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Downtown Manehattan, Mirror Universe Equestria
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Raiga, crackling with lightning from her form and walking with thunder in her step, charged and met Godzilla head on. Tackling him away from downtown Manehattan, the two kaiju tussled and rolled into the river amongst a barrage of blue plasma and bolts of gold lightning shooting into the sky. Managing to get on top of the wrestling, Raiga snarled and slashed at Godzilla’s torso with her long talons. While her handheld scythes did manage to cut through the dinosaur’s hide somewhat, the wounds were just as quick to mend as Godzilla was to launch a counterattack. Grabbing Raiga by her wrists after another slash, Godzilla threw his shoulders upwards, ripping Raiga off her pin and slamming her back-first into the ground above him. Just when she was getting up, Godzilla's tail ripped through the churned river water and smashed a dizzying tail smack into her face. Knocked senseless, she wasn’t able to rise up by the time Godzilla got to his feet and grabbed onto her tail. His claws digging into Raiga’s flippers, Godzilla repeatedly ripped her off the ground by her tail and then repeatedly slammed her back into it with ever increasing force. Shock waves courses through the ground and river water splashed out in all directions.
Having formed a crater on the river bottom by the fourth collision, Raiga regained enough wit to call down several thunder bolts upon being raised up. Electrifying herself, she managed to shock Godzilla enough times to get him to let go. Raiga landed on her feet and whirled around as her pearls glowed, firing a torrent of electrons out of her maw and blasting Godzilla in the forehead enough to stumble him. Still crackling with lightning, Raiga threw herself at her foe and slammed one electrified fist into Godzilla’s face and torso after another. Weaving like a boxer, she ducked under a tail-swing counter and landed several uppercuts into Godzilla’s torso. Unlike Agon however, Godzilla saw the strikes coming and was more than sturdy enough to brace. His reactions to the hits changed from staggers, to budging slightly, and soon enough the Tyrant King of the Monsters was barely even flinching from blows that would have knocked Agon silly. Stomping on Raiga’s toes before craning down and then slamming his head into her chin, Godzilla forced her back as his back spines ignited. Dropping his jaw into a roar that was soon chased by a beam of blue plasma, Godzilla blasted the stunned Guardian Beast off her feet and sent her flying several blocks backwards before crashing down into the debris. Digging her face out of the rubble after being sent hurtling through a warehouse, Raiga drew strength from her now glowing pearls, which arced electricity across her form. Stumbling to get her feet beneath her, she braced a palm on the ground and let loose a barrage of lightning from both her jaws and free hand’s palm. The stream of mana charged electricity smashed into Godzilla, burning away at his scales and scar tissue and forcing him to stagger briefly. Godzilla halted his advance as the golden electrons washed over him, groaning in strain, but soon managing to power through the onslaught and endure the attack.
His chest being burned and muscles twitching the shocks, Godzilla focused on something else. Training his eyes upwards to the above and past Raiga, Godzilla all but ignored her assault and leered at the distant lights of the still evacuating portions of Manehattan proper. For each light, there were easily a hundred ponies fleeing from the kaiju brawl a kilometer away; and there were easily dozens upon dozens of lights. He began to suck in his breath, the dinosaur’s back spines flashing with light before building to a steady glow. Red flashes of light shown through his scars and skin were the only forewarning of what was coming, an attack that could easily kill some lesser kaiju in one shot. Spiral fire. Raiga knew it more when she dove in front of it to intercept the beam heading for the fleeing crowds.
Though the burst was short, it was devastating. Raiga’s entire form was swallowed up by an explosion of sparks and smoke. When she fell out of it amongst her agonizing cries, her entire front half was covered in burns and melted scales. She tried to get back up, but with a hand braced to her chest and the other trying to support herself, she was clearly struggling. Godzilla treaded over to the fallen kaiju, nonchalantly kicking her in the face to roll her over. Raiga struggled and flailed to try and counter attack after he leaned down and bit down the back of her neck. Her groans turned to shrieks when he picked her up in his jaws, fangs punching through her scales and tossed her forward to send her crashing headfirst through several buildings. Rubble and torn concrete flew in all directions like a wave crashing on a rock. Through her pain and daze, Raiga opened her eyes and looked down at the street ahead of her snout. Much to her horror, she spied Starlight Glimmer standing besides some rubble with an absolutely horrified expression on her face and tears streaming down from her eyes. Raiga winced, blood trickling out from her jaws when she roared at the pony. Though she was no longer speaking a language the Equestrian could understand the intent was clear as polished crystal and as painful as impalement.
This foe was the strongest she'd ever face, too strong. Raiga wasn't going to win this fight.
-RUN!-
Electrifying her body, Raiga leaped off the ground and launched herself at Godzilla in a frenzy of last wind blows and lightning; determined till death to hold him off even if for just a little bit longer. Starlight Glimmer, with a bit of Raiga’s blood splashed onto her cheek, quivered and shook for a moment before doing as she was told. But as her mind raced, she remembered something Raiga said when they were on their makeshift raft after their escape. Rather than sprinting to the nearest shelter or evacuation point, she made a beeline for the source of Manehattan’s power.
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Manehattan Power Plant
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Lightning Dust’s evening had taken a complete 180’ from placid and smooth to crisis situation at the drop of a hat. The normally calm engineer was zipping around the plant at breakneck speed after ordering everyone out to join the evacuation, leaving her to reroute all the power to the evacuation effort. Granted, she was probably the best for the job after having gotten a commission from King Sombra to build this station in a model after the Cloudsdale weather factories; so she knew the layout like her own hoof. Didn’t stop her from panicking amongst her rushes from one side of the control room to the other, ponying the switches, levers, access, and wiring from one setting to another. Shutting off power to the useless areas like the downtown street lights, making sure the essentials like elevators, emergency lights, and alert sirens stayed on; and constantly juggling one current overload after another to avoid the risk of an overcharge that might fry the system. Being as tightly strung as she was, poor Lightning Dust shot up like a startled cat when Starlight Glimmer threw herself through the back door to bust into the plant.
“Wha- Starlight?! Why are you here?!”
Lightning Dust shouted after prying herself off the ceiling lamp she’d been clinging to. The desperation in Starlight Glimmer’s eyes was as obvious as the blood on her cheek.
“I need your help! Raiga needs our help!”
“Who’s Raig-!”
Lightning Dust was cut off by the building shaking hard enough to dislodge dust on the lights and ceiling. Both mares stole a glance to the outside, seeing Godzilla having just tossed the sparking Guardian Beast to the ground and started stomping on her. The malign monster’s roar rattled the window frames. That was all the motivation Starlight needed to teleport and levitate herself up to hover in front of Lightning Dust, grabbing her friend by the shoulders.
“She feeds off electricity to heal and use her powers, we gotta give her the power grid! Is it still working all full capacity?!”
“Y-Yes…!!”
Lightning Dust eased them back to the ground, rushing to the central control panel with Starlight alongside her. While she didn’t know who this ‘Raiga’ kaiju was, if she was fighting Godzilla that meant she was a better alternative running around than he was. And if there was anything the reserved pegasus was, it was empathetic. She could see the sheer distraught painted onto her friend and was quick to share it.
“Y-YES! I can do that! But what are you planning to do? Plug her into it?!”
“I need you to reroute all the power you can to one core cable, put it in the closest one to her.”
“I’ll try! But if we put them much power into one cable the insulation might fry off and we’d overload the whole current!”
Lightning Dust yelped as she stole a glance outside the window to check and see where the fight was going before looking back down to mash at the control to get the right set up. Across the city lights flickered off and on as power was rerouting to a single location.
“Whatever you’re planning on doing you gotta do it quick!”
"Will it work?!"
"I gotta re-balance the current flows so it doesn't short out in enroute!"
Starlight Glimmer’s eyes were transfixed on the quarreling kaiju. Raiga was still getting wailed on but was still defiantly fighting back against everything thrown at her. Grabbing onto Godzilla’s head as he hoisted her up, she called down at least a dozen thunder bolts into both herself and her foe. Godzilla roared in pain and annoyance even as Raiga tried to turn herself into a living taser. His body flashed with a red brilliance as he set to fire off a point blank nuclear pulse, a shockwave version of the spiral fire. Red light flashed across Starlight’s face, soon chased by Raiga’s screaming.
“HE’S KILLING HER! JUST DO IT!”
Starlight screamed through stressed tears before teleporting herself out of the power plant and following her line of sight. The system before Lightning Dust hummed to a deafening pitch, alarms and warning about a building overcharge filling the room. Much to her shock, she saw the brief flashes of light given off by Starlight’s teleports through the glass. The unicorn was moving block by block despite her exhaustion, and heading directly towards the kaiju.
Godzilla held up Raiga by her throat, still sending small shockwaves into her as the Guardian Beast weakly grabbed at his wrist to try and free herself. Grunting, he casually tossed her forward several hundred meters and into a strip mall. Rubble, smoke, and ash shot up into the air and clouded the scene. High above, the thunder clouds began to part ways, their intensity ebbing away. Raiga struggled up to her feet and rose up from the smoke and airborne debris. Coated in burns, bleeding from her mouth and nose, riddled in cuts and bruises, she sucked in a labored breath and took a step forward. Swallowing back her pain, she threw open her jaws in a defiant roar that carried across the night and echoed into itself.
Then her legs gave out from under her and she fell on her side, and didn’t get back up.
Starlight reappeared in front of the fallen kaiju’s muzzle, the weak trickle of hot breath coming from Raiga’s nose telling her the kaiju was still alive; but barely. Tears falling to the ground beneath her, she screamed to the biological mountain as she reared up and grabbed the Guardian Beast’s nostril.
“Raiga!”
A rolling thunder of a footstep shook the earth beneath her hooves. Starlight looked back to see Godzilla slowly approaching them from down the street, taking his time in doing so while still being brisk. Starlight looked back to Raiga’s closed eyes, batting at her nose and even resorting to shooting a weak magic bolt out of her horn at Raiga’s forehead, anything to try and rouse her consciousness.
“Raiga, you gotta wake up! He’s coming!”
She saw a brief flutter on Raiga’s eyelid and had to take that for what she could. Quickly spying the service hatch on the road with a lightning bolt symbol on it, Starlight Glimmer lit up her horn and shot a concentrated beam into the brick wall above the hatch. The street lamp near the hatch grew in brightness until the bulb shorted out, fracturing and frying itself.
-Lightning’s part is done.-
She looked back to Raiga and then back to the advancing Godzilla. She whispered to Raiga, not sure if the kaiju could hear her but not caring.
“I’ll distract him for a bit. Dig. Down.”
Starlight would have to hope it was all enough as she disappeared in a flash of turquoise light.
Godzilla halted his predatory approach when a bolt of magic harmlessly pinged off his eyeball.
“he-HEY YOU!”
Shifting his attention around to the source after a second hit, he soon spied the transgressor. Starlight Glimmer was a meek pony. She ran away from bullies, hated violence to the point of being terrified by it, and had just been put through more trauma in the last twelve hours than many ponies did in their lifetimes. She often wondered just what Chrysalis saw in her to make her the Duchess’ pupil. Little did she know, this was a reason why. As she stood upon a tall roof top shouting at one of the most dangerous monstrosities Equestria or Terra had ever seen, one she had no hope of hurting in their respective states but still drew his attention upon herself, she was showing exactly what her teacher saw in her. A powerful heart can breed powerful fears, but when it doesn’t let those fears control it, it can breed powerful courage.
Godzilla Junior leaned closer to the building roughly his height with a small snarl. Starlight Glimmer glared back at the sight of recurved fangs taller than she was, unmoving as the dusty, dank air blew into her.
“You wanted to stay like this forever right?! That’s what you had them working on! Well, according to Battra and Cadenza, you need my ability to enhance talents to do it! Can you guess what that means?!”
Godzilla’s snarl grew as he curled his lips back, starting to change his course and was now approaching Starlight.
“You want me?! Come and get me!”
Godzilla power walked to the building and took a grab at Starlight, the unicorn teleporting out of range at the last second. Hitting the street running, the unicorn bolted away from Raiga with Godzilla in tow with the two quickly playing a game of cat and mouse. Starlight sprinting, levitating, or teleporting out of the kaiju’s grasp as he plowed through street and building alike to get to her. The tyrant wasn’t in any rush, the predatory chase was entertaining for him. And as the increasingly short ranged teleports from Starlight proved each time Chrysalis’ chosen pupil slipped out of his grasp, Starlight couldn’t keep this up forever. She just hoped she could long enough for it to count.
Inside the head of a half dead kaiju, Raiga was in another time and another place. Near death experiences tended to bring up powerful memories, and this was her strongest. It was 70,000 years ago in the mid-Atlantic. A much younger Raiga knifed through the storming seas en-route to her destination, the voice of her creator, Anitun-Tabu, chiming into her head.
-”You are almost there young one, hurry!”-
-”I’m trying! A-Are you sure I can do this?”-
-” Mothra’s egg hasn’t hatched yet so this needs to be done by a Guardian Beast. Manjushri’s Anguirus has already been sealed away and Queen Baji’s Yonggary is too young to fight, you’re the only one who can contain the gyaos outbreak.”-
He creator’s confidence wasn’t infectious to the young Guardian Beast. Raiga knew of their mission and accepted it, to help the Mothra and Battra lines safeguard the world from Bagan when he returned in 100,000 years. She wasn’t expecting her first mission to be given to her when she was so, new. Anitun-Tabu had been informed of what was going on in Atlantis literally hours after she’d gifted Raiga with her lightning, and heard of how the Atlantean attempt at creating a Guardian Beast had horrifically backfired. And now the defective monstrosities, the gyaos, were running rampant and risked spreading across the world like a ravenous plague. Raiga agreed to go, but she knew full well that this wouldn’t be like her training. So much was riding on her and that certainly didn’t stop her from being anxious and unsure of herself.
-”Your swimming speed is decreasing, are you tired already?”-
-”No! Just-!”-
-”If those gyaos stop chewing on Atlantis and escape they could spread so far we’d never find them all! You have to get there now!”-
Raiga swallowed a gulp and pushed her flippers harder to increase her top speed. Soon enough she’d arrived at the floating city...at least, what was left of it. Atlantis had been one of the lucky cities. When Bagan, formerly Reijuu started his slaughter, he went after the cities with nexuses first to try and get rid of as much the Mana Stream, the very thing he created eons ago as Reijuu, as possible. Atlantis happened to be further out than the other cities at the time so Bagan went after most of the others instead. But based off the shape it was in now, Atlantis might have been better off had it shared Thule’s fate of being blown apart or glassed over like much of Asia had been. Gyaos of all sizes were flying about and filling the night with their shrieks. Every building from the central citadel to the dock houses to the golem statues had been utterly destroyed. Despite the deafening horde of gyaos, there wasn’t a single human voice nor scream in the entire city, and Raiga soon saw why when she spotted the only human she’d ever see on this mission. Two gyaos were fighting over a half eaten skeleton, one injuring the other and prompting the nearby monsters to gang up on it for more food to try and sate their hunger.
In their rush to make their guardian, Atlantis had created a species of mass producing kaiju that knew neither sentience nor a lasting end to their hunger due to an out of control metabolism. In the end, it literally came back to bite them and consumed every man, woman, and child in the now corpse of a city Raiga stood before. The young kaiju was shell shocked, her jaw quivering.
-”Raiga don’t focus on that! You have to end them now before they spread! Use the hurricane and fry the city!”-
-”But what if-!”-
-”You have to do it now Raiga!”-
Raiga raised her palms to the sky and caused an increase in the storm above’s intensity. Rain began to fall from the sky as thunder rolled. The gyaos, quick to pick up on the new scent, shrieked and screeched to one another. A wave of teeth, talons, wings, and screams surged out of Atlantis in a shadowy cloud. Raiga, struck by multiple lightning bolts who’s crash was muffled out by the enormity of the gyaos calls’ numbers, charged up her power until the glow from her pearls was blinding to the gyaos and forced them backwards away from the light. Hundreds of bolts surged into her as the Guardian Beast of Lightning held her arms out and formed a massive sphere of crackling energy whose color shifted from electron yellow to a blazen red. Raiga closed her eyes and roared before slamming the entirety of the condensed energy within herself and drove the storm into the surf and sent it flying into Atlantis. The floating city, a jewel of it’s age, was completely electrocuted and charred in a blinding flare…….
It was an hour later and Raiga was still floating in the surf outside of the city, still frozen in shellshock. Anitun-Tabu’s presence returned to her mind, able to see everything her creation could.
-”Raiga, you need to return to the Pacific. I used almost all my magic creating you, and my power is fading. We need to seal you in your chamber, for the future…”-
Raiga barely moved, instead shifting her eyes to what lay in the surf ahead of her. Atlantis, fried to a crisp and reeking of evaporated blood, was slowly falling apart and sinking to the depths. Her gaze trailed down to the debris scattered across the ocean’s surface, having been both flung out of the city before and after she’d burned it black. Amongst the curtains of ash and occasional bit of debris or gyaos body, there were a few things still in good shape. One of them that bumped past Raiga’s hand was a reminder that the mountains of ash before her was once populated. It was a tiny, primitive doll with an Atlantean necklace crystal around it. Raiga felt her face twitching.
-”I was too slow. I got scared and I was too slow…”-
Instead of her usual sharp tone or fickle nature, the ancient’s voice was noticeably quieter and calmer than before.
-”Raiga, we were so far away.”-
-”You told me I needed to swim faster!”-
-”It was, too late for them already. This isn’t your fault. Now please, you must come back to the isle... I’ll get your chamber ready.”-
Raiga turned and swam away as Atlantis’ remains sunk behind her. Neither she nor Anitun-Tabu could have known one gyaos broke away from the attack early and flew to parts unknown, where it laid an egg. Hundreds of years later that egg would hatch and that escapee’s offspring would lay several clutches across the world before the ice ages drove them into hibernation again. When Raiga first emerged in the modern era and found out what had survived, Anitun-Tabu’s words plagued her mind and hardened her. She was convinced there was something she could have done. If she’d swam faster, jumped into the fight quicker, was less worried for her own well being, any of those; maybe the end result would have been different. Raiga’s personality and confidence shifted and swelled, in an oath to never hesitate to enter the fray and never be passive in a conflict. Atlantis might not have been her fault, but to her, it was the start of her greatest mistake and her greatest drive.
It was then her mind and memory flashed back to more recent events, and a voice of the time soon entered her semi-conscious mind. It was Starlight Glimmer’s, heavily distorted and faded, but still audible.
“R-aai-a!”
“Rai-ga, wak-k-ke up!-”
Her consciousness, as it was pulled in by Starlight’s voice, flew back into real time.
“-he’s coming!”
Raiga snapped awake and flinched, her vision swaying and blurring before refocusing. The first thing she saw was burnt and cracked brick. At first looking just like scribbles, her the fuzziness in her eyes faded and she soon recognized it as a drawn symbol; the same star and swirl pattern Starlight had on her flank region. Below it was an arrow along with a crudely sketched thunderbolt. Dizzily raising her head up and looking down the street, Raiga quickly spotted Godzilla. He had his back to her, a small smile on his fanged maw as he pursued flashes of turquoise light Raiga’s memory recognized as Starlight’s magic color. But instead of just running away in a set direction to get away from the kaiju lumbering after her, Starlight, whom Raiga caught a glimpse of sprinting across a street, was just moving about at random. The Guardian Beast’s eyes widened a bit as the realization dawned on her.
-She’s trying to distract him! And the message!-
Looking back to the symbol and figuring it was Starlight who had left it for her, Raiga bit back her pain and shifted to sit up a bit. Seeing the arrow with a line under it pointing to the ground, she dug her claws into the pavement. Ripping up the concrete like tissue paper, she was surprised to find a hollowed walkway beneath the first three feet. Inside the walkway was a single, massive cable with a thunderbolt symbol on it. Even through the insulation, Raiga could quickly sense what was causing the two meter thick cable to overheat when she focused in on it. Electricity, an enormously absurd amount of electricity.
-Alright Starlight. You want round 2, I’ll give you round 2!-
Raiga grunted, pulling the cable out of the ground and biting into the thick power line. Surges of energy rushed into her like tides of adrenaline. Some of her more serious wounds began to mend themselves in seconds and her pearls glowed with an ever growing intensity. Lights across Manehattan flickered off and on before going in, a circle of darkness spreading out from Raiga’s location and spreading to others as she absorbed an entire city’s worth of power. The thunderstorms above returned in force, bolts of lightning raining down on the Guardian Beast and adding their own might. Flashes of Atlantis briefly flashed over the still form of Manehattan reflecting in Raiga’s eyes as she rose to her full height and glared at Godzilla, the monster king and the hordes of gyaos being interchangeable. Raiga balled a fist and dropped the cable, having drained it dry.
-Never. Again.-
Godzilla paused his pursuit of Starlight just after he seemed to have finally cornered the exhausted unicorn when the lights around him flickered off and on before going out. With the clouds above blotting out Luna’s moon, the only light soon came from the building brilliance behind him. He turned around and glared at the source and exchanged a leer with the risen Raiga as she stood between him and the rest of the city. Lightning striking around her, Raiga curled her lips and spat out some blood. She snarled as her pulsing pearls arced power across her, the glow intensifying as the bolts of electricity turned bright red. Runic marks began to appear across her body on her chest, arms, legs, back, face, and tail. Starlight wisely used her last teleport to get as far away as she could as Raiga sucked in a breath. Just as Godzilla was about to emit an earth trembling roar at his opposition, Raiga stomped her foot and roared to the heavens in a call that eclipsed his and was trailed by rolling thunder. A massive stream of lightning shot out of the roaring Guardian Beast, infecting the clouds and begetting a downpour of thunder bolts from the sky.
Raiga surged forward and stampeded down the mainstreet so fast her form was of blurs and light. A crackling punch to the jaw sent Godzilla sliding back several blocks. Literal aftershocks still sparking across his form, Godzilla grunted from the blow and retaliated; flashes of red and blue signalling an oncoming Spiral Fire. But even as he let loose the attack, the super charged and berserk Raiga kept closing the distance and charged right through it despite a direct hit. Though she suffered a nasty burn to her arm and chest, the constant waves of mana charged electricity deflected large portions of the beam away. Powering through the onslaught, Raiga slammed into Godzilla with an uproar of thunder and lightning. Her talons virtually glowing from the amount of energy coming off of them, Raiga raked her hands across Godzilla’s face and chest in a frenzy of swipes that cut and burned into his hide. Bloodied and burned, Godzilla lashed out at his attacker with multiple body blows and swipes backed by outbursts of red nuclear pulses. But even as the damage compiled and she was briefly knocked back, Raiga didn’t slow down in her assault. Roaring among thunder rolls, she charged right back into the fray with the two pearls on her palms brimming with light. The Guardian Beast weaved closer to Godzilla and loosed a barrage of electrically charged punches while lightning strikes to her fins amplified her strength. Uppercut, cross, weaving lunge, jab, uppercut to the sternum, each strike with a crack of thunder as it launched a surge of red across Godzilla’s body that shot out of his back as a bolt of lightning. After striking him half a dozen times with strength and thunderbolts, Raiga knocked Godzilla’s arms aside and grabbed onto his head. Sandwiching his head between the conductor pearls on her palms, she ran the entire current coursing through her body while calling down one massive bolt after another from the sky above. Eyes whited out from the shocks and sparking from every point on his body, Godzilla shrieked in pain. For the first time in this battle the tide had completely turned, Raiga was the one inflicting the heavy damage.
Still stubborn as always however, a nuclear shock wave from Godzilla caused the lightning to bend around him and his pulse forced Raiga to let go of him. Didn’t stop her from tossing him a good five blocks to make him crash headfirst into the edge of the now ravaged downtown district. Bruised, burnt, bleeding, and smoking, Godzilla nevertheless rose back up to his feet. Spines and eyes burning with a searing light. Raiga did not return Godzilla’s threatening roars, instead she closed her eyes and focused. She put her arms up in the same manner of which she begot the death blow to Agon. Energy channeled across her entire form and concentrated in her palms and throat. Raiga caught hold of her pulse as time slowed to a crawl and blackness surrounded her.
-I am quintessence, an element of life. I am Raiga, the thunder fang created by the storm matron.-
The glowing red runes stretched across her body grew in intensity as the pearls on Raiga’s cheeks and palms became blindingly bright. Godzilla snarled and sneered, the sheer temperature and burning lights within him starting to make the keloid on his chest smoke. He slammed his tail into the ground and opened his jaws to exhaust the massive energy build up. The spiral fire he let loose was the strongest he’d ever used in a long time, wide enough to span the entirety of the street. The spiralling death, twice as strong as the blow that nearly killed her, barreled towards the Guardian Beast.
-I am the second Guardian Beast, meant to safeguard the world and stop destruction!-
Her eyes, glowing spheres of red lightning snapped open. With a roar, Raiga released everything she had in a massive beam of ruby hued light and quintessence spewing out of her jaws and hands. The spiral fire and crimson lightning smashed into each other with a blastwave that burned the pavement and ruins below and around the epicenter of the beam duel black. For a time, the struggle seemed even. But then, the deathly flames from Godzilla began to swirl around and inch back the ball of white energy forming where the two beams collided. Raiga held her stance taught, even as her feet dug into and slid back into the pavement behind her. With one last affirmation, she threw all sense of safety away.
-And I will not fail again!-
Thunder cracked and lightning flashed. A surge of power brought out by sheer force of will flooded into Raiga’s beam and reflected away the progression of the struggle. With her own body smoking and her pearls cracking from the stream, Raiga gave the assault one final effort. Shoving the duel back into Godzilla, the sphere of white at the epicenter of the struggle expanded to many times its size before the resulting explosion engulfed both the kaiju in whiteness.
Several minutes later, at a giant, five hundred meter wide crater that used to be the outer edge of downtown Manehattan, a flash of turquoise heralded Starlight Glimmer’s arrival. She’d managed to avoid most of the fighting by ducking into a storm drain, but nevertheless was scuffed up in several places in addition to being drenched in the rain. There was no sign of the kaiju, and that is exactly why she was here. Sweeping a beam of light from her horn to and fro like a flashlight, she soon spied a pile of rubble with a familiar flipper sticking out of it. Gasping sharply, she sprinted across the uneven terrain and started shoving the broken pieces of pavement and tile aside. Raiga, back in her siren form, lay unconscious in the crater as the rain fell down and washed some of the dust off her. A quick check of her neck confirmed a pulse, but it was immediately evident she’d burnt herself out. Aside from the numerous bruises, cuts, and burns across her body, every single one of the pearls mounted across her body were cracked and chipped. Touching one of the pearls on Raiga’s cheek, Starlight yelped and jumped back from the brief shock. Nevertheless, she was so focused on the fallen siren she didn’t hear something else stirring behind her. On the far side of the crater that bled into the river, the waters began to surge back in as rows of cracked, sparking spines broke the surface. Thousands of tons worth of foot stomped into the river bottom beneath it and shook the earth. Slowly rising up from the murky water and pulling his front half out of the rubble, Godzilla staggered back to his feet and rose up into the storm.
If Raiga and Starlight looked bad, he looked easily twice as worse. Several of his dorsal spines have been blown off and a good half his body was covered in burns that were still smoking. One of his arms was obviously dislocated at the shoulder and broken at the elbow judging from the limp hang and odd bend. One of his eyes had been sealed shut from swelling and burns, blood trickling out of his jaws from multiple missing and burned teeth. Red electricity still crackled across the battered kaiju’s form, causing him to wince and twitch every so often. Had Raiga had a longer charge, she might have actually killed him. And yet, he was still standing. And with his remaining eye, glaring at Starlight Glimmer and Raiga.
Godzilla started to limp towards the two, obviously favoring one leg but still advancing through what must have been a blitz of pain. Starlight Glimmer whirled around and faced the kaiju, quivering on her knees as tears trickled down from her face amongst the raindrops. Godzilla grunted and hissed when one step turned into a stumble and he fell to his knee. Bracing his hand on the ground, the dinosaur lifted his head back up and shot a look of pure malice with his good eye. Letting a roar escape out of bleeding jaws, Godzilla’s back spines and throat began to flash with a weak blue light. Starlight grabbed the unconscious siren and tried to drag her free of the rubble.
“Raiga! RAIGA! Please I can’t-!”
She choked, not having the strength to lift the siren and carry her despite her trying. She tried to grab hold of the still kaiju as thunder cracked above them, squeezing her eyes shut through the watery blur and trying to think of somewhere, anywhere close she could teleport them to. But each time she tried to jump, her magic just fizzled out before it could leave her horn. The strain of the night had caught up to her and teleportation was too taxing on her horn. Starlight opened her eyes and looked to Godzilla, the blue glow in the kaiju’s throat only growing with intensity.
She was stuck. She couldn’t leave somepony to die, she couldn’t carry them, and she couldn’t use her magic to get them to safety with as burnt out as she was. She couldn't save herself nor Raiga from what was coming.
-Sorry Duchess, I guess I wasn't cut out for alicorn material after all...-
Starlight puzzled as she saw her death approaching when flickers of plasma embers billowed out of Godzilla’s jaws and heralded the beam. She cradled Raiga’s head close to her chest.
-At least we bought everypony time Raiga.-
She lowered her brow and closed her eyes, igniting her horn in one last act of defiant courage against the monstrosity; putting up a magical shield around herself and Raiga as Godzilla’s beam flew forward. It stood no chance, a barrier from a single tired unicorn, at stopping the beam but the show of force was the more important factor. If Starlight thought she was going to die, she wasn't going to die afraid. Little did young Glimmer suspect, she’d succeeded in every regard. The two heroines of Manehattan had bought time for the evacuation to pull most of the city back, and enough time for someone else to arrive.
In a blinding flash of lightning, everything in the crater changed. Two crystals shot out of the sky and impaled the ground on either side of Starlight and Raiga, erecting a barrier magnitudes more powerful than the weakened unicorn’s. The shield blocked Godzilla’s ray, dissipating itself and the attack a moment before an enormous shape flew across the city and tackled Godzilla back into the river and landed on top of him.
The rush of wind briefly stunted Starlight Glimmer’s hearing as it blew debris around in all directions, but a familiar warmth of a benign magic soon wrapped around her form and caught her. The emerald green glow gently lifted her and Raiga up and set them down in the palm of a bus sized hand. Starlight had barely been let down on the red chitin of a kaiju's arm when Duchess Chrysalis, not letting any fatigue of charging two kaiju slow her down, sprinted from Dame Destroyah’s shoulder to her arm and grabbed her student in a frightened hug. Looking past Chrysalis’ hooves and chest, Starlight spotted Sir Xenilla rising from the surf and lifting up Godzilla with his hand on the tyrant’s throat. Godzilla and Xenilla growled, snorted, and hissed to one another; conversing between actions. Godzilla grabbed hold of Xenilla's hand, far too weakened by Raiga to fight back as he spat.
“Was wondering how long I’d have to roam about to get your attention brother.”
Xenilla snarled, tightening his hold on Godzilla’s neck and tossing his self proclaimed sibling to the ground. The savior of Canterlot only spoke in a barely contained fury as he stomped towards Godzilla.
“Gaira, Megaguirus, Obsidious, Zedus, Dr. Orga, Orka, Krystalak, Varan, Dr. Katagiri,-”
He kicked Godzilla in the snout, rolling him over and punctuating the rest of his list with a stomp to the tyrant’s chest.
“-Biollante, Zigra, Guiron, Dagahra, Pulgasari, the whole of Sydney, Boston, and Tokyo!”
He stomped on Godzilla’s chest hard enough to break every rib in it. But even as he spat up blood, Godzilla wouldn’t scream or do anything other than crack a bloodied smirk.
“Trip-”
He coughed up several dozen gallons of redness from his throat as Xenilla hoisted him up with telekinesis.
“-down mem-ory lane brother?"
“All the souls I’ve murdered, for letting the child that grew into you live.”
"You haven’t even gotten to my fav-rites yet! What was that red saurian’s name again? The tall one with the flippers, you liked that one. N-ame escapes me though.”
That hit a nerve. Xenilla’s breathing quickened and he roared, his eyes and spines ignited with red light. He snapped forward and grabbed Godzilla, shocking him with a fully charged nuclear pulse that sent the saurian flying back several hundred meters from the shockwave alone. He hit the ground with an earthquake, but wasn’t the only tremor ripping into the ground. The shriek Xenilla emitted before pounding the earth with his charging footsteps was more than enough of a sign for Destroyah to stay back. This was a personal affair and Xenilla was about to finish what Raiga started. Xenilla kicked Godzilla to roll him over, the crystalline kaiju growling, dorsal spines were soon brimming with light that bled onto Godzilla’s face like the raindrops from above.
“No. More...”
Xenilla smashed a nuclear pulse charged tail slam into Godzilla, hitting him hard enough to expend the last of the energy charge Cadenza’s crystal had given him. A beaten, battered, monster of a unicorn lay in a crater of rubble as Xenilla loomed over him. Despite how much pain he was in and seeing his own doom forming in front of him, Godzilla only grunted a broken, bellowing chuckle once the light of Xenilla’s charging corona beam flooded the space around him.
“To y-ou, sparing me it was the greatest mistake you ever made. But I’m afraid, i-t won’t be the last one you make.”
A flicker of light crossed over from Godzilla’s body, slithering across his body like cracks spreading across glass. The second part of the charge crystal Cadenza made was beginning to kick in, locking onto the alicorn’s magic signature far away. Not realizing what was going on, Xenilla fired his beam.
“You’re not wa-king up from this nightmare bro-ther, not just yet. Hehe, I’ll give Cadenza your regards….”
Godzilla vanished from the spot he lay in, the encapsulated teleportation spell warping him to the distant alicorn’s location. Xenilla’s beam bored into the earth below for several long seconds before he cut it off. Instantly reaching out across space, he sensed his species. One, an adult female, lay not far away in Destroyah arms. The other, another adult male, Godzilla, briefly appeared dozens of kilometers away to the north before vanishing under another of Cadenza’s cloaking spells. He’d gotten away.
Xenilla’s face contorted and twitched, his body temperature spiking so high the raindrops around him were evaporating before they could even get close. The last thing Starlight Glimmer saw before passing out from exhaustion was Xenilla stomping a thundering footfall into the ground before throwing his head up and uttering a mix of a roar and scream, firing an enormous stream of plasma into the night sky.