//------------------------------//
// Halloween Special part 2: What A Fright 
// Story: The Bridge: A Godzilla-MLP Crossover 
// by Tarbtano 
//------------------------------//

Destroyah's eyes were blinded by a bright light as she flew through the portal, but she didn't care. The only thing that mattered to her right now was ripping that witch's head off and getting the Crusaders out of there. Whatever waited on the other side was going to wish it'd never seen her. Destroyah remembered all the creatures she'd wanted to kill in her life, be they enemies, or just targets of the bloodlust those little fillies had managed to help her leave behind. At this point, Giranbo was certainly in the top five. And Destroyah took pride that this mass murdering monster wasn't like the Defenders or even the Old King. Giranbo was a monster in every sense of the word, and she knew the only reason Lea wasn't trying to kill this witch right now was because she wasn't here.

A task the Serizawan Legacy would be all too happy to do for her.

But getting the Crusaders out? That was more important than sating that wrathful bloodlust. They were coming home. Even if she had to rip them out of that witch's stomach, she was bringing them home.

As the portal reached its end as Destroyah sprinted to its zenith, she came out into a solid realm with horn katana ready to bisect whatever was waiting… which turned out to be an archaic-looking lamp.

Destroyah skidded to a stop, her massive bulk making that no easy feat. She slowly looked around her new surroundings.

It was a dark, dusty old house, looking like no one had stepped foot in it in years. Cobwebs covering everything, faded old paintings on the walls, antique statues everywhere. The floor creaking noisily with each step she took. She'd never been in a haunted house, be it reportedly a real one or some attraction, but the Crusaders had gone on and on about what one they'd wanted to go to would be like. This definitely looked the part, but that hardly gave her any pause. The most unnerving fact, however, was how quiet it was. Deathly quiet. Like she was the only living thing in this entire world.. There had been many times in her life she'd been alone, but rarely did she feel it as strongly as right now.

Unamused, Destroyah stalked along the halls like an angry mother bear, making noise to both break the silence and let the mistress of this domain know just whom she had pissed off. Her nostrils flared as she tried to smell the false micro-oxygen of Scootaloo's costume. It was here, but faint.

Suddenly, a cackle came from all around her, sounding as if the house itself was laughing at her. Destroyah snarled, energy crackling.

"Show yourself and die, coward!" Destroyah roared.

A door suddenly opened down the hall, prompting Destroyah to let loose a burst of micro-oxygen that reduced it to nothing… but hit nothing. She marched forwards, noting several most unusual observations. Instead of the all too familiar smell of vaporized wood or drywall, the scent streaming from the destroyed wall and door frame was virtually non-existent at most with the barest hint of… strangely flesh. A detail backed up in uncanniness by a glimpse of what almost looked like orange blood seeping out from the damaged door. All the while there was a brief hint of the haze akin to when one of the copies were destroyed.

The blood ceased flowing as Destroyah reached the door and looked through the opening, finding a room full of dolls of countless children with black button eyes of all shapes and species. Humans, ponies, griffons, zebra, species she'd never seen before. Some almost looked like toys the Crusaders or other children owned, from bears with symbols on the chest to what looked almost like mechanical beings with red symbols. She was silently relieved the Crusaders weren't among them, though traitorous parts of her mind observed it was partially because there were far too many to study with intent.

Suddenly, they all turned and looked right at the massive mare, mouths unzipping.

"Like it? I'm going to be making three more very, very soon…" said Giranbo's voice from each and every doll, all spoken in perfect unison before they all began to glow with a blood red rune. Their jaws unhinged as they cackled madly, laughing so violently it risked bursting their seams.

Destroyah quickly put her hooves up in guard in a lucky reflex before the dolls all went up in a sizable explosion, enough to launch her back and slam her into the wall on the other side. The kaiju gave a snarl, getting back to her hooves, mostly unharmed. With each passing moment her desire to make this witch die screaming increased. And no one would blame her for it.

Shrugging off a ringing in her ears from the explosion, she gathered her wits and opted to keep her attack on a hair trigger. Activating her horn to give off a dim glow, the giantess of a mare slowly set back about searching the house in a brisk pace. Turning around the hallway, she saw the length of it was covered wall to wall with pictures of the witch hanging around her. Running down the hallway, she kept her eye out for anything unusual, or more importantly any sign of her captured friends. The witch had already proven she had plenty of underhanded tricks.

Walking past, the massive mare reached the end of the hallway and looked down at a full length portrait of Giranbo's witch form. It was almost laughably overdetailed and complicated, as if painted by the best possible artist in the world. And in a house very likely occupied by a single soul, it was extremely over the top to stretch from floor to ceiling. Destroyah scoffed. This was bad comedy and made the worst diva she’d ever encountered as of yet look subtle.

Suddenly, the painting smirked with uneven, razor-edged teeth and glowing blue eyes before Giranbo came barreling out of the painting, lunging at her with mouth open wide and trying to rip her invader’s throat out! Destroyah's horn ignited and the blade swung down, sending the witch's right front leg flying off in a shower of orange blood and sending her falling back screaming. A second one came down, cleaving the other off.

"My legs! You cut off my legs!" she screamed falling to the ground where the massive mare raised a hoof to crush her skull… only for the witch to laugh maniacally and vanish like any of her clones.

Destroyah snarled in rage, almost chancing to let something out but holding it back. The sight of the Crusaders in her mind’s eye brought her back to the Equestrian she’d become and not the terror she’d made Terra immortalize.

She spoke in the manner of the former, “Where are they?! Show yourself!”

"Up here," said a voice like a kindly grandmother getting a child's attention.

The mare's head snapped up just in time for Giranbo, perched on a chandelier, to smirk down. Her hoof morphed in a shifting mass of flesh into a werewolf's claw and slashed the cable, sending the massive lighting fixture crashing down on her opponent's head with a thunderous crash.

Giranbo did a surprisingly agile leap off the remaining rope, landing on the creaking old floor boards, looking back with a content cackle.

Destroyah exploded out of the debris, hurling the chandelier across the room and out the window in a manner that left bleeding cuts across the wall it impacted against, sending wreckage flying in all directions and cast a murderous glare at the witch, "Finally decide to face me yourself?!"

The witch gave a tooth filled smirk.

"I'm disappointed, I was hoping it'd be the moth so I could finally put her in my bug collection… nailed by the wings and crucified, as she and her family deserves," she said with a laugh. "But I suppose I can have fun with you…" 





The witch's form grotesquely rearranged itself, tearing her skin and form apart once again. This time between the fracturing hide and splitting face she started bulking up considerably around her maw, contorting and reshaping as a wolf like muzzle tore through her mask. Rising from the shredded costume, Giranbo emerged as a furry, wolf-like equine with piercing yellow eyes.

Giranbo grinned between fangs and fur, "Welcome to my world, bitch."

The wolfstallion howled and charged Destroyah head on, dodging micro-oxygen bursts before leaping into the air and landing on the massive mare's chest, biting and clawing away with supernatural strength and ferocity.

Destroyah snarled, giving a shout of effort as she tried to behead her attacker with her horn katana, but Giranbo kept evading. Thus, the massive mare opted for the simple solution of flying forwards and smashing her entire front into the wall, sandwiching the lycanthrope between herself and old walls with enough force to plow through and launch her across the room on the other side amidst a shower of debris one would expect of a busted wall and a torrent of bloody ichors one might otherwise not expect.

In midair, Giranbo's form rearranged and shifted, taking the shape of a handsome batpony stallion in a red and black Translyneighian count's attire. Count Dracolta stopped in mid air and burst into a cloud of bats to use the smaller individual masses to dissipate the force sending them hurtling back quicker. The cloud of bats flew in unison, shifting to whirl around and come flying back at their attacker while recombining into their original form. Destroyah caught the charging vampire lord with their limbs locking together. The two forms tensed, engaging in a test of strength as the transformed Giranbo bared her or his fangs and attempted to find purchase on Destroyah’s throat.

This scrawny-looking witch was far stronger than the kaiju expected her to be from her frame, but not strong enough. Destroyah instead decided to one-up the vampony’s enlarged canines by curling back her lips to expose the multiple sharpened incisors and wolf teeth she bore before a sharpened set of premolars. The former kaiju bit down on the vampony's shoulder and spun around, sending her plowing into a wall. Not a moment later and the deceptively fast, for her size, Destroyah was on her again at which point the bulldozer of a mare stampeded into Giranbo and began pummeling the shapeshifter's face with heavy blows in an attempt to cave in her skull.

Mid-blow, the vampony exploded into a cloud of bats and flew above her. Giranbo's form changed again midair, ripping herself apart as the bats collected together again; this time reforming into as a massive pale-skinned unicorn with a flat head, black mane and tail who looked like they'd been stitched together from corpses; mismatched forelimbs composed of an earth pony’s left arm and a gryphon’s right arm with a single pegasus wing attached to it. Bolts sparked on Frankenhoof's Monster's neck as the shapeshifter came crashing down on top of Destroyah. The two were sent rolling across the floors, the chimeric flesh golem grabbing the mare’s wing and violently twisting it as it to try and tear it free. Destroyah gasped in pain, joints popping and skin splitting before she managed to rear up and crash down atop her attacker. The two staggered to their feet, trading massive blows that sent audible crunches in the air that indicated a single hit might be lethal to most anypony else. Needless to say, this time they were hard enough that she could at least feel the impacts and, being comparable in size, her foe was able to take the blows without being sent flying. One very strong blow to the face sent Destroyah’s sunglasses flying off and she spat out a loosened tooth before snarling.

Still, strong enough didn’t always mean powerful enough. Spotting one of the stitches holding the gestalt monster together, Destroyah swung her horn downwards and caught Frankenhoof at his bonds. Chopping into the weak point, the golem lost the entirety of his left arm above the elbow and was thrown off balance to stagger forward. The Serizawan Legacy finally found leverage to pick the creature up over head and hurl Giranbo across the room and through another wall, leaving orange blood dripping from the sides of the hole.

Rising back up, Giranbo glimpsed the irate Destroyah pouncing at her out of the debris cloud’s dust and smoke with energy crackling between split jaws and her frayed mane. Electricity crackled from the bolts on the monster's neck as a blood red rune formed around her horn. When Destroyah let loose the deadly spray, it was met with a torrent of powerful lightning the moment it left her jaws that resulted an explosion going off right in front of her.

Destroyah came sailing out of the explosion and shockwave, burnt and singed in many places but even more irate than before. Frankenstallion was too large to get out of the way despite attempts to do so, smashing into and sending both himself and Destroyah hurtling through the floor and into a dark space below.

Briefly knocked silly by the impact, the first thing Destroyah was conscious of was a cold wetness. They’d crashed into a body of water that seemed extremely deep and gotten separated. Unable to see anything from her daze as well as the sheer darkness of it all, which was unnaturally so almost like the water itself was blackened, Destroyah had to light up her horn to make anything remotely visible.

They’d fallen through the bottom of a portion of the house, which evidently had a cellar or secondary basement that sat in an open cavern atop a river or lake she hadn’t recalled seeing before. Then again given this realm made no sense, that was hardly surprising. Spotting an access ramp, she started to paddle towards it; cursing mildly that this equine form lacked her old ability to rapidly swim through the water with thicker wings, much less fully intact ones given the soreness at her joint told her she’d dislocated one.

The shifting in the water was the only forewarning she got. Evidently, Giranbo had shifted again underwater to a very fitting form. Just as tall as Frankenstallion, but leaner with tighter muscle beneath thick scales and jagged fins, the denizen of the black lagoon looked like a monstrous mixture of an armored tiger fish and a marine pony sporting sharpened, claw-like hooves. Destroyah got a plenty good look at it when it tackled her from the side and dragged her under.

The Gillstallion shrieked through the watery distortion, hacking and stabbing at the giantess with his hooves while pulling her deeper and deeper under. Blood rose to the frothing surface. Gritting her teeth as her jacket and chest were carved into, Destroyah gave up trying to swim to the surface again and grabbed the shapeshifter to hold them in front of her. The wounded, bleeding white patch on her chest lit up in a way that would have signaled the floral pattern on her sternum opening had she been in her true state.

The surface of the black waters was violently torn asunder as the gillstallion came flying out of the water, shoved out by a brilliant beam of white and violet light that had melted and dissolved off one of his arms. A large hoof grabbed the edge of the river and cracked the floorboards beyond it, Destroyah soon hauling herself out of the waters with her chest still smoking from the wave motion cannon being fired without a charge up. Thankfully, her powers still worked even better underwater to make up for that shortcoming. The blowback stung and had forced the Serizawan Legacy to hack and cough, but pure vindication drove her to find her opponent. All she spotted were wet hoofprints leading back up the stairs and was quick to pursue.

Staggering back into another hall, still wet, bleeding, singed, and with much of her costume ruined, Destroyah snarled as she spotted the one-armed gillstallion standing on the opposite side of the room from her.

"Stubborn about dying, aren't we?" snarled the witch, crouching down and shapeshifting again. As her body contorted and split apart, the missing limb was regained from mist absorbed from seemingly the house itself as the wolfstallion returned.

"It will take more than you to kill me," Destroyah snarled in return, meeting the pounce of the wolf pony with a slash of her energized horn, only for her to transition into a swarm of bats and fly out of the way and past her.

Merging back into Count Dracolta on the other side, the vampire summoned swords to his hooves and slashed Destroyah across the back several times before a buck from the bleeding giant sent Giranbo flying backwards. Grabbing a chandelier as he was flying back, Dracolta transitioned back into the wolfpony, nimbly spinning around and launching forwards. Mid-flight, the lycanthrope equine became the terror of the Black Lagoon again and landed the harshest blow to the jaw she could manage with all that momentum.

Spitting out a bit of yellowish green blood, Destroyah snarled and swung her massive head back around directly into Giranbo's chest as a bludgeon, sending her flying back and into the opposing wall.

Seeing an incoming micro-oxygen spray being charged up by the vindictive mare, the gillstallion tore at his own scales to pry them off, fish-like eyes popping out and replaced with blackened cavities as the scales gave way to worn linen. Transformed into a dried corpse wrapped in bandages. Forming a rune in front of her hooves, the Mummy let loose a horde of flesh eating beetles that Destroyah quickly had to dissolve with the spray instead. Forming another rune, a massive sandstorm shaped like a shrieking face emerged and washed over Destroyah like a power sander. The former kaiju skid across the floor, her hooves digging bloody trenches into it as her entire body felt like it was getting stabbed and jabbed with needles, the sand ripping a large portion of her remaining costume off and shredding the room.

Her response was to cover her eyes and charge forwards through the sand, impaling the Mummy on her horn katana...only for it to dissipate in a puff of mist. By now Destroyah was as wise to this as she was annoyed and infuriated by it. Another copy.

Destroyah growled as she panted for breath, already feeling her limits. She could guess what was coming.

The sound of scraping swords, crackling electricity, canine snarls, raspy groans, and the wet smacking of gills flexing told her she guessed right even before looking up.


=========


"She's cheating!" Pinkie Pie exclaimed, seeming to teleport as she kicked one of the multiplying clones in the head.

After several bucks, it finally burst into a cloud of mists.

"Give me back mah’ sister!" Big Macintosh roared, showing off his much renown strength by using anything he could get his hooves on as a weapon. Even with the odds against them, his sister's life now being directly threatened was certainly a huge motivator.

"Looks like Lady Destroyah may be our only chance at least for the moment, do you think she can defeat that witch alone?" asked Radiant, doing her best not to let her fear for Scootaloo hamper her fighting ability.

A rapid moving blur of clubs and rainbows was decidedly a huge benefit, but not enough to get them through. Pinkie did her best job at being in nine or ten places at once.

While not everyone in town was a skilled fighter, but they were trying their best using whatever they could get their hooves on, and covering one another definitely made up for it… but they knew that in the end, it was a race against time. Lea obviously couldn't hold the barrier up forever. If they didn't break through, then Giranbo would escape. And it was abundantly obvious that Giranbo knew that too.

And try as they might, the infernal clones just kept coming!

Twilight, straining to hold up the barrier in everything that happened, considered the situation and Radiant's question. Destroyah was undoubtedly one of the most powerful kaiju, certainly none to write off if Lea’s accounts held true as well as what she herself had seen.

On the other hoof, this Giranbo seemed far from weak herself and Destroyah was fighting her alone in her own domain, where who knows what might happen. And without someone who could empower her back to her true form...

No one, not even Lea, knew what was on the other side of the portal. Giranbo could be hiding anything in her realm. And Lea had said Giranbo had gotten stronger since her mother fought the monster witch, so who knew what tricks she had up her sleeve literally no one could account for. Destroyah was alone in a world of unknowns, and Twilight Sparkle had never really liked unknowns.

Still… Godzilla Junior facing off with Grand King Ghidorah had been seemingly hopeless. It'd ended with the King of Terror meeting his end. Thus there was only one thing she could say.

"...We can only hope.”


=========


One of each of the monsters came barreling at Destroyah from every direction. The wolfstallion lunging out with his jaws on one side, Dracolta swinging a sabre across her back, Gillstallion attempting to claw her to death from a third while Frankenhoof's Monster tried to pummel her from a fourth, expelled enchanted wrappings from the Mummy snagging around her legs. In return, she tore, slashed, and blasted away, rending the beasts to shreds even as they tried to do the same to her. Kill or be killed, each blow sending her back more and more to Terra. More and more to 1995. To the last time she’d come closest to dying.

What on the outside world was a few moments felt like several minutes. Because in this world, it was. Destroyah’s form was dogpiled by the monsters, dragged to the ground and mauled with yellow ichors drawn up by her attackers with each gnashing bite, stabbing claw, beating fist, slashing sword, and constricting fabric. Dragged to the ground, she was brutalized.

Life flashed before her eyes. Two conflicting lives.

Walking a trio of precious fillies home from school on wide hooves…. And bearing down upon a victim with talon-covered feet.

Petting Sweetie Belle on the head after the filly suggested she dress up for Nightmare Night… And using that same limb, now a clawed hand, to wrench a rival kaiju’s head off.

Riding on a runaway wagon in a wacky downhill chase after her shed copies as but a filly… And boarding a train of weapons researchers Xenilla had set her upon as a ravenous swarm of monsters.

Feeling the morning sun on her face and enjoying its warmth like it was the best day of her life… And feeling the intense heat of the dying Old King from the absolute worst day of her life…

The life she yearned for, as ill fit or deserving as she sometimes thought herself for it; and a life she had been built for since the day she could think at all.

One wanted, one hated. As if by two different lives entirely as opposed to different chapters.

The faces of the possessed Crusaders, eyes blackened and voided stared back at her mind. The towering visage of a laughing Giranbo loomed over them like a puppeteer pulling strings. The waking nightmare morphed. Monsters of fiction and horrific versions of a nocturnal heroine oscillating before they melted away. All that was left was a charcoal gray hide with blazing patches of orange and red emerged, and double-rows of teeth gnashing hatefully as blazing eyes called for blood. The Old King, Godzilla Senior bellowed at his last foe.

As loathed as she was to it, she had to turn to the old life and old memory. To a time she dared bellow back.


“AAAAHHHRUUUOOOOOUUUUOOOOOAAAAA!”


The world shaking roar that turned 1995 Tokyo into a nightmare bellowed out. The roaring, massive mountain of a mare threw herself up and sent all of her attackers flying. Eyes constantly glowing with sheer hatred, the look a pain-maddened apex predator gave the world she only knew violence from at the time of her genesis, all was cut loose. Micro-oxygen beams crackled and split the air as they were turned loose, instantly exploding Count Dracolta on contact. The beam was dragged across the floor and walls before being joined by the charged wave-motion cannon that burst walls after a full charge. The Gillstallion was buried in debris, a charging Frankenstallion was hit so hard that he burst the Mummy when sent flying into the fellow monster. The most agile, the Wolfstallion dodged the beams and attempted one last, defiant charge. But soon after he sprang into the air to try and seize the mare and acquaint himself with the taste of her blood, the foe sprang around. The brightness of the horn katana was the last thing he saw before his vision divided and split in separate directions, the bisected monster’s halves falling to either side of the snarling Destroyah.

Panting and heaving, as much from exhaustion as she was bloodthirst, Destroyah checked for any surviving enemies. And found none. The house’s upper floors and walls had been completely trashed, bleeding and smoking from anywhere not vaporized. The ceiling was near-completely gone in several spots, showing only a dark void absent of stars high above.

A low, bestial snarl crossed her maw as she glared at the sole surviving part of the house still intact and not visible from holes punched in them. The basement opposite the access to the water. Moments later, her echoing stomps cracked the stairs leading down into it and she found what she sought; having finally sighted the witch at the entryway to the basement levels. Back in her familiar form, on the other side of the darkened room. Looming over an oven with a locked door directly behind her.

"...Well, you've gone and made a right mess of my house, you know. Very rude," the witch replied with an annoyed visage as the pieces of rubble faded and vanished in a manner not dissimilar to her clones.

Destroyah didn't respond, her wings unfurling and launching straight at her like a rampaging rhino with just as much intent to impale her on her horn.

"...Fine. Enough games," stated Giranbo, her body beginning to rearrange and contort, building mass as it shifted to something else. Her face split open in a contorting mass of teeth. "...You know, since I'm making my comeback in this world after your bothersome bug of a friend wounded me so badly all those years ago, it's only fitting I take my favorite form from this world!"

Giranbo charged her, body still changing and contorting, increasing in mass. Her lengthening horn's rune ignited.

Destroyah put all her momentum into a horn katana slash to Giranbo's head… only for it to be met with a magical energy blade of her own, parrying the blow and stopping it with a resounding crash like a gong.

A black-furred face cackled at Destroyah, draconic eyes narrowing. Blue barding erupting out of her skin as obsidian demonic wings erupted from her back and spread out wide. The image of Luna's corrupted state looked back at Destroyah, angler fish-like teeth permanently bared and demonic wings instead of the feathered wings the real deal would bear.

Giranbo, now in the form of the darkest alicorn, grinned and cackled maniacally, "Ever wonder why ponies thought little Nightmare Moon ate children?!" 

The kaiju didn’t care what this prey was saying. Just that she wasn’t dead yet, and seeking to fix that!

The two exchanged energy blade slashes, Destroyah having more sheer power, but the false Nightmare having more skill and agility. Physical blows were met with much the same result, one side having more sheer brute force, the other outmaneuvering and meeting that power with skill. Destroyah was anything but an incompetent fighter, but was fighting purely off instinct and this witch knew how to fight. She wasn't simply trying to pummel her or slash her to death. Every move was calculated and done with a precise goal in mind. Destroyah's power edge thankfully made up that difference in skill.

Glowing horns sparked and crashed into each other again and again, creating horrific scraping and bashing utterances as the duel continued.

Thrown back by a powerful parry break however, the witch noted her position right next to the locked door beside the oven and flashed a toothy grin.

“Nothing more than a rabid dog now aren’t you?” She smirked at the oncoming, drooling, fang gnashing monster of a mare, “Must say, I much prefer this truth of you. But I still am rather vindictive about you wrecking my house. So…”

She rose up and put her hoof to the previously locked door. The space and matter composing the sealed entry seemed to bend and contort into a combination of mist and liquid. Like a cloth ripped off a table, she wrenched the outer layer of the door free and seemed to absorb it instantly. The suspended blood within the door’s mass hovered in midair for a brief second before reacting to gravity and plummeting down to reveal what lay behind it.

Three sets of blank, blackened eyes were beholden to the world outside the pantry door. Apple Bloom, Scootaloo, and Sweetie Belle stood motionless; still clearly unable to act by will of their own. The dilated, manic eyes of Destroyah contracted in recognition and the apex predator had a fleeting pause.

Nightmare Moon used that to her advantage at the right time. Lashing out with a wave of magic before landing a buck to the back of stunned giant's head along with her own momentum. The end result was the massive mare's face being slammed full on into the floor with enough force to drive her head through it; dazing her enough to stun the kaiju. Nightmare Moon launched up to the ceiling on her dark wings and dove back down with a quadruple foot stomp directly on Destroyah's rising head. Then another. Then finally flying to the ceiling and diving down, raining energy blasts on her foe before the alicorn slammed into Destroyah with enough force to drive her entire upper body through the hole, cackling sadistically the entire time.

As Destroyah attempted to tear herself free, Nightmare Moon smirked unnaturally wide, flying upwards and letting loose a massive beam of energy that blew the Serizawan Legacy through the floor and crashing into the basement! The crash was so powerful that it upended a lot of the flooring to the room above the lowest levels. A small object, previously perched on a shelf next to the previously locked door the Crusaders were sealed in, was knocked off its resting place and tumbled into the void below…

Destroyah’s instinctive mind noted she’d landed onto something very uneven, uncomfortable, that shattered to dried pieces on impact.

Shaking her head, Destroyah forced herself to her hooves and opened her eyes…

To find a pony's skull's empty eyes looking back at her. And another beside that. And another beside that. And a human's beside that. Then skulls or equivalents to of many types, shapes, and compositions she couldn’t even recognize. And so on. And so on. And so on.

For as far as her eyes could see in all directions, skulls and bleached bones in costumes of countless monsters stretched on and on. Not hundreds. Not thousands. Not even hundreds of thousands. Millions. All of incomplete, unfused single bones or other signs of immature corpses. A mass grave filled with almost exclusively children of countless worlds.

Moving her leg, Destroyah found the skeleton right next to her hoof was an exception. Seemingly an adult with some sort of uniform raggedly clinging to their bones as a shattered rifle lay at their gnarled boots. From the looks of it, they hadn't died peacefully.

"Oh, you found my trophy room…" Nightmare Moon mocked, sounding like a child had wandered into the wrong room in their grandmother's house, "This is why my realm is known as the Dream Graveyard. I like to go down there and remember each and every little dreamer… it's easy when the important part is in here…"

The false nightmare's jaw distended and her entire upper body split open like a grotesque flower, revealing an ethereal blue glow inside. There was a noise coming out with the light, almost like a lightbulb buzzing or humming as it ran. Only it grew louder, and louder with time. And more recognizable. Sobbing, crying, shrieking, pleading, and the screaming; all blurred together in a cacophony of sorrow. Screaming that reminded Destroyah of Grand King Ghidorah's cackle in a disturbing way as she looked into the deadlight.

The primal kaiju’s eyes relaxed back to some semblance of normality, as she staggered to rise while bleeding all over  the boneyard floor.

Nightmare Moon closed her body back up, sealing off the deadlight into the visage of her sadistic, smirking face, "When I feed on them after letting the souls cook for awhile, I eat their sweet dreams… but once they're inside, I tend to like to have their nightmares for dessert."

Finally, feeling as if her voice was caught behind years of disuse from a raspy throat, Destroyah spoke again in a half whisper, “The Crusaders…”

“Is that what you call them?” Nightmare Moon scoffed, “A paltry plunder. But I have been out of the game since… well, one year after your emergence. The moth and… these ones.”

She levitated up something Destroyah recognized well. After all, the ancestor of the GDF, G-Force, had identically designed helmets during her rampage in 1995. Giranbo, Nightmare Moon, sneered as she tossed it away.

“Adults, ambitions and dreams so less potent, taint the soul like oversalted meat,” Nightmare Moon hissed as she threw the helmet away.

“What... happened, aghk!” Destroyah shot a sideways glance, her sight still dizzied but able to hear. She gagged, blood running out of her lips. Nightmare Moon raised her brow but shrugged.

Nightmare Moon hummed, turning on her hooves to reminisce as she looked at the other corpses of the G-Force soldiers.

“Hmmm... it had been quite some time since I’d been to your homeworld, so I thought I’d return. Had such a good time there since the days after the first civilizations there fell and there were no guardians to impede me.”

She glimpsed a purple glow and smirked, humoring it, “But I found the mothra had returned from the stars. I suspect, the mother of the one outside keeping my Jack-O-Lantern from leaving, yes? She was meddlesome, I will even admit had a chance to stop me as I did her. But upon finding some brave fools had invaded my realm, well, I couldn’t let my current collection go to waste.”

Nightmare Moon paced away a few steps, calmly and secretly charging up a burst of magic. This had been fun, but meddlesome and it was time to end it.

“I escaped back to my home and, while not having a haul as big as I’d wish to have, I had… enough. Hmmm,” Giranbo hummed contemplatively, “They should be just about done cooking in my oven to serve. Might help myself to some of them, after all I do need to make room in there for three more-”

The micro-oxygen burst flew forth with murderous intent, burrowing through her mane. Nightmare Moon however had been prepared and smirked, her head and neck splitting in two to dodge the oncoming beam as she whipped around. The two split halves of her upper body ducked down, flopping about with movement, before stitching back together rapidly. The moment the horn was reconstituted, a massive beam of dark magic spewed out.

And soon several things became clear.

Destroyah was battered, dizzy, had blood clouding one of her eyes, and she was exhausted. And she’d missed on purpose to spur a counter attack.

Sometimes not being a rabid, reactive beast had its benefits. Especially when it entailed grabbing a music box, dropped from above, playing ‘Pop Goes the Weasel’ on loop, and putting it to Giranbo’s own magic.

“NO!” Nightmare Moon shrieked and stopped her magic, but it was too late.

The music box exploded and dissipated into mists and slimy ichors that ran off the smiling Destroyah’s hoof.

Stunned and recoiling in pain, as if tied to the music box that gave her the Pied Piper-like melody, Nightmare Moon was unable to dodge the forward lunge by her foe.

An orange light cut through the air and the faux Nightmare Moon fell to the bone yard floor in pieces. Panting from her horn katana’s efforts, Destroyah whirled around and covered the witch’s entire body in a deluge of micro-oxygen; drowning her in it. Until there was nothing left but a gnarled mess of half-transformed bones. It wasn’t a clone this time…

For a time, all that was audible in that dark, grim trophy room was the Serizawan Legacy’s coarse, exhausted panting gradually stilling. Slowly, on shaking legs, she staggered towards a ramp to haul herself back into the pantry after waiting a minute to see if Giranbo would rise again.

No sooner than she returned to the room with the oven and now vacant doorway, Destroyah collapsed while mutely heaving to catch her breath.

A racket approached and she was almost too tired to rise. But something forced her to look.

“Miss Des?” A youthful tone chirped.

Destroyah’s tired eyes opened back up.

The spell had been broken, three costumed fillies standing before her with worried, scared expressions clad across their faces.

A thousand thoughts flew forward. The Crusaders never saw her at her worst, they were unharmed, and they desperately needed to leave. But all that was pushed aside for a moment. Destroyah snatched outwards with dilated eyes, scooping up the three little girls to clutch them to her as tears wept away the blood in her eyes.

She drew them to her for her comfort and their own. And at the sound of creaking wood and groaning foundation. Sweetie Belle screamed and Scootaloo clung to her. Destroyah drew the three of them under her wings to shield them with her body when the house came crashing down atop them.

………..
……………
……………….

It seemed like several minutes of blackness before the void beyond was lit up by an orange light cutting across the rubble. Destroyah grunted and heaved; her sore, cut, but powerful back rammed its way through the rubble.

Free of the rubble, wings unfurrowed to push the debris aside and expose the three protected Crusaders.

For a few moments they merely stared. They were now standing in a realm with an endless forest and starless sky, an old, abandoned playground nearby with discarded toys laying desolate.

"...Well, that's one way to get rid of a witch. Drop a house on her head," Apple Bloom dared to choke out.

"...Are you okay?" 

The trio looked up to see Destroyah gazing down at them in obvious worry despite she herself being wounded and bleeding far worse than anyone they’d ever seen in their life.

"We're fine…" said Sweetie Belle, shuddering. Remembering. Trapped in an endless dream, aware, but unaware at the same time.

She sniffled, opting not to focus upon that as she bundled up part of her vampire cape to press to one of the ragged stab wounds her savior had on her forelimb. Selfless worry was overpowering her fear, as choked up as she was, "Thanks to you! Th-Th-Thank you..."

Apple Bloom, trying to control her quivering, nodded and then blinked, hearing the sound of somepony trying not to cry. Scootaloo's eyes were wet with tears and she was clearly choking back sobs.

"I-I'm… I'm not okay… I feel like I got my heart ripped out. She… she said… my wings… she said she'd fix my wings and I… I believed her…" The filly sobbed, clinging close to her friends and protector, “I-I got us all into this! I-I felt something was wrong but..!”

A broad hoof, cracked and covered in scabs, rubbed the back of the small girl’s head in surprising tenderness. Destroyah leaned down as she weakly hummed assuringly, nuzzling Apple Bloom, then Sweetie Belle, and finally Scootaloo. Thanks to the latter’s disguise, one could say it looked like a mother comforting her child. At least, in her own way.

“Giranbo will not hurt any of you,” Destroyah, “I made her pay for it.”

For a few moments more, Destroyah and the Crusaders merely stood hugging, comforting the little orange pegasus as well as each other. It allowed them all to collect their wits.

"What about you, Ms Destroyah?" asked Sweetie Belle, reaching up and pawing her cape to the giantess’ cheek to dab away some dried blood.

"I've had worse," Destroyah replied with a small, curt smile, her attempt at a reassuring one.

She wasn't lying, though the worse she'd had was having most of her body destroyed except a small piece Xenilla had to nurture until it regrew her body. And something like that meant she couldn’t carry her charges back to their awaiting families.
By combination of body language and her own sore efforts, Destroyah collected the Crusaders onto her back and surveyed the surroundings. The landscape beyond was an empty void of nondescript land, a foggy forest, and pitch black sky, the entirety of the house having been leveled aside from the oven. And in the far distance, through the forest trail, a single blemish of light on the void beyond’s darkness was cast in the shape of the Jack-O-Lantern’s entrance. Back from hence she came, and back to whence they’d return.

Destroyah walked over the rubble and made for the exit, “Time to go home…”

Until Apple Bloom blinked, her ears pricking, "Uh...do you hear something?"

The group looked around, seeing the debris of the house begin to rattle and move on its own.

"...Oh no…" Destroyah muttered as she slowly realized what that meant, beginning to sprint for the exit but was impeded by the shifting ground the rubble covered and her broken wing.

"Onore! Onore! Onore!" the witch's voice echoed from every bit of rubble in a writhing chorus as it began to convert into writhing masses of flesh.

"Looks like I'm not the only one too stubborn to die!..."





The entire house, the bleeding walls and ability for her foe to seemingly appear anywhere. Giranbo wasn’t the resident. She was the house. But no more the whole of the entity than one of Destroyah's aggregates.

The melted, gnarled skeleton was pulled from the rapidly liquifying, goopy rubble with fleshy tendrils lashing out and forcing themselves to knit and stitch together. Amidst the writhing mass of swirling flesh and darkened bone, a single glowing blue eye erupting in its skull that cast an eerie blue glow about her prey.

If she was saying anything now, it wasn’t legible. Just a booming, echoing, heinous chorus of cackling laughter that seemed to surge up from all directions. The writhing flesh swirled around her, compounding on top of bones.

"...Get to the trees," Destroyah said simply, forcing her tired, battered body to move.

The small rest helped some, but not nearly enough. If she could reliably break down and reform she might be able to heal back at least some damage, but that wasn't possible in her current state. She hadn't done that in years and the last time she tried it nearly cost her more than just her identity. The Crusaders hopped off her back and took their big friend by the hooves to help tow and urge her along at a pace quicker than a stumble. The group rushed and took cover in the forest as the swirling tower of flesh and muscle rose higher and higher into the air with a sickening tearing sound.

Tendrils stretched out as a blue glow pulsed in its center of mass. Legs with pointed feet like witch's shoes began to form. A humanoid upper body took shape, a pointed, medium-length tail formed and whipped behind it. A human-like hand pushed off the ground, helping the massive form lift itself up..

Rising up, the thing stopped at 100 meters in height and took complete shape. It was humanoid, in the sense it was the vague shape of a human. Her skin, or some approximate thereof, was primarily orange, with a dull purple underbelly and stretches of skin over most of her body. Red markings broke up the color scheme and were clad across her chest. The right arm had a human-like hand, though tipped in flat edged talons that recurved backwards towards the palm with a strange blade running along the forearm, while the left was a short, bladed spike. The strangest aspect of the creature was the 'head'. Alien by every measure, unakin to any creature that might be found on Terra or Equestria, with arches of bone approximating roughly the shape of a head with two short 'tusks' extending down onto the chest and strange 'antlers' that looped back in and connected back to the top. Oddest of all was she lacked a proper face and yet easily conveyed where it was she gazed upon, instead having a singular blue, pulsating mass that writhed and yet looked crystalline. The 'eye' composing most of what could be called a visage. The ‘eye’ was partially grown over by a web of stretched skin, breaking up its shine into multiple small openings of luminance. Lights that seemed to offer no meaningful brightness. Light cast by the screams of the millions trapped within. Multiple deadlights.

The giant gave a maniacal cackling laugh despite lacking a visible mouth. The ground quaked as she marched forward, leaving the boneyard, lake, and the still-burning oven as the only indication that the house had been there as she marched towards the forest.

"She can turn into a giant monster without any help?! That's so unfair!" Scootaloo whimpered, but her trembling showed her dumbstruck speech was merely an attempt to defuse the terror of the situation.

Destroyah shot a look to the light beyond, trying to ignore the dread in observing how distant it was.

"P-portal’s still open, we have to get out of here, now!…" Destroyah panted, the priority being getting the girls out of here rather than sating bloodthirst for this demon’s heart, before noticing that said witch moved in their general direction rather than any other. So much for their cover....

The giant witch cackled, a rune manifesting in front of her singular eye before she swung it across a portion of the forest, lighting it aflame as the Crusaders huddled among Destroyah's legs with a scream of fright.

If she was allowed to just search without a diversion, she'd trap them in a ring of fire. None of them would get out. And if the forest fire spread too far…

Destroyah looked around, seeing the glowing exit in the distance. Too far to run with the wicked witch lighting everything ablaze… and worse yet, Giranbo was still standing in the clearing where the house once stood, their most direct route to the portal. They'd either have to sneak through the woods as Giranbo lit them on fire, or they'd have to run past her to reach it. If she saw them, they wouldn't make it. A creature that size could cover a lot of ground very, very quickly simply due to the length of their strides.

They were trapped… no… not they.

The massive mare looked down at the Crusaders.

Decades ago in 1954, Dr. Daisuke Serizawa, the man whom could be considered her father, made a choice. For his unrequited love of a fiance, for an old friend who had been put into the hospital reporting on the tragedy unleashed, his young nephew, and the generation he represented. The doctor whom made the deadliest weapon the world would ever known sacrificed himself to destroy a monster and ensure his creation would never hurt an innocent ever again.

Self-sacrifice by her own creator. One who no doubt would hate what he'd engendered both before and after his death.

"...Girls, I'm going to hold her off, run to that door. Get out," Destroyah said bluntly.

Still, it was a worthy act to be inspired by.

"What about you?" Apple Bloom asked.

"…"

Destroyah rarely saw fit to not tell the truth. Rarely saw fit to be anything but blunt… but to tell them what she knew would probably happen… to the ponies who'd seen her through all this… it hurt. It rammed a shard of ice through her chest. It hurt too much.

Maybe she could split up into aggregates again and let the one with her mind escape while the little monsters held the witch off...Destroyah had to avoid laughing. A logical plan, but without the conviction or mental prowess she ever truly bore, it was too likely to be foolhardy. The only time it ever worked was when there was a massive, burning apex predator in the same area to unite against as a horde of mindless beasts. It wouldn't work, the divisions would ever take her direction long enough to do that…

"But you can't beat her like this!" Sweetie Belle, seeing right through the bravado, screamed. "You'll die!"

The mare looked at herself and ripped a large chunk of her mane out, handing it to her, "If I don't get out, give this to Xenilla. He can regrow me from it. He did it before."

A distant hope, likely not to be true. A lock of hair was not alive like a hunk of flesh was. If anything it was to give them strength, conviction. Even if she herself could hope just maybe it might work. Xenilla, the first being who’d ever treat a monster like her with any thought to be a friend, he was smart. If the Crusaders had hope, he’d have determination; he'd find a way… She hoped. If nothing else, given who he was, he'd have a plan for next time Giranbo came.

Sweetie Belle took the mass of hair, looking up at her with scared eyes, "But...but… It-she might not be you."

Destroyah took her cheek in her hoof and looked Sweetie Belle, then the other two dead in the eyes. Her eyes quivered, moistened; as her hoof trembled. And yet still, she cast a nod to them they understood. Destroyah held onto the feeling of their hooves wrapped around her muzzle and forelimb, fleeting as it had to be, before she stood up and separated.

"Now go! Run to the doorway! Before she lights everything on fire and you can't!" the massive mare ordered with as much authority as she could manage, waiting for them to start running before turning and looking up as Giranbo lit another swath of forest alight.

If the CMC got out… she wasn't afraid. Destroyah bit down and grabbed her wing, forcing herself through the agonizing pain and withstanding the sensations until a wet snap popped the joint back into place. It hurt constantly, but she could properly flex it now for flight. The air was churned by the gust of beating wings that pushed back against some of the fires.

Flying out of the forest, she wasted no time and let forth a blast of micro-oxygen at the behemoth's eye. Not enough compared to her huge mass to meaningfully hurt her, but enough to get her attention.

Giranbo cackled at her own dull pain, some of her eye’s mesh-like covering melting off but suffering no meaningful damage. She sneered, swinging her blade hand in an attempt to bisect the flying former kaiju.

Destroyah was no Rodan or Mothra, but she wasn’t an incompetant aerialist. She banked sharply, barely able to avoid the swipe but was sent spiraling purely by the wind of its passing.

The irony of being a small, easily destroyed object trying to avoid the blows of a gigantic, powerful beast didn't escape her. She wondered if the ghosts of those soldiers in that mass grave got any enjoyment out of seeing the creature who'd killed a number of their brothers-in-arms the previous year in this situation.

The mare landed on Giranbo's arm and galloped along its length, at least limiting what the titan could try and murder her with.

The witch did little more than laugh, trying to crush her like a bug with Destroyah managing to use her wings to get a burst of speed to avoid the human-like hand as it slapped Giranbo's arm. The impact, while no more to the witch than a human trying to squash a mosquito, felt like an earthquake. A blood red rune formed over Giranbo's eye and let loose a torrent of flame, the pony whose size could be generously compared to an insect having to fly to the underside of her arm to avoid being fried. Even then the sheer heat hurt, and the Seriazawan Legacy knew she'd likely gotten at least third degree burns. Flying along her limb, Destroyah flew back up and landed on her shoulder, blasting her repeatedly in the head with micro-oxygen to little effect.

Instead, Destroyah was forced to dodge as her massive hand crashed down on her shoulder with the force of a meteor impact. Tendrils of twisting flesh emerged from her shoulder, trying to grasp or strangle the mare, forcing her to slice or blast them away.

The Crusaders panted, running as fast their little legs could carry them, hearts pounding in their ears. They were about half way there, running past the oven that'd been beneath the house.

Until Sweetie Belle looked down at the mass of crimson hair she was carrying…and saw a feral little filly destroyah looking back at her.

"STOP!"

The trio skidded to a stop, her friends looking at her with wide eyes.

"Sweetie, Ms. Destroyah said we had to run!" Scootaloo called.

Apple Bloom blinked, looking over to the oven. The glowing embers seeming to almost...speak to her. Like a bunch of little voices in her mind...all telling her to run. She shuddered.

The little unicorn looked back to Destroyah, as the mare flew up and landed on the titan's horns, avoiding shapeshifted tendrils and swipes...and bearing even more lacerations from the sharp tendrils emerging from her skin.

"...You remember what happened when she split up...only one of her was her… Xenilla might be able to do that back on Terra, but even then there were changes,” Sweetie Belle muttered with an increasing frown of despair, “But if he does it this time… it won't be her anymore, just some memories…”

Scootaloo looked back at the one-sided battle with a visage of pure loss like the last fragment of hope she had was impaled and left to rot, “I think she knows it..."

The trio's blood ran cold as they watched their friend fighting a high-stakes battle of David and Goliath...and it didn't look like David was winning as a shake of Giranbo's head nearly sent her flying.

"...She told us to get out. She didn't tell us tah bring back Twilight to grow her inta’ a kaiju or anything ‘bout killing Giranbo," Apple Bloom replied, dread quickly beginning to surface in her mind.

"She… she's gonna die…" Scootaloo stuttered out, eyes tearing up as mucus clogged her throat and nose.

The hairs, the last fragment they’d have of her. It was all a sacrifice with a hope entrusted to future generations. Like father like daughter, a Serizawan tradition.

The trio could only stare in, frozen in terror and sorrow as the little red spot that was their massive friend tried desperately to distract Giranbo. A blast of the wave motion cannon to Giranbo's head at point black didn't seem to do more than annoy her, like a pebble hitting an elephant.

"Then let's get Twilight and come back!" Apple Bloom suggested.

"You remember, right? We-We were trying to get through that shield she put up when we were under that witch's control! That's probably still happening!" Sweetie Belle replied, shuddering at the memory, “She drops it and more kids might get hurt or worse!”

"Well there has tah be somethin' we can do!" yelled Apple Bloom, panic beginning to rise more and more. Her heart skipped a beat as Destroyah had to fly from one of Giranbo's horns to the other to avoid being grabbed.

Sweetie Belle crossed her eyes and looked up at her horn, "Hey! I'm a unicorn! Maybe I can do it!" 

"Yeah! That's right! Try!" Scootaloo yelled as her eyes lit up in a hope, distant as it was.

The little white unicorn pointed her horn, trying her best to aim despite shaking from fear. Her best friends held onto her, helping to home in on the comparatively small, distant form of Destroyah like aiming a cannon. She focused, straining hard...and only earning a small spark of green magic like a flint and steel striking from her horn tip. She strained again, beginning to sweat, her head beginning to hurt. Another spark. A third time, her horn starting to hurt like a toothache. This time there was a tiny little beam the circumference of a laser pointer that faded almost instantly.

"Come on! Come on! Come on!" the filly chanted, her eyes welling up with tears.

"Hurry!" Scootaloo yelled as Giranbo's back began to contort and crack.

"I'm trying!"

Apple Bloom looked at her hooves.

"We've got magic too! Let's try to help her!" she yelled, putting her hoof to Sweetie's horn, which was already beginning to heat up.

On memory of instruction from Granny, she focused through her hooves like she was feeling at the earth itself and the life therein. Sweetie Belle wasn’t a tree but she was alive after all, so she could feel something. Hoping it wouldn’t make Sweetie Belle sprout fruit, she poured it in.

Scootaloo looked to her small wings and put a hoof to her friend's horn. Even as a deformed cripple, she was still a pegasus. A pegasus’ wings were still enchanted, otherwise they’d never be able to get off the ground with such a small wingspan. And as pathetic as her wings were, she knew, she still felt magic in her from being able to cloudwalk before. It was her best experience with it and Scootaloo focused on it, vibrating her body and buzzing her wings as she tried to recall the feeling of trotting on cumulus while holding Sweetie Belle’s horn.

Both non-unicorns focused and struggled, trying to send their magic to Sweetie so she could pass it on. Straining so hard it hurt but still the beam was little more than a laser pointer blast.

Giranbo's back erupted in a torrent of orange blood, reforming into a pair of gigantic wings, her entire form shrinking at the exact same rate as her wings grew. Destroyah raised an eyebrow, noticing but more focused on hanging on for dear life. Flapping her new wings, the now 70 meter monster took skyward, the sudden wind and g-forces finally making Destroyah lose her grip and get spent spiralling. A massive human-like hand spun around caught her. Tendrils of flesh extended, one from each finger, each grabbing a limb. Destroyah fired, slashed, and blasted viciously but couldn't get free.

The monster witch held Destroyah up to her eye with a sadistic cackle as the tendrils began to grow tighter and pull harder.

"Try harder!" Scootaloo yelled, her wings sparking a little bit.

"Ah am!" Apple Bloom replied, feeling a little twinge of the magic of life in her hoof.

But it still wasn't enough.

Destroyah cringed, feeling her limbs beginning to hurt, flesh beginning to protest. Even as the witch tried to draw and quarter her, laughing all the while, the Serizawan Legacy didn't give her the satisfaction of screaming.

There was a glimmer of green light behind them. A large pulse of magic from Sweetie's horn sprang forth and cut into the air, her emerald magic intermixed with hues of red and purple Scootaloo and Apple Bloom could feel themselves feeding in. The combined blast could have ruptured walls or done some noticeable effect on a close target… but didn't go nearly far enough.

The combined magic fizzled out after twenty or so meters.

The trio panted, exhaustion and strain now quite evident as much was their horror.

"Don't give up! We're almost there!" the little unicorn screamed.

The kaiju-turned-pony had to use every ounce of her will power to stop an involuntary scream as she felt her bones and flesh start to seperate, her throbbing pulse carrying with it echoes of shredding tissue as everything was beginning to tear. But it wasn’t paid any heed, despite how overwhelming it was. Instead she kept blasting Giranbo in the eye over and over defiantly, gagging and vomiting out salvo after salvo of micro-oxygen bursts that did mostly just scratch damage to her foe.

The witch kept laughing, not even moving her eye away so she'd get a good look when the limbs started being torn asunder.

The Crusaders thought of everything. First finding Destroyah. Taking her for help after she stopped the Timber Wolves. Scootaloo staying with her in the clubhouse. Taking care of slendermane. The baby Dizzy swarm, spending time with the little filly version of their friend. That same friend leaping into action to save them literally from herself.

Even memories from earlier in the night. Memories of how a nightmare for Terra had become their friend.

"We won't-" Scootaloo began, wings beginning to crackle with a pink light that mixed with a natural purple one.

"-let-" Sweetie Belle continued, her green magic aura starting to spark with pink.

"-her-" Apple Bloom added, her hooves gaining a pink spark mixing with her red.

The oven continued to burn with a warm glow...then slowly, as if affected by the sudden burst of magic nearby, the interior visible through its glass window lit up. The light gradually transitioned to be a pale hue. White embers began to touch, almost beat on the inside wall of the oven door, as if begging freedom.

In the mass grave, the skulls of the brave G-Force soldiers stared on with empty sockets. Veterans of the conflicts with the Old King and Destroyah, having given their lives trying in vain to save innocent children when they came charging through the gateway only to meet their demise in a house made from a horror. Now their ghosts watching as the beast who only a year before their deaths had slaughtered their squadmates was about to meet a grisly end trying to do the same thing. And they weren’t alone. Sparks and whispers zigzagged across the graveyard…The wind began to blow, seeming to come from just over them and carrying something intangible but very real, like an army of warriors charging into battle.

Scootaloo's hoof found the magic gem Lea had given her on her costume and ripped it off, holding it in front of Sweetie's horn, like a prism. The wind and sparks all surged into it as the trio lit up with a glowing pink aura. All three opened their eyes simultaneously, now glowing white. For a brief instant, one could see a pattern form across the ground around the three in the shape of a shield.

Giranbo cocked her head, noticing the growing glow and ceased her attempted execution.

Destroyah took the opportunity to swing her horn aside and hack at her bonds, dropping herself limpy to towards the ground as she desperately tried to fly even with over half her limbs dislocated...Giranbo merely tossed her battered, injured form over her shoulder like a toy she'd gotten bored with as she turned, aiming directly for the raging forest fire, moving too fast to right herself.

"-down!" the Crusaders finally screamed, Sweetie's horn unleashing a swirling beam of green, red, purple, and pink magic surrounded by sparks of light, guided by a wind swelling up from the graveyard that seemed to know where to aim far better than herself, like the hands of a soldier with hundreds, thousands compiling together to lend aid.

Giranbo gave a chuckle, expecting a futile attack on herself in a desperate attempt to save her victim.

Then she was blinded by the gargantuan flare of light that shot past her, the shockwaves coming forth from it knocking the gigantic witch out of the sky and to the ground in an earthquaking crash. She soon clawed her way back to rightedness, sneering without a visage at the three still-illuminated crusaders before gaining a moment of pause. It was only for a moment, only for a fraction of an instant. But she glimpsed not three immature equines. Amidst them and around them, even if the crusaders didn’t react to them, were crowds of mostly youths. Some equine, some human or humanoid, animalistic, cybernetic, all alive and all dead. And at the front of the crowd, flanking the fillies were two men and a woman in seemingly pristine gear. A formerly cracked and shattered helmet with a G-Force emblem back together, held under the arm of a resolute man whom raised a single figured gesture to his killer.

To someone behind Giranbo even as the irate witch cackled and closed in at a menagerie of her former victims.

The beam ended and Sweetie Belle swayed dizzily, stumbling over her own hooves, "I-I don't think... I- can... walk!..."

The others caught her and looked up as the earth quaked under the feet of a titan.

Giranbo gave an amused cackle, reaching out with her taloned hand, still thinking they'd missed their one shot.

Scootaloo saw something behind her and cracked a grin, "Wasn't aiming at ya!"

The witch froze, the howling gales of wind rushing past her from behind as a gargantuan mass suddenly displaced all the standing air; accompanying a near blinding flash of purple light that shot into the sky. While she lacked anything resembling a face, her shock and even a little fear was evident as she slowly turned around over the span of several seconds. She saw fit to begin growing back up to her true height, wings receding into her back at the same rate as her growth until they disappeared entirely once she was one hundred meters.

Pillar-like legs with three-pronged talons ripped into the dirt as a long, pincer-tipped tail flattened several swaths of trees. As the glowing pillar of purple began to recede, four wings unfolded from behind pauldron spiked shoulders to near impossible length outstretched. Muscular arms tipped in triangular spikes unclasped to reveal themselves to be three-fingered talons. Emerging from the light was a towering face, still composed of a glowing mass that was remolding into a tusked face flanked by a pair of shield-like crests and crowned with an edged, sabre-like horn. The blinding flare faded, dark crimson red exoskeleton forming plated armor atop red scaly hide; with the only breaches being the ivory in the claws, multiple spines ringing the knees, and enclosed floral pattern on the sternum. A maw full of jagged teeth that could be favorably compared to a shark gnashed, the three tusks flanking it flexing back and forth in a hungry bloodthirst.

A pair of compound orange eyes lit up 120 meters off the ground, the 80,000 ton mass taking her first step as so in what felt months.

Orange compound eyes briefly beheld a murky sea floor. A sicky greenish hue cast by the silt and disturbed waters, churned by a mass of bubbles. There was something there. She was tiny then, barely thinking, barely feeling; but registered her minisculeness in the face of its enormity. Some distant whisper within her subconscious might recall the finer details. A glimpse of a worn figure in a rubber suit baring a metallic helmet, the blank eyes of a human skull staring back at her.

Now she was conscious, now she was mighty; now she was the one whom cast the shadow upon what lay before her.

Destroyah, one of the greatest monsters of all time, born from the deadliest weapon of all time, threw open her jaws in a booming cry that shook the realm to its foundations…



=======




Image Link!


On the other side of the portal, amidst the desperate defense against the ever constant number of Giranbo clones imitating beasts of lore and myths of movie legend, something broke through all the chaos in the airspace.

Shouting out the yelling, the battlecries, the shrieking of the possessed children, and the rabble of monsters from lycanthrope howls to snarling vampires; was something very familiar to one soul present.

A titanic, muting, air rattling roar.


“AAAAHHHRUUUOOOOOUUUUOOOOOAAAAA!”


The Guardian of Mortals had been feeling herself in a losing battle, straining against the disappearance of the Jack-O-Lantern like she was trying to hold back a tsunami with a screen door.

Radiance Dash panted, having protected Lea from another clone in the form of Count Dracolta, was noticeably paler, “W-what… was… that?”

The rush was powerful, as was the contrast from before. The same call that once signalled dread was descending upon the battlefield, and gave the opposite. The screen door now felt like a sea wall, concrete clad and reinforced.

Reinvigorated to keep fighting, for she knew the other side of the portal was fighting as hard as Ponyville was, Lea threw herself into the spell with everything she had.

“A witch’s karma,” She huffed with a smirk.


=======



The echo of the Oxygen Destroyer came barreling through a near all-consuming pyroclasm with one of her arms raised. Flying and sprinting through the onslaught of flames to grab her attacker by the non-existent face. Fire spewed out in divided jets directly from its origin point at Giranbo’s ‘eye’, but if it hurt the mutation she didn’t show it.

Instead she lashed out by diving into the ground while slamming her arm down. Flapping her wings and springing over the ground, Destroyah ground Giranbo into her own realm’s strata, digging a trench with her body and sending sparks flying. The earth and heavens thundered and quaked as she kept up the assault, even when Giranbo lashed out and gouged her arm blade into the gap between two exoskeletal plates at her foe’s stomach. Destroyah was quick to respond in kind by whirling her arm around while jumping up. In a titanic show of strength, Destroyah wrenched the only marginally lighter kaiju completely off the ground in a 360’ rotation.

Giranbo was smashed and thrown into the ground with so much force it caused the ground to explode on impact, sending dust and debris flying in every which direction. Credit where it’s due, despite sounding like a bunker buster had just gone off Giranbo was managing to rise after a hit like that. Like Destroyah intended to allow that, given the resounding thunder crack that sundered the air from her kicking the transformed witch in the face and starting to stomp on her. The taloned feet and spike studded legs found their use, sickly-colored blood identical in hue to those of the house staining the tips.

After several more stomps however, the next was interrupted by two strokes upon the mutation’s back forcing her to stumble. Two Giranbo duplicates went for blood, cackling maniacally and hurling themselves at Destroyah in a flurry of chops, punches, and stabs. Their combined mass and swarm of blows was enough to stagger the mutant crustacean enough to free up the real Giranbo.

She knew she wouldn’t have much time. One of the copies had already been grabbed by Destroyah’s tail pincer and was getting swung about like a ragdoll, bludgeoning its opposite number. Even at full power with more durable clones, they wouldn’t last long.

Thinking fast, the witch kaiju drew her handspike across the blade on her opposite arm, collecting up some of the blood still stuck to it from when she stabbed Destroyah’s side. Her eye flashed in tandem with the blood giving off a purple glow, the dark magic spell cast and binding to the ichors. Unflinchingly, she turned and stabbed the blood covered tip into her own leg and instantly felt the desired result.

She knew not of this kaiju in any detail, other than she was relatively modern. Nothing like her on Terra in the bygone days of the early civilizations or afterwards. The souls she’d collected in 1996 had only recently become ripe enough to her liking and she hadn’t bothered much with the spirits of the meddlesome adults who tried invading her realm, stale with age and cynicism. But there were other ways to find out information, find out weaknesses…

The manic witch started cackling at the obviousness of it all when memories of such agony and pain came forth. From man and from monster.



Destroyah shocked the first clone via conducting energy through her tail prongs, directly injecting micro-oxygen into her prey via the stingers. A magic user she most certainly was not, but she had figured out enough to know that most times when something looks and behaves a certain way, it reacts in the same way even if its origin makes no sense. And if it felt like flesh and hit like flesh, it reacted to being dissolved like flesh from the inside out. The clone writhed and shrieked, arms and limbs flailing before it was dissolved into dust and mist.

The second did manage to rake her claws across Destroyah’s face in a leaping lunge punch, followed up by a knee strike that knocked a few of the mutant’s teeth out or into her other jaw; but made the critical tactical error of staying too close to the mad Destroyah after making her so.

Bleeding across her face but too angry to feel it, Destroyah swung her head aside while her horn ignited even brighter than it ever had before. The arm came off after a burning streak chopped through the air where it had been, the severed limb crumbling to mist before it could hit the ground. She was keen to follow up, but her pace was slowed.

At first numb to all feelings of pain due to unbridled rage, even the fires of her indignation weren’t able to roar as strongly when she really did begin to go numb. Destroyah’s pace slowed, increasingly so by the moment as whiteness began to build up across her body. The Giranbo copy compensated for her shifted balance at the loss of an arm and went on the assault, bashing with her muscular legs and gouging with remaining spike-arm.

Destroyah staggered, more and more ice forming over her body and feeling the blows. Compound eyes determined to track movements even as frozen sleet threatened to form across them; the lack of eyelids meaning the frost couldn’t be blinked away. The attacking Giranbo crouched down and kicked off the ground with a momentous lunge, extending her arm while doing so.

Destroyah saw the point of the spike coming closer and closer, directly so, even through the blur of the sleet. But her timing was off and there was a sticky squishy that sounded out.

Her aim had been off, Giranbo’s hadn’t and she could barely see now.

The Giranbo copy struggled and flailed, stuck due to the three jagged claws jammed through her arm to halt it as the point of the spike flailed about mere meters from Destroyah’s eye. The mutation inwardly swore, wrenching the copy up and beating it into her spiny legs. She’d been going for its eye and missed, keeping her in the open longer. And it was getting extremely cold.

The actual Giranbo maintained the onslaught, holding her arms apart after casting the rune into the air to activate the spell. Between her arms she bore a portal to some unknown realm, featureless aside from an ever present, near polar storm that made the worst of the South Pole seem like Hawaii. The frozen gales came screaming in through the small dimensional tear, bearing a massive force of wind and frozen liquid much denser than water. And more density meant it tore away the heat much quicker, almost like some sort of freezing napalm.

The witch cackled, knowing and using one of two things this kaiju really didn’t take fancy too.

Her single eye flashed when Destroyah’s facial crests crackled and sparked with light, a highly energized micro-oxygen spray tearing free and ripping the ground apart while vaporizing it as it rocketed towards her. Giranbo crossed her arms and seemed to fold in upon herself like a closing book, winking out of existence to avoid the hit.

Destroyah hissed, wiping the ice off her face and starting to rise only to be hit with another frozen blast of air and frost. Then another, then another, and another.

A small circle of half a dozen Giranbos all maintained duplicates of the portal, all aligning the freezing-vulnerable mutation in their crossfire. There was so much cold in the realm now, everything was beginning to glaciate.



All except for a single item left behind by the collapsed house. One thing Giranbo didn’t reabsorb after stretching out part of her body into her domain to afford creature comforts. Because it was the one thing in the house not made of her, but made by her for her use. The white glow in the oven and the racket within had only increased with time. Something, or rather many things, wanted out. And a savvy trio of hooves all grabbed the oven door handle to yank it open.


Destroyah instantly knew something was up when even through the ice forming across her eyes, she could still see a truly massive flare of light had appeared on the scene in a wave. She’d been bracing, planning to throw out all her limbs and bust the ice enough to chance a risky gambit, especially in case the flash of light was from her foe. But instead she got the opposite implication when the Giranbo collective’s demented cackling turned into agonized shrieking.



Giranbo was stumbling and screaming, swatting at her body as if she was being covered in stinging ants. Small wisps of white zigzagged all over her form briefly as the shockwave of light crossed the whole of the visible dimension. The witches’ body crackled with unknown energy and sparked from multiple locations. The portals fizzled out, despite her and her copies’ obvious attempts to maintain or resummon them. But their attention was soon torn away when an audible shattering heralded shards of ice that went flying in all directions.

The first clone got an airborne tackle that resulted in Destroyah ramming her horn through its head, the second was stunned when the irate, frost covered mutant tore the still-intact first clone from her face and threw it into them. Both were engulfed in drowning gouts of micro-oxygen that left craters where they stood.

The remaining copies and original dropped foolhardy attempts at opening another portal, feeling something now blocking that type of magic, and lunged towards one another. Destroyah turned to face the oddity obscured by the haze and mists, flexing her wings to try and work more of the ice off of their surface.

Lacking the ability to summon up more freezing temperatures so readily, the witch opted to make due with what she had and go for a thermal shock that reopened past scars.

And Destroyah’s maw flew open in a shriek of pain when parts of her carapace split open and disintegrated from mass, sudden temperature shift when the orange and red spiraling beam of plasma slammed into her. She stumbled, on the backfoot already when another beam crashed into her chest and caused the floral pattern plates upon her sternum to all but explode. Sparks and smoke shot forth from both the front and back of her body, greenish ichors being gagged up.

Destroyah crumbled to a knee and her own grim reaper grabbed the mutant by the horn. The arm grasping it was attached to an upright saurian, dark black in hues with glowing patching of blazing orange across the chest, eyes, and dorsal spines. All the world seemed to go still as a mixture of Giranbo’s cackling and Burning Godzilla Senior’s bellowing roar cried out.

The full saurian, in full nuclear meltdown to the point trees were catching on fire just by being near him, snarled and lashed out. A broiling hot clawed hand was jammed into the opened chest wound deep enough to bury itself up to the elbow. Destroyah gagged and croaked, trying to rise only to be shoved over with her one-time killer falling atop her. Burning Godzilla bellowed, keeping the larger kaiju pinned and shoving her arm in deeper to rake his scorching hot claws through Destroyah’s internals. The echo of the Old King wasn’t content, lunging down the moment he spotted her horn starting to blaze to life. The facial bite into a point-blank spiral fire engulfed them both in smoke.

And when it cleared, Destroyah had fallen.

Giranbo-Godzilla grunted and scuffed, jamming their arm in again to see if it could gain a response…… Nothing.

Limbs spread and limp, numerous parts of her body smoking with large chunks of carapace and hide having literally exploded off due to drastic thermal shock, and the entirety of her horn blown off along with a majority of her face scorched to the point of barely being recognizable.

Her life had flashed before her eyes even before more of her face had been burned off. She remembered her first conscious memory.

The fish she ate.
First voyages onto land.
Then the first passerby who crossed her.
Being one of many, acting together and living together.
Then being together, actually being and thinking for the first time.
A battle against the first giant she ever met, and the retribution sought afterwards.
And the wrathful Old King she threw everything she had against, only to find fate choosing her to die….

If she didn’t remember all that came after, when the first born son of that king discovered her again years later and especially when one world became another; she might not have had the will to think of her grim reaper too deeply.


Only she had. And she remembered how his wrath felt, remembered and respected it.

And to remotely consider this comparable would be an insult to herself and the lineage of her compatriots.


Destroyah grabbed onto Burning Godzilla’s arm and lunged back up, shrugging off the blazing heat and throwing open her almost skeletal jaws to loose a gargling shriek. Giranbo tried to wrench her arm free, tried to teleport away, but it was to no avail with the death grip holding onto her hard enough to pop the joints and crush her elbow between Destroyah’s pincer-like arms. Now she was the one shrieking.

The Godzilla’s jaws threw open, intending the next faux-spiral fire to not skim across Destroyah’s face. But the effort was for naught, the pronged tip of Destroyah’s tail widened and snagging the saurian by the back of his neck before wrenching back. The beam of burning heat shot off into the empty void that made up the sky but soon that was the least of Giranbo’s problems given it wasn’t the only torrent of wrath soon firing upwards.

And unlike before, there was no magic or clone swapping to make her losing an arm the source of cracking any jokes. Destroyah grit her teeth, blind but able to feel how firing the wave motion cannon point blank with the arm jammed into her was tearing up her internals. There, however, a solution.

All this time, she’d been fighting without one of her best skills; both because of how it had backfired before and her fear of what it nearly cost her. What had changed was now confronted with her own past, the repentant demon felt the conviction she lacked before. If this worked, when this worked, it was to end this nightmare… for them.

Destroyah was engulfed in a cloud of mist and haze, causing the now one-armed Giranbo-Godzilla to stumble forward. No longer on their mounting, the copied saurian had to use their remaining arm to rise to push off the ground and get to their feet.

They bellowed, surveying the grounds for where the other kaiju had gone. Nothing. Just patches of scorched earth, burning trees with frost blasted ground, and the water that once was below the haunted mansion. They only noticed a uniqueness when burning eyes trained upon three small forms huddled together, but having the gall to stare back at the echo of the Old King.

Orange eyes narrowed in recognition and rage at the opened oven and the ensuing roar was obviously one of unabashed rage. Those three dared spoil her meal?! She’d make the next year’s dining slow for that!

Burning Godzilla stomped forward, rattling the earth with each step. Though even that could not account for the upheaval of ground and trees that burst out all around them, throwing massive amounts of dirt and debris into the air. Compound orange eyes somehow managed to glare back despite the lack of eyelids.

The orbs were mounted on a long neck with a flared head resembling a snouted horseshoe crab in shape, the body of which it was attached crawling forward on side sharp pointed, crustacean legs accented by a pair of arms sporting jagged pincers. On the hind end of the long body, which looked halfway between a reptile and an athropod, were another pair of extra long legs that arched over the body, tipped in multi-pronged spearpoints, along with a pronged tail swaying behind the form. The adolescent stage, an Aggregate Destroyah, barreled forward. Then another set of eyes glared out from the erupting ground. And another set. Then another set. Each as fearless in its advance as the last.





Two dozen Aggregate Destroyah, each 40 to 60 meters tall all came bursting out of the strata and charged their old foe like troops storming a beachhead.

Not one blemish in their movements, not one squabble between them. It was as it had been in their old life, but for a new purpose. One mind directing an army. Godzilla bellowed, blasting at the grounds before him with copied spiral fire that, while not as potent as the real thing, still packed more than enough punch to be menacing. One aggregate launched up and took the hit for its fellows, shielding them from the blast as three sprung into the air. Twisting and shifting mid-air, the trio metamorphed into beasts that looked markedly different even though they retained the same colored carapaces.

The three were flattened verticalled, losing most of their crawling legs save a few shifted backwards with paddled tips to act like air rudders. A set of large wings similar to a pterosaurs’, though still covered in a carapace, stuck out the sides with the tail lengthened for steering. The face now resembled the adult stage, though less matured and missing the tusks even as they bore small, curved horns. The trio of aerial forms weaved and nimbly soared through the air, accelerated by biological thrusters firing micro-oxygen bursts out of their wings and backs, forcing the Godzilla to pay focus to them after one slashed the saurian across the side with the spiny carapace covering the front of the wing and the two others criss-crossed it with micro-oxygen rays.

It gave covering fire for the Aggregate to swarm the Godzilla like a pride of lions dogpiling a buffalo. They clawed with their legs, slashed with their pincers, gnashed with extending secondary jaws that could punch through the hide. If one was grabbed by the one armed giant and thrown off or blown away by the searing heat, another would take its place as the injured party picked themselves back up and pounced back into the fray.

Giranbo shrugged and thrashed, trying to fight off the swarm in an increasingly desperate attempts. All the tricks were tried. Duplicates phased into existence and charged over, only to immediately get tackled and blasted by irate members of the swarm who saw the attack coming now that they, she, had eyes literally pointing everywhere. A ploy at crossing her arm over her chest and folding out of existence only went absolutely haywire due to the bodies still holding onto her and in many cases with jaws or claws buried within her flesh. Giranbo reappeared after the teleport attempt, unceremoniously crashing to the ground just a few hundred meters away with many Destroyah still mauling her and the others chasing after the fallen kaiju.

Her flesh started to contort, twisting and rending itself apart even more than her attackers could manage. Shocked by the salvo of magic, the otherwise stubborn Destroyah disengaged and jumped back to join their fellows. The aggregate lined up as the aerial forms circled above. Giranbo, shifting away from her Burning Godzilla state, swelled up inside like a balloon being filled.

150 meters tall… 200 meters tall… 300 meters tall… 400… 500… 600

The mountain of a monster, a seemingly impossibly huge giant of giants stood up at a full kilometer in height, dwarfing the gathered swarm that were individually less than a barely a twentieth her height. Giranbo stood up straight, her arm having returned in full as the titanic witch loomed above with confidence evident in her cackling.

Her shadow was cast upon all in sight, the light of her eye like a full moon, “Gahahahaha! Playtime is over, bitch!”

The Destroyah swarm bellowed and shrieked, backpedaling out of her shadow. It had become a reversal of fortune more intense then they could have ever foreseen. The group scrambled and scattered from a lurching stab by Giranbo’s spike hand seeking to impale them upon its tip, leaving the weapon to bury itself in the ground before them.

The lead aggregate cried out in both defiance and command as Giranbo swung down with one of her feet, punting one of the ground units away a considerable distance. The singular mind reacted, one of the aerial forms breaking off and flying towards the Crusaders’ location.

She tried, but she couldn’t win this; never able to foresee Giranbo had this sort of greatness in scale. If it meant the children would be safe, she’d have one part of her take them back through the portal and that consciousness of hers would live on with them. She’d try to mature as fast as she could again and by then, hopefully, Equestria could prepare for this titanic sorcesses’ return as no doubt after all that had happened; she’d want a score settled.

The rest... Would hold the line.

Defiant as she had ever been, the Aggregate charged and launched herself at the oncoming second foot that had intended to punt her as Giranbo had the other.Giranbo’s eye flashed in some unreadable emotion before contact was made with Destroyah.

And she flinched… Giranbo flinched and tried to brace before 15,000 tons of pouncing subadult Destroyah crashing into her leg made the witch stumble back like she’d been hit by a heavy blow.

The hot moment of realization hit the collective.

The wings earlier when Giranbo grew them. When she did so, she shifted in volume but her mass didn’t seem to change. In fact she seemed to almost shrink vertically. And when Giranbo’s backfoot stomped on the ground to regain her balance, it didn’t sound exceptionally louder than before. There was a reason fighting at her full size had been a last resort: it required all her available mass,leaving none to spare.

Shapeshifting meant volume changed, but mass… didn’t. Certainly better for reach and area of impact, but didn’t drastically increase power. Just like the disgusting transformations, fondness for assuming the look of horror icons, having an eerie setting, and taking on the image of her own killer; growing gargantuan as an intimidation display was just another trick to enact fear. In fact, the old her might have turned tail at the latter ploys.

And Destroyah at this point had become far too enraged to be afraid. Now it was Giranbo’s turn!

The two remaining aerial forms started to strafe and divebomb the living mountain, the third number turning about to rejoin them and give Giranbo an eyeful of dissolving micro-oxygen. The first Aggregate threw her head up and shrieked, snapping her secondary jaws and leading the swarm in what almost amounted to a cavalry charge. They threw themselves at Giranbo’s legs, hurling into it headfirst and using their flattened skull caps as battering rams to continue forcing her back. Giranbo flailed and fired her bursts of flame, far too many attackers swarming her to give them any focus and her spread-out mass meaning her blows were slower and less effective.

Her form contorted and tore itself apart, a dark red into black, spiny exoskeleton erupting from her limbs while dark wings burst from the giant’s back. Shrinking down to the still gargantuan height of 400 meters, the writhing mass making up Giranbo’s body morphed and tore free in one last ploy. The final form closely resembled Destroyah, but darkened as if by seeing her at night, features like the length of her fangs and claws exaggerated in length and more jagged. It was like how a mind full of fear might perceive her. Especially that of a child.

Destroyah’s mind slowed to the milliseconds as she bore witness to the scourge of twenty years prior; seeing a darker, twisted version of herself from dozens of angles and lines of sight. Was this how she had been before? Was this what she could have become had the Old King not stopped her? A more monstrous potential past or maybe this was a possibility for a future had a chance event not sent her to a chance location called Sweet Apple Acres?

A solitary, rabid, brutish, sadistic beast of Terra; roaring out onto a world they sought to kill….

The aggregate and aerial army all charged together in unison, converging together on stampeding feet and flapping wings. White mist clouded the terrain but her momentum never ceased.



“AAAAHHHRUUUOOOOOUUUUOOOOOAAAAA!”


Destroyah, legacy of Dr. Daisuke Serizawa, closest ally to Crystal Imperial Guardian Xenilla, pegasus resident of Sweet Apple Acres, Equestrian; was whom came rocketing out of the mist!

Fully formed back in her final stage, most wounds healed from dividing and recombining, Destroyah tackled the demonic copy of herself off the edge of the cliff and sent them hurtling into the waters below.

Giranbo shrieked and clawed at her attacker, trying to dislodge the smaller kaiju to no avail. Her maw and headcrests glowed with sparking lights. Her jaws split open unnaturally wide, the ghastly glow within of the deadlights and screaming nightmares mixing with copied, blue colored micro-oxygen. Destroyah seized her lower jaw and craned her head back with a powerful shove, exposing Giranbo’s shapeshifted throat and chomping down as hard as she could, like a tiger grasping a deer by the throat.

Giranbo thrashed and screamed, especially when Destroyah’s horn and headcrests lit up in tandem with her eyes and dissolving plasma bursts began to burrow into her through the bite wound. The larger, fake Destroyah’s body contorted and writhed, purple light eclipsing that which she held within. Purple rays of destruction came flying out of the vents located on the sides of her face as well as from her mouth and bursting out of her eyes.

They hit the waters below in a burst of mist amidst their titanic cannonball.



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



It all happened at once, in that mayhem addled span outside of Ponyville.

The attacking Giranbo clones all froze up, a menagerie of movie and mythological monsters all seemingly stuck in time. At the same moment all the children, whom were previously fighting tooth and hoof to bum rush the portal, attack Twilight or Lea, or assault those trying to restrain them to get free; all went slack. Their eyes closed and a tense moment passed before it became increasingly clear they weren’t about to resume their suicidal attack.

Big Mac panted, looking quite worse for the wear but relieved he didn’t have to buck yet another Dracolta trying to pounce on him. The woulda-be attacker seemed to shimmer in the air, like a paper picture being wiggled in the wind, before crumbling to dust and mist.

All the others began to follow suite, spurring the exhausted farm stallion to look to Twilight Sparkle.

“D-Did we jus’ win?”

The Princess, cautious about dropping the barrier blocking up the doorway, looked about. All around her, exhausted, battered ponies were picking themselves up after the prolonged melee; many a pony now casting worried gazes to the unresponsive but thankfully not berserk children.



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




The surface of the lake once again exploded with activity. Giranbo, back in her true form and 100 meter height, swung her sole remaining arm frantically through the air. She’d been blinded from a hole being blasted through her face. The witch was bleeding, battered, and most of all, something extremely befitting. The blight of a thousand worlds and murderer who’d relished the fear of millions, was utterly terrified.

And for good reason.

The mist surrounding her was omnipresent, coming from all regions but especially under the water. The raised hand seemed to droop and flop, the tip sagging and shrinking in the manner of melting ice. Massive bubbles surrounded her form and the usually cackling witch began shrieking louder and more frantic than she ever had before; desperately trying to make it to shore. But the bubbling only intensified.

Her shrieks began to carry pleads, promises that if she was spared, she'd send her victims home and return Destroyah to her home of Terra and never visit this world ever again. The bubbling didn't cease for a moment.

Micro-oxygen worked best in water, and hundreds of thousands of centimeters long Destroyah were doing a splendid job recreating the weapon that gave them life. Giranbo’s body sunk further and further as she kept losing mass, gagging both from the water drowning her body as well as her internals getting torn apart and dissolved. Her melting hand sinking beneath the dark waves. With not even a soul to her name, there was nothing left.

The bubbling continued for several more moments even after every visible trace was dissolved, Destroyah making absolutely sure not even one cell of the witch remained, taking absolutely no chances of her survival. The surface finally settled, all going quiet.

Giranbo, was finally gone for good….



The ground shook.

Apple Bloom and her company knew of their company’s arrival well before they could physically see her through the trees, the rumbling booms of her footsteps and snapping of foliage underfoot was clear indication even before the enormous shadow engulfed their position. The realm itself seemed to be darkening more and more over time, perhaps itself dying alongside the demise of its master. Which meant the only thing visible of the walking skyscraper outside of her outline was the cast glow from orange compound eyes.

The kaiju stood still as she loomed over the still shaking fillies. Her massive wings folded back behind herself, perhaps in some attempt to make her titanic form look marginally smaller, before Destroyah leaned down.

The difference in size was extremely stark, each of the three fillies not even half a meter in height apiece whereas the massive compound eye that lowered closer to their level was over four times that height. And that was not to speak of the several dozen recurved fangs, even the smallest of which dwarfed them and the largest wouldn’t fit through a double doorway.

A demonic-looking beast stalked her face closer to the three as mist seeped from the vents on the flanks of her crests, seemingly emotionless eyes not betraying what was crossing her mind. Destroyah, while holding herself up with an elbow braced against the ground, reached forward for a short time before stopping short of her taloned hand reaching them. She flinched and retracted the limb, closing her maw while doing so. It took the Crusaders noticing a slight quiver in her shoulders and a sort of unconscious tension at the kaiju’s shoulders for the realization to cross them; especially when Destroyah seemed to glance aside in a mannerism she’d only picked up on as a pony.

Anxiousness. Perhaps at worry over their well being and perhaps still at them seeing her like this, or what she’d done.

The Crusaders looked to one look at each other, looking between their respective two best friends. A nod was cast.

Destroyah’s eyes seemed to glow slightly brighter in reaction, some equivalent to them widening. With her attention taken away she hadn’t seen the Crusader’s charge forward, nor show how unafraid they were in their linking forelimbs together in a bid to reach around together and hold her muzzle. In practice, they only managed to hug a small portion of her lower jaw between several fangs. Apple Bloom’s tail wagged back and forth like a giddy puppy, Scootaloo rubbed her cheek into the armored chitin, and Sweetie Belle gave the craggy surface a peck with her lips. At that angle it was very hard for Destroyah to see or distinguish much of this, but she knew what it meant all the same.

Be it Equestria perhaps lacking the aversions to demonic-looking beasts as Terra did or the children being wise to this fright being one that meant them the opposite of harm, the acceptance could have made her weep.

Pulling her face back, and having to jiggle her jaw slightly or else the stubborn fillies would have held onto her, Destroyah moved her free arms to them and opened up her fingers. Helping one another to climb up onto her palm, the Crusaders sat comfortably and contently in where they felt completely safe; even 80 meters off the ground as Destroyah advanced on the distant portal. She was running low on energy and would likely change back soon, but was confident she could cut travel time down with some long strides and put them back down before it came the occasion to change back.

Besides, a small part of her wanted to smirk in mild pride at how much the children were gawking. If only she had lips…

The Crusaders had stars in their eyes, oohing and awing at being so high up, at the appearance of the one holding them, and at the abilities she’d demonstrated. It was a welcome distraction over what they had been through. Now was not the time for dread, but to celebrate.

"You were so cool!" Sweetie Belle shouted as loudly as she grinned at the kaiju, looking up and down at her spiny carapace.

"You showed that witch!" Apple Bloom cried, “You were like a’ whole army!”

"And next Nightmare Night, I'm going as the real you! You look so cool!" Scootaloo yelped as she stuck out her hoof, the two two happily bouncing in place with her.

“Oh oh! We can see about getting some rubber or foam to build a costume!” Apple Bloom giggled, “Plenty of that in some shops!”

Sweetie Belle squealed in giddy glee, “And we can paint it to look like her carapiece!”

“Carapace, Sweetie Belle,” Scootaloo deadpanned.

“Oh how would you know?” Sweetie Belle’s eyes narrowed.

“Aunt raised beetles,” Scootaloo stuck her tongue out at her compatriot.

“Ah hush up you two, we got work to do!” Apple PeaceMaker Bloom quipped as she took her friends by the shoulders, “Sides’, this sorta thing might be our calling!”

A look was exchanged and they all smirked, clasping their hooves together, “Cutiemark Crusaders Kaiju Costume Makers!”

The hand they were seated on vibrated briefly and the trio paused to look at their protection. Destroyah was casting her head aside again with her jaws hanging open, moving up and down slightly with a low, warbling sound seeping out despite her obviously trying to keep her jaw clenched.

She, Destroyah, was trying not to laugh; as much at the three’s antics as much as she was in relief. That last lingering doubt burned out like an ember. As close to a smile as her fanged visage could manage formed on her face. They'd seen her as she truly was, and they still loved her. As she had grown to love them.

They all joined in raucous laughter all the way back to the portal, dying down only when Destroyah lowered her hand to let the three hop off. She could feel the extra power ebbing away, would only take a minute or two now. Crouched down and pondering if firing off her abilities into the void might burn through the energy boost quicker, Destroyah’s attention was cut away when Scootaloo wrapped a hoof on her finger tip. The kaiju glanced at the pegasus filly, quickly picking up on both her companion’s clearly surprised expressions as Scootaloo pointed back. Destroyah followed her line of sight and carefully turned, looking back to where she'd ended the ancient nightmare once and for all to find something emerging from the lake…





Thousands, millions of glowing monsters, small monsters...that removed their masks to reveal little children, ethereal and see through. All shapes and sizes, from animals to humans, even machines. Some costumes were cutesy, some meant to evoke fear, or were what their culture found monstrous; but still innocent children all the same. Millions of little children rising from the witch's final resting place into the sky to look the towering figure in the eye.

The wind and glowing sparks of the graveyard flew over, like embers of a fire carried in a breeze, congealing into an army of soldiers, parents, and others who'd given their lives trying to save Giranbo's victims, two men and a woman in G-Force combat gear standing in the front of the separate crowd.

Without a word, Destroyah looked to the grave, then back to them, getting a nod. She gently nudged the Crusaders back with her hand before rising to her full height. Towering over all, in this crumbling world whose distances were fading to black, the kaiju pooled her energy within her chest. A purple brightness collected like condensing waves therein and after a moment or two more of amassing all the power she had left, Destroyah threw her face to the sky in an earth-shaking roar!

A massive, purple collection of plasma and micro-oxygen flew out and into the sky, arcing down in the manner of a mortar shell. It dove down and slammed into the bone yard, engulfing it all in a mushroom cloud that sparked with violet energies. That which was not blown to bits instantly was all but atomized by the dissolving properties of the Oxygen Destroyer shell. The graves, the bonds, finally destroyed.

Unbound, many of the adult phantoms surged forward to the other group as numerous souls of the children did likewise. They embraced, reunited at long last before their masses collected into a beautiful assortment of glowing wisps. The families and friends all trekked to the portal to journey to what existed beyond together.

The phantoms all spoke as they departed. While in countless different languages and manners, some without verbal words at all, the two words aimed at the fillies and kaiju intended all held the same meaning.

Thank you…

The three G-Force soldiers stood with the souls of children previously trapped in the oven; each of them holding at least one by a hand. The trio in front stood at attention and brought a hand to their foreheads in salute as the lost children’s spectres skipped towards the portal, waving as they went with teary, grateful smiles.

The meaning was clear from the souls of 1996 to the nightmare of 1995: All was forgiven. All is appreciated.

Several small dozen lights flew by the four heroes who had finally ended the nightmare, flying out the portal.


========


Twilight gasped as suddenly lights emerged from the portal, flying fast past her. For a moment she expected one final trick...only for the last light to stop in front of her and take a familiar form.

"...Twist?"

Twist's soul nodded, giving a snicker before zooming off into town, heading to Sugar Cube Corner where her body waited for her as Giranbo's other 'snacks' that night did the same.

The Princess of Friendship blinked… then smiled, realizing what this meant.

"...Destroyah did it..." she muttered in relief, sparking cheers and celebration as the children at the site came back to their senses.

Thunderlane burst into laughter as his previously crazed kid brother clung to his leg. Lily, who’d previously been ready to throw a party cannon at a group trying to restrain her, instead dropped it and ran up with her arms spread to embrace.

Cloudkicker hugged the restored Alula close and ruffled her little sister's mane. Such reactions were hardly unique at the moment.

Big Mac and Radiance merely sat, waiting for their charges to emerge safely with their savior. They had no doubt that was coming. Big Macintosh would certainly be asking AJ to make Destroyah a special apple pie and Radiance would be all too happy to assist in any dress the giant desired… if Rarity didn't beat her to it.

“Mommy!” Derpy Hooves sobbed and barely held herself together at the return of the voice, gasping when a returned-to-her-senses Dinky rushed out of a much relieved Zecora’s grasp to run to her.

The mailmare scooped up her daughter and kissed her, cradling her child close.

Twilight Sparkle and the faeries moved back to a clearly exhausted, but still-standing Lea.

“Let us help you with that,” Twilight whispered, her tone far more relaxed than it had ever been in the past hour.

“She did it,” The Shobijin spoke in unison as they landed atop their patron with faerie, lending their aid to help maintain the spell.

“They did it,” The Guardian of Mortals whispered, almost in disbelief.

Mothra Lea was beholden to it all. A nightmare had finally ended, and by whose hand but three little girls none would ever assume and a destructive gargantuan a whole world feared. All because they’d come here…

Twilight Sparkle felt a set of eyes upon her as she joined in on the spell, using what she knew of Terran magic to weave herself into it and take pressure off her friend. The alicorn glanced aside and beheld the most honest, joyous smile she’d ever seen.

“... Your world truly is a wonderful place, my little pony.”

Twilight Sparkle giggled and put a wing around Lea’s back.


========


Destroyah stood by and let the spirits depart in peace, watching them go with a smile even if naturally she should have been quite startled by the revelation such matters were real. It was just too pleasant to worry about that. She saw another child fly to that which came next for them in the beyond, when she locked upon recognition… Standing within the portal unmoving, was an entity from somewhere in the back of her mind. One who hadn't come from the gateway or from inside the witch. A distant haunting come to fruition.

Tiny compared to the giant, but instantly recognizable from the sea of other spirits despite no conscious memory recalling them. A humble human dressed in an old diving suit with a single circular visor. Unlike most of the spirits who looked pristine and clean after their liberation, this one looked old and haggard, like they'd been wandering for decades without end or rest. Hanging from their suit was the air tube, which quite plainly had been sliced at its end by a knife still held in a hand.

The diver dropped the knife, which seemed to instantly fade into nothingness, before reaching up to their head. The clasps to the helmet were popped free and the metallic shroud itself was slowly removed. As it was pulled away, the diver was revealed to be a Japanese man with short black hair, a skinny frame, a black patch over a right eye lost in a conflict he never agreed to.

Destroyah has never seen this man in her life, but it was as if she’d been seeing him following her every move for decades. Perhaps since she gained sapience in 1995, or even perhaps since a weapon was unleashed upon Tokyo Bay forty one years prior. But she knew who he was, as if a life was told her in an instant.

The oldest of two sons, a kindly elder brother whom grew a fascination with medicine after bandaging his sibling up after a bicycle crash. A talent he reluctantly took to the Pacific theater when he was drafted as a medic, seeing things he never wished upon any soul, not just done to his people but committed by his people. A shrapnel injury that cost him an eye and he was thought dead. It was only by a miracle an American soldier and later reporter, Steven Martin, found and rescued him. Martin later went on to become his best friend. But the night terrors he experienced past those days never left, even after the atomic bomb was dropped on his hometown of Hiroshima.

After the war, a family fortune was thrown into funding measures to mend any wound imaginable… Only for his medical breakthrough in compressed oxygen molecules to turn him into the next Oppenheimer, with something even deadlier than any atom bomb. It took a leviathan that was the A-Bomb incarnate bringing him back to a decade prior for him to finally leave his laboratory, the same day he burned it down to destroy his research. The same day he took his own life to keep his discovery of micro-oxygen and the resulting Oxygen Destroyer from ever living again…





And yet, he’d failed at that.

The man looked at his legacy, creator and creation finally meeting in conscious thought for the first and likely last time. A man who'd died to prevent his weapon from ever being used looking at the thing his weapon had birthed, the being by which his hated invention lived on through.

And for the first time since before the Second World War, he breathed like a mountain had been removed from his chest. The diver smiled honestly, a tear shed by his eye as he let his head rest. A small, proud, but peaceful smile as he gazed upon his creation with hidden joy. A shroud of nightmares and regret from decades past was finally cast off. The aged, grimy, and fraying diving suit that had been his coffin was replaced by a pristine lab coat and red cross clad upon his breast pocket. The eyepatch faded away, the scar hidden under it completely healed.

Dr. Daisuke Serizawa didn’t throw his hands up in mirth or cry out in joy. He didn’t need to, for such expression could never convey all of that which he felt. He merely let the tears flow, from both eyes now as he beamed and steeled himself. His expression was one of wonder.

He'd created the Oxygen Destroyer in hopes of making something to benefit the world. And after decades and thanks to three tiny fillies, he'd succeeded.

Destroyah was stunned for a moment...but returned the expression as best she could. She had never sought this man's approval, the three behind her were the only ones whose approval she’d ever desired or needed. But that didn't mean she couldn't enjoy it, nor ever knew how much she’d ever have treasured it.

Turning away, her creator, her father's ghost looked to a passing unaccompanied child. It seemed anyone whom might have awaited the youth's spectre hadn’t yet passed on. But that didn’t mean they’d travel alone. The little girl looked up as a kindly man knelt down before her, offering his hand. The ghost looked up and after some thought, took it. Serizawa chuckled quietly, looking aside and soon offering his hand to another lost one. Soon, he was shepherding all those without a guide, stepping to the portal with his hands full and another sitting upon his shoulders. The long-dead doctor finally departed into the light with good company, leaving behind his legacy and finally able to rest in peace.

As all the souls departed, a purple light lit up the area, the titanic giant shrinking back down to a still very large mare.

Not half a second after she’d shrunk down and the giantess of a mare was instantly tackled and hugged by three small, giggling fillies.

Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom both grabbed onto and were tangling off her forelimbs as Scootaloo held onto and climb atop the kaiju-pegasus’ head.

“Let’s go home,” Apple Bloom quipped, before smiling and rubbing her cheek against Destroyah’s muscular leg in an adoring sign of affection.

Sweetie Belle enjoyed swinging back and forth as Destroyah paced towards the portal, though did shoot a concerned glance at the decaying realm. Everything had gone into grayscale and seemed to be crumbling into nothingness far out and it was gradually, though slowly working its way closer.

“Yep, looks like this place is falling apart.”

"So the wicked witch really is gone for good?" Scootaloo asked now that Destroyah could finally speak back, climbing up between the mare’s ears and half buried in her shaggy mane.

Destroyah gave a nod, deciding, in a rare moment, to lighten the mood herself and quote a certain movie, even if her costume was long destroyed, "She's been terminated."

The Crusaders laughed while Destroyah merely gave a small smile. Much needed after this very aptly named Nightmare Night.

Looking up after a much needed bit of cathartic levity, it became clear the realm was slowly beginning to fade away like a nightmare with the dawn, its master now destroyed down to the atom.

"Come on, it's time to go…" the Serizawan Legacy said, standing and leading her charges towards the portal with the three still climbing over her and soon were seated upon her back at their usual post. The nightmare was finally over.

“Hey Miss Des,” Sweetie Belle whispered as the portal was a mere meter away.

Destroyah tilted head face back to them, “Hm?”

The unicorn filly tilted her head, clearly speaking for the three of them given Scootaloo and Apple Bloom’s similarly perked ears, “Who was that monkey you were staring at?”

Destroyah resisted the urge to laugh. She instead only snickered briefly before she looked ahead in contemplation, perhaps into the beyond, into a coil she knew not.

She chuckled, “I’ll tell you about him another night… Let’s go home, my little ponies.”

Serizawa did sound like a good surname, appealing even...

The three stepped through the portal, leaving the graveyard of dreams to return to little old Ponyville and a heroes' welcome. Something if you'd told Destroyah she'd ever receive even a year ago, she'd probably laugh in your face if she didn't tear it off.

Oh how things change...