. The combined power begat a fantastic explosion. Enjin and Ghidorah’s runaway energy combusted with the force of multiple megatons directly into the King of Terror’s wing membrane. Grand King Ghidorah’s wing snapped back and cracked, a smoking, burning hole blasted into it that caused any lingering lightning to chaotically spark and flail about the wound. Out of the corner of his eyes miles below, he thought he glimpsed a tall, dark unicorn mare smirking at him as cutiemarks flew free of the now opened cutiemark slab.

He cursed her interference, cursed the timing, cursed everything for disrupting his plans. His one wish was being denied and as far as he was concerned; everything could tempt perishing for insulting him in such a way. Rarity had bought Godzilla Junior and Xenilla enough time for their rays to become engulfed in a blaze of burning hues and spiraling red plasma, a dual spiral fire ray fighting back against Ghidorah’s finale. Grand King Ghidorah roared in prestigious power and let it all loose, amplifying both his oral beams and chest beam into a tsunami of energy so massive and strong it was pushing back the force of a double spiral fire.

The spirits spilling out of Ghidorah shifted and flew past the pair of heroes like darting meteors, collecting behind and between the brothers in heralding of a call, the hot wind now a howling gale. As the trapped spirits started to condense behind the heroes, the roar of an old king called out to one who’d listen.

In the Harmonium, Harmony watched on from her vantage point, taking note of the figure forming behind the brothers. She saw where the brothers were falling towards, near Foal Mountain. She saw the others rallying to aid them. There was little she could do, her realm was too shattered to open any portals or stretch out her hoof to directly guide them.

That’s when the wailing roar hit them. To most in life, it would sound like a terrifying bellow of an angry titan. But in spirit and to Harmony, it was a plea as clear as day. The goddess knew the risks, knew such action could risk further damaging her slowly repairing connection to Equestria; and she didn’t care. She amplified the roar, redirecting it, and used all of her awesome power to send it to those that counted. Deep in the spiritual aether, she could feel a presence, a hot gust of wind, thank her.

The call was sounded and every soul tied to Godzilla Junior and or Xenilla heard it, acquaintance, family, and friend alike. Across Equestria, ponies, mermares, and beyond all looked on in confusion and awe. Princess Celestia and Luna instantly knew there was trouble and made for the north as bright streaks of flying magic. The four kaiju in Ponyville quickly gathered with the nearest Element Bearer they could find and were taken to the sky to try and get there in time by mix of flight and the Princess of Friendship’s teleportation magic, Destroyah not hesitating to carry Anguirus after yelling for Scootaloo and company to get to cover. Unfettered, the rest of the Mane 6 were quick to join in the teleport spam that guided them to the north.

Down below, Nightmare Rarity quickly looked in the direction she heard the chime-like voice coming from, even if she had been gripped by the beam clash going on above. Having just opened up the cutiemark slab as the marks flew free towards their owners and getting a comatose Sunset Shimmer to the surface, she wasted not a moment and burst into a dark cloud to rush across the landscape to try and chase down where she was compelled to go towards. Towards the sight of a fall.

Back on Terra, Azusa felt a shock go through her and halt her heart. Her breathing became shallow and she quivered with a tear running down her face. She suddenly found herself on her knees and praying, praying for the safety of her son and for thousands she never even met despite not knowing why. On New Birth Island, the flora shifted and creaked at the movement of its queen. Biollante pitched her head up and gazed off into the milky way and stars above despite not looking at either, sensing and knowing something was happening after hearing a voice she hadn’t heard since 1989.

Grand King Ghidorah’s eyes twitched when he saw not two, but three kaiju before him, the spirits collecting into a form with blazing eyes, a face like Xenilla’s but devoid of tusks, and spines like Junior’s but rounder and shorter. Different, but no less regal. Dorsal spines ignited and a roar sprung forth a tidal wave of power. A third spiral fire ray joined the brothers’, combining with them and breaking the tie.

Slowly, the struggle pushed back towards the King of Terror. Ghidorah cursed, he roared, he shrieked, he fought; not just against his opponents but against fate. Fate and prophecy, those had always been the only two things Ghidorah ever saw as truly great. Fate made him what he was so he did what was in his nature to do. But now, it seemed the one time he set out to achieve something that mattered, fate abandoned him. Why? Why prolong his existence for ten hundred thousand centuries if he was to end like this? Achieved of nothing?! He couldn’t, not until he got his wish! He had to know if he had succeeded!

But as he fought against the fantastic; for a second, time seemed to still in the gravity well. He froze. He could finally see it now, see what was to come. He’d damaged dozens of worlds back in the kaiju realm with the wish to either create or discover a being powerful enough to kill Bagan, or to become strong enough himself to be that being. Ghidorah could see that entity now. A titan to finally rival the one opponent he couldn’t beat. Somehow, somewhere lay a force aside from the one he glimpsed with the alicorns was capable of facing Bagan. A force able to stop extinction. If he’d glimpsed a Goddess of Creation before, he was now reveling at the sight of her counterpart. The sight of the future was clear, Bagan’s final opponent would come by the form of a horned God of Destruction. And somehow, Ghidorah had changed fate to make such an outcome so. His life’s work, a the dream to manipulate events to unleash the most powerful creature in existence, one who stood a chance at destroying Bagan. And he’d succeeded. He wouldn’t, he couldn’t do it. But another would.

Time crawled back to normal and he stopped struggling. He let his onslaught die away just in time to let the last souls he’d been housing free. For the first time in his life, Grand King Ghidorah felt peace. He'd spurred events so the stronger of his successor's halves would win, whichever it was. He'd no doubt caused things to get much more uncomfortable for Reijuu, setting that ancient enemy back. His hundred million year long story was at last finished with it’s first and only wish fulfilled. These kaiju and ponies could learn of Reijuu on their own accord, it seemed something of them might just be something Reijuu would wish it didn't learn of. He let the power of the Godzilla Dynasty baptize him with a content smile upon his face when the light overtook him…

Godzilla and Xenilla plummeted, drained and spent as the ground barreled towards them thousands of meters below. Xenilla was far too weak to fly and Junior was in a similar state as to not manage his newest trick.

Xenilla glanced weakly at the giant hole in the sky they’d made that Ghidorah had once been hovering in, “Yeah, he’s dead… Icka-… Junior, scare me like that again and I’ll kill you myself next time!”

A quiet chuckle seeped out of Junior despite Xenilla snap, “Assuming there is a next time, though couple of minutes earlier wouldn’t have been bad either, Icka’brod.”

The realization Junior just said the word he himself stopped himself from hit him like a tidal wave. Xenilla froze, his shocked visage contrasting with Junior’s weak smile.

Junior shrugged as the air rushed past them and shook his head. They’d probably perish when they hit the ground, so he wasn’t holding anything back. After the last acts of courage, he’d more than forgiven Xenilla, “Going to take my word or you going to make me repeat myself?”

Xenilla felt a dampness streak out his eyes and the tears flew up into the rushing air. Godzilla saw the look on his face and croaked out a soft chuckle that infected his brother. It grew in strength and heartiness, a reunited family sharing a laugh for the first time as doom seemed to come rushing at them from their descending height. The scar splitting their family asunder had finally healed before their end could come...

A burst of alicorn magic and a teleportation spell in the space just northeast of Canterlot said otherwise. Three pillars of light lit up the sky, gold, green, and white beacons to the heavens. Flying out of the golden hues, Mothra Lea flew directly into the two with a magic boosted sprint, furiously beating her wings to divert or slow the gojirans’ fall as the Guardian of Mortals mentally swore up a storm. A red blur, having taken a moment to build up more momentum, dove in under the moth with a thundering sonic boom. Rodan gasped from the impact force but bit it down and joined forces with Mothra. A third form came whirling in behind them, unfolding from the spinning ball configuration to reveal Anguirus. Working off an angle, the ankylosaur kaiju threw his momentum upwards and helped to yank the group likewise as he grabbed onto Rodan and Mothra. Godzilla and Xenilla’s fall began to divert from straight down to angular, but more power was needed. Fortunately the one who’d lobbed Anguirus at the ground had just that. After a brilliant flash of purple light had shot up to join the previous pillars of light, a massive horn and spiked wings burst from a cloud bank. Destroyah threshed gales from her wings and met them, braced both hands onto Anguirus’ shell’s sides and pushed forward while pulling up. They all strained and fought together to save the unconscious brothers. In a moment, there was no Mutation or Defender faction. Just one group of titans doing a titanic deed.

Managing to slowly but surely divert the fall into an almost horizontal path however, was draining endeavor. A mass eruption of light shot out and now six of the strangest equines Equestria had ever seen were plummeting with Lea, Rodan, Anguirus, and Destroyah still fighting tooth and hoof to save their comrades. But their numbers were soon to swell.

Yellow and blue blurs of light, like streaking comets, shot out from Canterlot’s direction and braced against the group. Princess Celestia and Luna used earth pony strength, pegasus flight, and unicorn magic in the form of telekinesis to put everything they had into saving the endangered and slowing the fall. The group started to make contact on the ground, first carving a trench into a pond before skidding across sand and dirt at breakneck speed. The sisters might have been the strongest ponies in Equestria, but the call to act had been heard by many and even those of less power weren’t going to just lie back. In a burst of purple light and crash of a rainboom, Princess Twilight Sparkle, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, and even Fluttershy grabbed onto any limb or braced against what they could. The images of the elements ignited across their chests, invigorating the five with a rainbow of hues. More alicorn magic grasped, pegasus flight beat, and earth pony hooves dug their heels in as the ground made contact with firmer ground. The rescue team of Terrans and Equestrians was carving a massive trench into the dirt heading towards Ponyville, practically splitting dozens of meters of hills in half. The final play came with the arrival of a dark mist and brilliant magic.

Had it been any other situation, most anypony would have reacted in shock when a burst of purple magic to indicate the element of Generosity arrived in the way it did. Nightmare Rarity made a surprise appearance and threw herself into the fray; bracing against Destroyah’s back and joining her magical grip to the alicorns’ while putting her empowered physical strength to dig her hooves in. But in such a desperate situation with everykaiju and everypony figuratively and literally throwing their backs into it, none had any spare focus to spare on details like noticing a returned enemy. Anything and everything else than fight the now igniting friction and overwhelming velocity of the fall. Kaiju, princess, and ponies; all heroes and heroines doing what heroines and heroes did.

Pinkie Pie, bracing her back against Princess Celestia, grimaced as she saw them barreling towards Ponyville even while skidding and grinding across the landscape.

-Well, this is gonna hurt, time to cut down on the hospital trip! Sorry Mr. and Mrs. Cake, good thing you all are out!-

Her mane flexed on its own and pulled out a buttoned control, which she clicked by biting down. If there was one constant with the queen of parties, it was never to question where she hid her utilities. She had party cannons and other equipment around town and in places nopony would expect. With the button clicked,‘Party Protocol B’ was activated and a salvos of party cannons fired off across Ponyville in a path line leading towards Sugar Cube Corner. While the blasts of air and confetti hitting the group didn’t do much to slow them down, it did help guide them towards the shop; almost pinballing the group to slide and fall in a different direction. More importantly however, the corner’s front door popped open and, had several thousand kilograms of speeding equine not been blitzing towards the door, a massive, already finished cake was to pop out. Typically the protocol button was for if Pinkie got caught off guard and needed to give somepony a party pronto; complete with party cannons and a pre-made cake. Unfortunately the poor, delicious confectionery didn’t even make it out the front door before the combine mass of kaiju, alicorns, and the Mane 6 slammed into it. Frosting, filling, sprinkles, and the like went flying in all directions, but the slowed fall had been drained by the improvised, sugary sweet airbag at the cost of Sugarcube Corner’s back wall being blown out when they hit it.

The restaurant and bakery looked like it had been hit with a mortar shell deciding to come through the storefront, now sporting a massive trench leading up to said storefront that was literally on fire in a few places. In one big heap of jumbled up limbs, the Alicorn Diarchy, Elements of Harmony, and now unified kaiju lay groaning or unconscious. Taking advantage of her host being passed out breaking the rest of the Mane 6’s fall, Nightmare split off from Rarity and slithered out a blown-out window. She reformed into a diminutive version of the Pony of Shadows slumped against the back wall. Weakened and knowing what would follow if she was caught by the recovering alicorns, especially after the stunt pulled at the plateau; as well as wanting to get as far as physically possible from Godzilla, she limped off into the dying night while the group of saviors started to come to consciousness.

“Isss ev-verypony okaaay?” Princess Celestia, unceremoniously doubled over with her legs slung over the counter, groggily groaned as she tried to pull herself up.

Moments later, Godzilla Junior’s eyes weakly fluttered open and he took in the sight around him. No King Ghidorah. No falling skies. Just solid ground around him and a myriad of eyes looking to him with acknowledgement and relief. Forelimbs curled over him to embrace him, first Luna, then Lea, Rodan, Anguirus, Celestia, and soon a gaggle of bright hues to show a smiling Mane 6. He looked to each fondly, then to the gold-encircling red eyes gazing back at him. Xenilla, with Destroyah’s hoof wrapped around him, gave his little brother a tired nod Junior returned. The younger brother wasted little time shedding any visage of vendettas in pulling his sibling and even Destroyah into the group embrace as a laughter of the Mane 6 spread across the group of heroes.

It took a visit to a world where friendship is magic and love was power, but a burned bridge had finally been restored. A warm breeze traveled past Sugarcube Corner, before departing off into the sky as a father smiled upon his sons.

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The month that followed was a peaceful one. One of rebuilding, celebration, achievement, and relaxation. Just as it seemed Equestria, with its magical friendship and palpable morals of forgiveness, redemption, and love had affected those whom it graced; so too did the greatness of the kaiju inspire equal change and greatness across the realms which they tread. One look at the Equestrian newsprint headlines was proof enough.

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Who's awesome guys and gals? You're awesome guys and gals! Thanks so much for the huge ride this arc and beyond, so here's to you all!

Xenilla Alucard

Lion Patriot, capitalizing off Xenilla's voice of choice matching the Hellsing star and more than a few shout-outs, gives us the crossover we've all wanted!

Queen Maui (Mermaid)

Shortly after she was described, Zeroviks drew his take on Queen Maui, which ended up influencing the finished design. Now, it comes full circle with a mermare turned mermaid!

Luna and Junior

Isniaca supplies some feels and probably quite a few shipper grins with this beautiful piece on Bridge's power couple!

Blade Dancer Human Form

Pyrus-Leonidas adds fan favorite Blade Dancer to his lovely Bakugan series, check it and the others out!

Dead of hope

Mayozilla turns on the heat (literally) as the Vs. Bagan comic broils on to a fiery climax!

Heart to Heart

Holycross supplying the will and Sorelstrasz supplying the talent to show us what goes on at the restaurant after hours!~

My Little Kaiju AU: Your in the Wrong Neighborhood

If one wishes to flirt with diabetes, check out FallenAngel's gallery. This (pre)school yard stare down is just one of many and I need insulin injection now, brb-

Equestria: Across the Multiverse - Jaunt 39

- The Multiverse hopping shinanigans continue in GodzillaWolf and company's run, no guest-starring The Amalgam'verse incarnations of Gamera and Rodan!

The Bridge: A Godzilla-MLP Crossover

by Tarbtano

Chapter 41: End of An Epoch

Xenilla Alucard

Queen Maui (Mermaid)

Luna and Junior

Blade Dancer Human Form

Dead of hope

Heart to Heart

My Little Kaiju AU: Your in the Wrong Neighborhood

Equestria: Across the Multiverse - Jaunt 39