The Bridge: A Godzilla-MLP Crossover

by Tarbtano

Chapter 53: Rebirth

The storm sirens were still blaring.

After seeing what they had across town, it was the closest thing the city of Canterlot had to sound the alarm. And when a multi-story tall monster taller than any building in town roars out something that sounded an awful lot like “GO AWAY”, pretty much everybody had unanimously decided “OKAY!” and started high-tailing it out with the type of evacuation usually reserved for particularly bad storms. The retreat was reasonably orderly, much as one could hope such to be. Thankfully cooler heads and survival instincts motivated the pull-back from the city even after the giant monster disappeared as abruptly as it had appeared. Sheer presence coupled with the unusually cold weather and coming stormfront was more than enough motive to get out of the way until a semblance of normality could be maintained.

For a green-hued, dark-haired young man by the name of Warhawk, it was a strange sense of deja vu. Big monster aside, this was beginning to remind him of his youth. He’d lived out of town at the time, technically not even in Canterlot proper even if it was a similar area code and that’s what the mailing address said. When that big blizzard billowed through, freezing over much of Canterlot, his family and neighbors had put up lodging for those fleeing the worst of the storm with nowhere else to go.

That sense of odd remembrance only got stronger as he inched his car along on the packed, but still mobile street. He’d been the last one in the line and he might not have noticed otherwise. Eyes widened in recognition at what he was looking at slumped on the ground on the edge of an alleyway. Jamming the brakes on the car, he opened his door and almost jolted out of his skin at feeling just how frigid the air was even with minimal snow. With a Southern wind howling, it was like having the heat torn from his skin.

Still, selfless goodness was not easily snuffed out. And not just for him. Shaking off the shock after a moment to collect himself, the Good Samaritan scrambled out and flagged down a traffic cop directing evacuation efforts. The unconscious was gently picked up and carried out of the cold air. Thankfully the car in front of Warhawk also stopped. It was a large, white delivery truck with a cake symbol.

A tall, orange-haired man in a woolen jacket scrambled out waving his arms at Warhawk and the traffic officer, “Hey hey! Bring her here!”

As he rushed over to help carry the unconscious rescued, opening the back of the van to welcome them, the passenger side door nudged open to a similarly covered up blue-skinned woman hastily carrying a large number of extra covers and blankets.

“Oh! Oh the poor dear! They must be ice-cold! We’ll get her warmed up soon as can-be!” Mrs. Cake cooed as the motionless was loaded into the van.

“I’ll check and make sure no one else was with her, can you all handle her?” Officer Sentry grunted with a nod back towards the alley.

“Y-Yeah we got this!” Warhawk assured whilst helping Mr. Cake get the still form’s legs over the edge of the door to get them inside.

Human goodness, on full display for a complete stranger even with the wisps of southern winds gnawing at any warmth. The onlooker, hidden from sight as Officer Sentry ran right past them without seeing their form, watched on even as the Cake delivery van door closed. The interior had ample space for another to be swaddled with blankets and secured. In the panic to save someone they thought lost and possibly freezing to death, nobody thought to wonder why her footprints in the snow were leading away from the evacuating caravan before Wallflower Blush had collapsed.

The observer saw all of this. They'd taken note of it even before emerging here. Unseen, they turned and walked off into the snowstorm, not leaving a single track or sight. Stepping right into the snowstorm, they only paused when a pair of eyes beyond the norm were set upon their unseen form.

The pause was prolonged, communicative to a presence unknown to most. The western wind howled and billowed down the roads, but stopped the moment it touched the traveler. There was no contest between them. A howling wind bouncing off a standing mountain. Zephyrus stayed in the shadows and leered. They'd hope to bear witness to what was planned for Notus' spawn. But this... This presence was one they'd felt before. And it was... unnerving.

It was an exceeding rare event that Zephyrus felt fear rather than create it, and not before from something other than Harmony. The shadowed windigo slipped away and retreated, heeding the cue given by a rise of southerly and northerly winds billowing back and forth from the direction of Camp Everfree, and following them.

Alone again, the deity ignored the demon's departure and continued on, heading right for where the kaiju had emerged and disappeared, heedless of anything else.

=================
Camp Everfree
=================

Hideous, monstrous, and just ‘wrong’. That is what Australis could be described as, like a wretched, gag inducing odor set to all of the senses; those palpable like sight or otherwise. As if the very soul and mind were perceiving that wrongness and wanting to recoil away. It was hard to really look upon Australis in full, given the spirals of frost and billowing wind whipping around her that obscured vision, and the constant gout of dark magic-laden mist mixed therein. Aside from two arms, two legs, and a head; that was just about the only thing remotely humanoid about the panting, croaking monster which was lacking in any fleshy attributes. And yet, even with no outward resemblance to speak of and no way to fully look upon her, Pinkie Pie, Gloriosa, and Megalon wasted no time rushing to the monstrosity who occupied their compatriot’s soul as Lea put her back to Australis to keep a heading on Boreas.

“Sonata!” Gloriosa cried out as she yanked off her jacket, one of Adagio’s spares, to try and offer up the heaving Australis something to cover up with.

A torrent of southern gales ripped past Australis and slammed into the group, the largest of them letting Gloriosa and Pinkie hold onto him as he fought to keep his footing.

“Nata! Nata! It’s us!” Megalon yelped whilst braving the winds to take a few steps forward.

Through the winds and mists, a single eye aligned was at last visible and snapped into focus. A purest black, a dark void weeping tarry ichors that dribbled past frostbitten lips, jagged, frozen fangs and over an icy collar chaining the neck. They were situated behind what revealed itself to be a sort of mask in the shape of a pronghorn skull, or rather such a shape forcefully crammed onto her face. Asymmetrical ice composed the skull, which fused and stitched into what remained of her skin when the two touched; as well as completely freezing over her left eye. What remained of her ears were frostbitten and frosted over, plates and spurs of ice somewhat resembling fins and giving her face, with its distended mandible and oversized fangs crammed and ingrown into her lipless jaws, a vaguely anglerfish-like appearance. Ragged, wisps of paled hair, covered in lines of ice and frost, dangled from beside her face like icicles.

Pinkie Pie cried out over the storm, trying to look her friend dead in the eye while tears wept from her own, “Nata! Nata I know you’re scared but you gotta listen! Let us help you!”

She pushed past Megalon, arms covering her face to shield her from the winds and southern gales, frost gnawing at her skin as she took a step forward towards the abomination to all senses. Around Gloriosa’s neck, the final crystal she bore, the blue element, started to flicker.

“Come-on girl, I need you to smile and fight it!” Pinkie Pie braved to do one herself, even at a face with no lips.

Several meters away, the snowstorm slowed enough to make all of Australis visible. With less wind and snow billowing, it became clear how ragged and grotesque the transformed siren looked. The frozen pieces of her body weren’t just ice, the same tarry ichor dripping from her crying eye was intermixed without the frost alongside obvious traces of blood. Her skin, where it was visible, was pasty and dead in appearance, sometimes blackened and gangrenous. It was less the ice had formed over her body and more it had come ripping out from it unevenly.

Jagged, icy antlers erupted in differing angles and sizes to crown the head. Glimmering frost seemed to gush forth from the place where Sonata’s scar once was, now an empty void one couldn’t look upon without feeling their mind begin to spasm at trying to perceive that cavity’s depth. One arm was twisted, stretched, and broken in a way sure to have dislocated the shoulder and elbow from their sockets; covered in a gout of ice that approximated a partway combination of a bludgeon and set of talons. The left arm was emaciated and covered chiefly in frostbitten, bruised and deathly pale skin, shards of ice erupting from some of the surface and encasing half the hand. Her right leg mirrored her right arm, face for several icey spurs jutting through her knee and lower leg; which arched around and reconnected back into the flesh. Her foot was entirely composed of frozen tissue and ice, roughly approximating a cloven hoof. Her left leg, by comparison, was entirely frozen inside and out, bent and broken into a digitigrade shape resembling a pronghorn’s limb. She bore no clothes, adding to her decrepit, pathetic and emaciated state. Mist seeped from her face and scalp, with jagged icicles crowning her hips and pushing through the skin of her rips to create the visage of a gaping, ever hungry maw on her starved looking belly.

The unholy looking thing snapped its head up at Pinkie Pie, eyes darting to her and the Element of Laughter around Gloriosa’s neck. Australis bristled like a wild animal, shoulders raising and body shifting. Icy strands growing between her body parts and across her skin constantly snapped and crackled as they shattered and refroze continually with every movement. Each motion engendered the sound of breaking glass, coupled with the sickening, wet pop of her limbs plopping in and out of their sockets. She looked simultaneously agonized, terrified, crazed, and enraged. Tarry viscous fluid drooled from her irregular fangs.

Boreas only applauded, thrilled, “Ha! She’s nothing but the darkest of emotions and experiences now, just like her old man! If she surpasses him, she’ll be free of any impurities forever. Don’t you see, she can’t feel the shackling restraints of love and friendship anymore!”

All of the negativity, strife, and terror was constantly both billowing out of and rushing into Australis, who both engendered such feelings in others and consumed them herself in a horrifically vicious cycle.

“Nata…” Pinkie Pie whimpered, reaching out her hand to the monstrosity who looked at it like a threat.

A single, crazed eye surrounded by a black void darted back to the Element, perceiving it and Pinkie Pie differently than anything else around her. She shrank back… And then her eye locked upon Boreas, and the elder windigo grinned. Australis heaved and held her breath in, before it came exploding out in a shriek that seemed to shatter every single window for miles. Everyone standing up was floored by the torrent of southern winds slamming into them like a freight train. Trees were snapped and cabins shuddered and cracked.

Boreas continued to stand, unnaturally held up by his own magic and X’s powerful body and gravity abilities. He applaud even as Australis came exploding out from the blizzard, contrails of mists clinging to and emanating from her body as she rushed at him. The newest windigo contorted, with her larger arm cocked back and swung forward to disembowel. What remained of the Mess Hall all but exploded as Boreas dodged back and let his niece hit it so hard that shrapnel was sent flying into the lake.

Australis shrieked incoherently, sounding all the more like a galeforce of a storm than an actual cry, as she ripped her way through the shattered remains of logs and timbers to get to Boreas. The elder windigo, for his part, was having the time of his life judging from the expression on his grinning face.

“AAHAA! HAAA! You’re already an upgrade compared to your old man! Hunt-obsessed dullard never was much for conversation!” He dodged with a backstep, only for Australis to grab onto his face with her larger, ice-covered arm and smashed it into the ground repeatedly.

With each punctuated pounding, Boreas never stopped laughing as a golden glow came across his eyes. A momentary flash of lights flooded the dimming skies and Australis was wrenched off her feet in a recoil that traveled up her arm like a shockwave, cracking and splitting some of the icy formations and shearing tissue. It was telling how little it actually slowed the South Windigo down given her lack of response to Boreas followed up by grabbing onto her fused fingers clasping his head and snapping them back to get free. A nimble rotation brought the back of his heel into her hip in an axe kick, putting her into a stagger and letting Boreas slip away a short distance.

Australis was on him yet again soon after however, and she promptly grabbed her uncle by the arms and swung the formation of ice that had grown around her leg as hard as she could. The icy growths exploded at the rising kick, sending shards and black ichor everywhere from Australis punting Boreas in the crotch as hard as she could. Boreas' eyes bulged and he pitifully exhaled, shot back like a cannon and sent flying through another cabin hard enough he took out the wall on his exit.

After a hit like that, it was frankly disturbing how Boreas got back up, like the pain didn't even register. Considering how Australis was still up and moving despite multiple broken or dislocated limbs, it was likely the windigos didn't feel much of anything even if the damage did happen.

“Ah! That one hurt!” Boreas grinned and pointed to his face, blast marks blackening parts of his now frostbitten face due to firing the graviton flares from his eyes point-blank, and he was missing a tooth with blood trickling from the empty socket. He wore the injury like a badge of pride and clapped excitedly, as if enacting the part of a jovial uncle playing with his dear niece.

After all, he was giving her a gift in all of the dark magic that was being siphoned into the gaping cavity in her chest where her crystalline siren heart once was. Australis wailed, contorting and convulsing, the ice across her form creating a cacophony of horrid breaking. Boreas, for his part, was using his own northern winds to redirect and push this gift to his niece, who’d already surpassed his brother and was showing no signs of slowing down.

“SONATA!” Pinkie Pie cried out, eyes glazed with freezing tears as the harsh gales of the southern winds were managing to pierce into each the bubble of benign magic that was surrounding her and dampening their effect.

They tried to get closer to her, but not even pushing together could Pinkie, Megalon, and Gloriosa fully brave the storm. Boreas cackled and keened over the blizzard… Until everything suddenly went quiet.

“Ah?! What gives?!” He snapped and snarled, a golden bubble of energy having encircled him after appearing forth from a runic mark on the ground. One of a cross with emanating waves of energy vaguely resembling butterfly wings.

Windigo magic had very few counters. It could bite right through the toughest armor, freeze the veins of the most courageous, and spread across whole cities as easily as it could to an individual. Dark magic of that breed had only one thing that could outright destroy it. But even that meant there were some special clauses.

Like magic completely out of context for anything that had ever been present in any realm of Equestria, be it modern or a bygone era. Clasping her hands together and stomping on the ground, Mothra Lea doubled up the barrier. A shield of Terran magic enclosed around the North Wind, blocking any influence they could have on Australis as the Southern Windigo looked upon the new energy signature with confusion. And dark magic Boreas tried to create or send into Australis from the surroundings just bounced about inside the shield.

Boreas swore, or at least that’s what he likely did given how he seemed to be shouting profanities while banging on the inside of the barrier with clenched fists. The shield muted him entirely, shimmered in waves, but the force keeping anything inside of it from getting out was just as strong as what was keeping anything outside of it from getting in.

That helped solve that problem, but another reared its ugly head.

An ungodly shriek split the air and Lea was forced to break apart into a cloud of Fairy Mothra and dodge a geyser of frost ripping across the ground in jagged spires that traveled in a line. The uproar of ice kept going until it struck a tree and made it clear what would have happened had it hit Lea, when said tree was eviscerated by icy fangs that burst through and out of the trunk. There was a shower of splinters and shrapnel.

The barrier around Boreas flickered and phased in and out of existence, collapsing for a split second before a recombining Lea quickly threw it back up. The contained windigo roared in protesting rage, eyes flashing gold before multiple graviton flares smashed into the shielding; creating deafening crashes akin to striking a gong. Lea winced and strained to keep the shield up, especially when she had to divert attention back to who’d sent the ice geyser her way.

Australis drooled black ichors running from between broken, jagged teeth lining her maw; and gushing out of mostly empty eye sockets. She heaved and twitched, eye locking onto Lea before her form exploded into motion with the sound of crunching and splitting ice from the formations growing inside and snapping across her joints. It was a purely blind rage, unlike when she’d gone after Boreas especially. But given her extreme departure from how Sonata should have looked and sounded, it was very evident there was nothing resembling the mermare portion of the hybrid’s mind holding onto the mental reins.

No consideration, no hesitation; barely anything resembling a consciousness, just destruction.

Lea was forced to combine and recombine to dodge, lest she get gored by Australis’ uneven antlers in a stab aimed for her gut. The windigo barely gave her any openings to keep the barrier up, swatting, stabbing, and snapping; breaking a body that refused to stay down further with the sickening pop of joints in and out of her sockets; all in a bid to damage this random stranger’s more.

Jagged teeth snapped down where Lea’s throat had been a moment ago, moths composed of solid mana fluttering away as the barrier dropped. Golden beams ripped through the air and smashed into Australis’ flank. Her left leg snapped and twisted, buckling her from the impact with smoke gushing from her form. Ichors slipped through frostbitten skin where it was exposed, or through cracks in icy growth covering other body parts.

Wet snapping and plops were audible as Australis staggered back to her feet. Dark magic that clogged the air, much of it pure hatred coming from her, was redirected by northern winds to be devoured by the empty cavity within the New Southern Wind. Australis was almost nothing but spite, wrath, and hatred right now; and she was absorbing all of it right back into herself. She started heaving and shaking, taking in far more than she had prior; both from directly siphoning negativity off Boreas, whose dark magic had built up inside the barriers and was now gushing free; and from her own hatred towards practically everything around her.

“You need to keep her away!” Lea yelled out as she reconstituted herself on the roof of a cabin and threw the barrier back down on Boreas, straining in the act therein being a struggle akin to jamming a bucket down on top of a geyser to try and keep the water in.

“Get her away from here! I can barely keep this one contained!”

Lea cringed as Australis’ shrunken, insane eye locked upon her; the other side of the former siren’s face covered in frost from the mask of ice resembling a pronghorn skull, that had grown overtop her face. She couldn’t tell if the malice in the glare was aimed at her especially, she didn’t know or cause offense to this siren personally but in this manic state of mind she was lashing out at anything. Or, if it was out of rage at the barrier keeping Australis from Boreas.

Australis hissed and wheezed through broken, jagged fangs as she took in a massive breath, ice cracking across her body and raining down in a shower of shattered fragments. She let loose a gale force hurricane aimed directly at both Boreas and Mothra, only for a blur to tackle her from the side. A metal hand, one quickly frosting over, wrenched the windigo’s head upwards after grabbing onto a frozen antler erupting from her head. An arm of flesh, though one missing itself halfway past the elbow, hooked around her mid chest and tried to wrench the windigo back and over. Megalon did manage to divert away what used to be his friend from directly taking aim at Mothra. But as a testament to strength in disparity to her gaunt form, Australis refused to be toppled and only had her head craned back.

A horrific shriek of a blizzard came gushing out from distended jaws in emulation and the echoes of a scream. The blast of cold air and frost shredded through several trees and eviscerated their now crumbling trunks so violently it seemed more like they exploded into woody shrapnel.

Megalon gasped and struggled against Australis, who barely seemed to pay attention to him and was instead locked on Boreas and by proxy, the one keeping her from him. It was a testament to her uncanny constitution that the cyborg, even with his prior damage, couldn’t pull her down and back without momentous effort despite Sonata being considerably smaller and physically weaker in her true self.

It was noticeable then, when Pinkie Pie caught up to try and help the cyborg pull their berserk friend back; that Australis reacted to them.

“Nata! Nata look at us! You gotta stop!” Pinkie Pie yelled with tears in her eyes as she tried to cup Australis’ face only to recoil back in pain and clutching her hands.

The sheer cold of touching a windigo directly was so frigid it burnt, reddening and splitting skin on her fingers. Megalon was resisting it with sheer durability alone and even then, frost was growing over his arms. Pinkie cringed and looked at her hands and then back to Australis, crying out of the corners of her eyes at more than just the physical pain. The blackened, crazed eye of Australis was locked squarely upon her as tarry ichor wept from the socket to give the windigo a simultaneously terrifying and yet terrified look.

Australis looked scared of her, like an animal recoiling from a blazing hot iron lest it get branded. Two marks that hinted at the shape of hands covered either of her cheeks where Pinkie Pie had touched her.

“Sonata! Sonata you gotta calm down! Brutalizing X’s body won’t stop him!” Gloriosa hollered as she sprinted up to try and take hold of the windigo’s largely ice-free arm, trying not to focus on the sharp crystals of frost growing out of it nor the frostbitten hide she touched.

The gemstone around her neck, her sole remaining Element, flickered dimly; as the camp director was able to take hold of the windigo. The magic she retained seemed to be acting as a buffer even as the woman winced back the pains that shot up her body at contact. Australis’ skin was like a void of heat, not just frigid but a constant emptiness that sucked away anything when one contacted her. Heat, thought, even any semblance of happiness itself. She was forced to see sights of the past she’d otherwise pushed to the back of memory.

Namely she was younger again, back to the coldest winter she’d ever known until now. The one where her mother never came back after putting her and Timber to sleep, despite those hours of a young Gloriosa Daisy sitting by watching the front door. That was another time she felt that void within, and she was barely old enough to form concrete memories to have this as one of her earliest vivid ones.

And even so, she struggled to hold onto Australis; thinking not of the monstrosity in arm’s reach but the scared, ill, sweet young woman she’d spent weeks helping care for.

Pinkie Pie felt time stop as she looked at how everyone was faring. Miss Lea was wincing and gasping, her hair frayed and blood running from her nose as she set to reinforcing the barrier holding Boreas down; trying to shore up a crack that had formed. The manic windigo was rapidly punching into the shield so hard and violent that the skin across his knuckles and hands had split, grinning at the prospect of releasing all the stored up negativity he was exuding to his niece as soon as the shield fell. Megalon was cringing back pain as ice grew over his elbow and shoulder, starting to freeze over his joint while he desperately tried to pull Australis away. Gloriosa meanwhile was doing no better, visibly fighting tears at whatever horrid visions she was being forced to see to take Australis’ hand and pull her back.

She was a highschooler who still wore a skirt decorated in lollipops and gumdrops on most days, skipped randomly when walking down a street, and got ‘nervocited’, and used that exact word to describe it, when trying to consider asking the ones she liked out to a malt shop of all places. Magic was just something that had blustered its way into her life less than a few months ago; tales of an urban legend in her childhood withstanding. She was surrounded by magical warriors, monsters, witches, and now frost demons; and she was astronomically out of her league.

It was terrifying.

She was terrified. Voided of everything else but that.

The dim flicker of Element magic that had occasionally come from her collar went out and the windigo stopped recoiling from her.

Returning to form, the seeming well of never-ending dread seemed frozen within Australis’ gaze.

Australis’ eye blackened over entirely and she reflexively shrieked, convulsing and throwing herself into the scream so loudly it was poised to shatter the sky itself. The heart-wrenching and bone-gnawing screech came with a tsunami of frigid wind that smashed into everyone from the South. Megalon and Gloriosa were thrown aside and back by the galeforce, tumbling into the growing frost icing the ground. Lea braced for impact and felt the full force of the blast slam into her. She was sent recoiling back and into her own barrier, which shattered into golden dust on impact.

Australis charged forward, heedless of those trying to hold her back. Pinkie Pie stayed frozen in place as the windigo closed in and passed her to get to her actual target.

All of the accumulated dark mist, the worst of thoughts and emotions, flooded outwards from the shattered seal. Boreas grinned upon glimpsing the blurry mass spring into the air and launching herself upon him, Australis bearing down with lethal intent. He opened his arms, like he was ready to embrace the first windigo truly born in over a thousand years; and let all of the dark magic he’d exuded flood into her all at once. It would be her baptism, a full removal of any impurities left behind by her mother.

Except, the seal below his feet leftover from Mothra’s spell rapidly shifted and reappeared. It didn’t enclose itself around him again, he was too quick and dodged aside; but it wasn’t specifically aiming for him. A hand extended towards the spellwork even as its owner lay on the ground nearby. Mothra Lea laid on her side, hair spilled over her face with a trickle of blood coming from her scalp and nose. And despite looking like she was in a world of pain, she’d dutifully kept her magic going.

Her arm raised up and yanked back, her seal rushing back to her with all of the dark magic being carried with it. She couldn’t keep them both locked on either side of a barrier, so she instead took all of the strife and hatred meant for Australis and threw it at herself. Her left eye, the only one opened with the right closed from pain, looked at the livid Boreas who’d finally stopped carrying that manic grind on his face.

She smiled as the darkness came close.

-I came her to heal her, like Daiei I’m letting you hurt my patient…-

The mists accumulated by all of Boreas’ efforts, not easily replaceable, flooded the downed Mothra and were completely absorbed into her. They seeped and trickled in across all of her tattoos, eyes, and mouth, which flashed dimly and pulsed with light. Agony ripped through her, not just in body but also in mind.

Despite the sheer cold, all she could see was burning. Everything was burning. Half a continent was being glassed, forests instantly turned to ash and oceans were vaporized. From the core of Asia to the northern seas, burning moth wings fell from the sky like fiery comets. All from the actions of the enraged titan they’d tried to stop.

Lea screamed and thrashed, covering her face as she convulsed. Green hair frayed as orange crept across the strands, and her tattoos warped and began to reconfigure.

Boreas barely had time to process it before Australis slammed into him, her icy gauntlet of a right arm seizing him by the chest and slamming Monster X’s body into the ground. She was upon him the moment his back hit the ground, smacking and clawing to open him up. Boreas snarled and smashed several brief salvos of graviton flares into her form, shattering frost and blackening skin. Australis was sent recoiling back, her spine snapping back with a wet crunch as her top half was virtually parallel with her legs. She writhed and wheezed, wet pops sounding out as she snapped back into place and lurched forwards with black tears gushing from her eyes.

She shrieked and lunged even as Boreas batted aside her right arm and grabbed her left limb that tried to claw at his face; sinking her fangs into the robust muscle of Monster X’s shoulder and thrashing as if she were a rabid hound.

South and north winds clashed back and forth, as the two slammed each other into the ruins of the camp. Australis’ back shattered several spires of icicles she was sent through when golden explosions blasted into her midsection. Boreas, sporting numerous bloody wounds he didn’t even feel, snorted as he stood up and eyed the dark mists mixing with the wind.

“Heh, fine! Wanna play rough for your graduation party? Well Uncle Boreas has just the ticket,” he wiped reddened bloodstains across X’s face and grinned, “It taking longer just makes it better! Let’s see if this body holds up, not like I care about losing it!”

Australis didn’t even remotely articulate a reply, stomping on the ground and sending a geyser of jagged ice his way.

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

Pure blue eyes beheld everything. The camp, a home of many happy memories, was half destroyed. Megalon and Gloriosa were trying to recover. Lea was convulsing on the ground, eyes snapping open as crackling purple rays briefly flew free into the storm above. Australis was doing her best to maul a friend’s body to death, and the cold winds ripped through the sky.

Pinkie watched it all and felt tempted, so tempted, to just fall to her knees and give in. Give up everything.

She was out of her league… And yet…

Gloriosa and Megalon were trying to help each other rise, heedless to their safety.

Lea was desperately holding back what was happening as a direct result of self-sacrifice.

And a cold wetness ran down her cheek. Pinkie Pie touched at it and looked at her hand, feeling the thick, vicious dark ichor on her reddened fingertip.

Australis had a chance to attack, and yet she’d run right past her; crying this dark fluid the whole way.

Pinkie Pie closed her eyes and curled her fingers into a fist, feeling the cold but also feeling plenty of other things.

The seconds ticked by and despite the howling gales smashing into her; the young woman felt an odd sense of… warmth as she stood her ground. That void which seemed to exude from Sonata was met with something else. In a mirroring of the darkest of cavities within the windigo’s chest, a flicker of light came from Pinkie’s collar. She didn’t even think, because doing so was subject to fear’s influence. It wasn’t the mind where the opposite of fear came from, it came from within the heart.

And if there was anything at all strong about Pinkamena Diane Pie, it was her heart and the hope therein.

She sprinted to Lea’s side, baseball sliding on the falling ice and snow to stop herself. Lea wept and shook, crying incoherently in ancient tongues as the visions assaulted her sight. Every time she opened her eyes, prism beams fired free that could blast through steel and had already cleaved through several treetops.

And yet it was a helpless, powerless highschooler who’d wrapped her arms around the transforming and thrashing kaiju. Pinkie Pie clutched Lea to her and cooed through her tears. She put her forehead to Lea’s and started humming a tune.

Within the realms of the ancients, Lea’s mind was a chaotic storm of unfiltered memories and echoes of the bygone ages. The doors to her father’s side, the Battra of yore, had been wrenched open after years of keeping them locked shut; and all influence from her mother’s side was pushed aside. She was drowning in it all. Not the recollections of the Battra of yore that had relatively peaceful lives as fair, if stern, arbiters of the biosphere and rising civilization; but of the most recent ones. The father, grandfather, and great-grandfather who’d seen the era of the First Civilizations come to a crashing end with a world of life becoming a world of death. And under the windigo’s influence, she was only seeing, only feeling, the absolute worst of it all.

Betrayal, when an upstart ancient city tried to seize more power and slay the Battra calling for them to stop their devastation of the living world around them.

Despair, when the wise titan that had virtually raised their ancestors suddenly changed one day due to actions the Battra had failed to stop and ripped the world apart.

Loss, when the sky bore only a single pair of guardian moths to see the new day; the Pacific ocean carpeted with the corpses of ancestors and family.

Wrath, when the mana stream was further depleted and the fae withered away after the humans dared tamper in domains they should have known better than to touch again, after all that had happened.

Hatred, blinding everything when the only mothra left turned against their judgment to save the world and took aim upon them. Whence there were many, there were only two. And after there were two, there was only one.

All of that spite and pain, magnified when they awoke into the modern day in a new body. A new body that saw old allies turned enemies, the mothra and mankind, and revived an old conflict. Only to find a leviathan of destruction awaiting him with fanged jaws that sank into her father’s throat.

Lea was forced to see and feel all of it, dragging further into the dark tide that spewed out of the doorways to those lives. She was losing, not only her mind but also her own self. She couldn’t separate herself from all of the pandemonium, her own memories and thoughts slipping out of her fingers. She sank further, her forefather’s memories and hatreds covering her face and body and dragging her into their depths. Only her hand reached out of the floodwaters for however many seconds she could see any sense outside of the past.

Until someone’s hand reached out and grabbed her hand. She felt pulled up, a melody starting to cut through the floodwaters as sight started to return.

“You know.. ~when I was a little kiddie and the sun was going dooo-oown. The darkness and the shadows, they would always make me froooo-ooown…~”

This was ridiculous. She looked ridiculous with that much pink on her. Lea wasn’t even sure what she was looking at. It wasn’t some mental link in the traditional sense, more like a manifestation of some outside influence.

And somehow, despite the flood of strife and pain coming from the past, this piece of the present was standing against it like a rock weathering a wave.

“~I'd hide under my pillow, from what I thought I saw!~” a silhouette cast in the most gaudy pink imaginable, trimmed in blue light that started to grow brighter and brighter, gripped her hand tighter and helped tug her further from the floodwaters.

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

Back in reality, Pinkie Pie wept even as she kept singing. She cupped Lea’s face like her dearest grandmother once had and lightly tickled her cheeks while keeping her tune constant.

“~But Granny Pie said that wasn't the way to deal with fears at aaaaall!~”

She knew fear well. Fear led to despair and that was the opposite of hope. And hope was the predecessor to what she stood for. Some would take the joy she reveled as silly party affairs, but there was much more to it than that. Laughter wasn’t just about happiness in the times that were going good. It was just as much about fighting off the worst of times. Be it trauma of the ancients afflicting a heroine or a scared little girl hiding under her bed after stories of frost monsters. In that way, laughter gained through hope, stood for courage.

Pinkie cradled the kaiju and patted her cheeks, using her thumbs to help put a small smile on Lea’s face.

“~She saaaid, ‘Pinkie you gotta stand up tall, Learn to face your fears!~”

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

Somehow, in the cacophony of her mind, Lea could still hear the singing.

“~You'll see that they can't hurt you, just laugh to make them disappear!~"

A dark mountain burst from the visions of the floodwaters. It molded into shapes and twisting nether, as spines and fangs erupted. Godzilla Senior’s blood-spattered maw thick with Battra’s lifeblood transposed with Bagan’s blazing form surrounded by funeral pyres of slain guardians. It lurched upwards and dove down at her like an avalanche come to crush her.

She felt so monumentally small, helpless, weakened; pitiful beneath that enormity.

The pink presence got in front of her, standing their ground against the oncoming damnation. She put her hands on her hips and rocked with each punctuated syllable in her song.

“~Ha ha ha!~”

The tone was jarring, stupidly so. This mountain of dread and pain before her, and Pinkie was laughing at it. The sight was so enormously off brand for anything from Terra that it was… kind of funny.

Lea, in her first break from screaming, couldn’t help but chuckle.

And the gestalt mountain of fear ground to a halt, spurring Lea into a momentary phase of being dumbstruck. Pinkie Pie’s presence, a manifestation of her magic and song leaking into the guardian, took Lea around the shoulder with an arm and grinned.

“.....~Soooooo!~”

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

Gloriosa saw the horrors of the windigo battle destroying more and more of the camp that had been her home. She saw her friends hurt and no end in sight to the chaos. But she heard something else, whilst she tried to help Megalon to his feet with an arm over the sparking cyborg’s shoulder.

Laughter.

A short distance away, Pinkie Pie and Mothra Lea were laughing together as the former kept singing. It was surreal to see, especially given both were visibly crying throughout it and the clashing frost demons weren’t too far away. Pinkie even turned to block some of the winds from reaching Lea with her own body as a windshield. All while heedless to the danger of Lea’s out of control powers Gloriosa had witnessed not moments ago.

A warmth settled from her core to her mind, coming from her necklace. She looked down at the last remaining Element of Harmony. The baby blue crystal for Laughter, according to Twilight. Conflict was within her for a moment or two.

Without this, she was nothing. She’d give up the magic that had filled her with a purpose. That gave her the ability to help others so much, as it had helped stabilize Gigan and Adagio. The magic that had called out to her. And the magic that had given her some closure and tether to her mother in ways she never could have imagined.

Gloriosa Daisy saw her reflection in the Element of Laughter’s smooth face. She looked pathetic, bruised, frayed, and crying. The Camp Director could feel the sparks of warmth coming from it, into her fingers. The sparks of the only sense of power she’d ever known.

-And to think, I once thought finding these was my destiny…-

In some ways, it had been. But in others, maybe her reason to be was for something bigger.

She gave the Element of Laughter, her last source of magic, one last squeeze in her hand and yanked it out of her necklace.

-I was just your Retainer... And I think I did a damn good job at it!-

“PINKIE! CATCH!” She hefted it and threw it as hard as she could.

She smiled when Pinkie Pie, without even looking, as if she could sense a part of her coming close, caught it and was engulfed in a flash of light.

Within both of their minds, Retainer and Bearer, a proud, gentle voice whispered to them both.

-Pinkamena Diane Pie, you are capable of encouraging great joy and courage through Laughter…-

Gloriosa could only weakly smirk with pride as she watched Pinkie’s magic fully erupt into being.

-You got this…-

The melody being sung to Lea in mind and body became audible even over the storm.

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

Lea stood on her own two feet now. The tide of horrors from her forefathers continued to surge, but they’d lost all of their bite. A step was taken forward, her own memory seized and used to strike back.

She, supported by Pinkie Pie, took another step against the tide and towards the doors to her ancestors’ memories.

Her father blasting her mother out of the sky was smacked away with seeing that same beautiful mothra through her egg.

The sight of seeing an ancient city of magic razed under barrages of prism beams slashes and scouring so none would survive, death enacted; was countered seeing a city of technology illuminated as its power came back on after it had been saved under fire of buster cannon blasts.

The wrath of an old king of the monsters and blood upon their fangs in a decades old conflict contrasted with the gentle embrace of that king’s heir, her best friend, holding her just the other day.

So much death and devastation upon the sunset of the old world under the titan of extinction, to her first dawn at Canterlot after a new world had been saved.

The death of the ancients and passing of time, to the dawning of the future with so many promising heroes; kaiju, human, and equestrian.

The latter memories, the latter self; that was who she truly was. This life, her life, was not dictated by her ancestors’ mistakes. The reason she bore their memories wasn’t to be them, it was to learn from them.

The dark tide. All that strife, hatred, and pain; everything the windigos stood for… It was being defeated.

Out of context the scene was obscenely ridiculous, some random, silly acquaintance Lea didn’t particularly know very well, having an effect on all of these old wounds. And yet, it was working. The cheer, the positivity, the laughter it engendered by proxy and action. It wasn’t Pinkie Pie fighting off the darkness alone, it was her giving Lea the gumption to do so herself.

All, with a laugh.

”~Giggle at the ghostly! Guffaw at the grossly! Crack up at the creeepy! Whoop it up with the weepy!~”

The horrid thoughts were pushed aside, replaced by the kind her forefathers largely lacked these last few trying generations. Instead it was Lea’s own past that she herself was able to draw up. Her own self put to the forefront. She was not subject to the past here. She was not betrayed by those she cared for, they were the very reason she was fighting now. All the fears of the bygone times were real, but the grip they’d once commanded drowning and strangling her heart was pried off. Lea was a Battra, but she was not that Battra. And she’d be damned if the trauma and terror of her forefathers would override the type of heroine she’d grown up to be, not in the company she kept.

Not when she had a promise to keep.

Lea laughed victoriously as she reached the doorways, braving the tides spewing out.

The strength welled up inside her and the presence that threatened to choke out her own sense of self was beaten back. Lea grabbed the doors to the past. She felt so much of it now, so much she’d stayed away from after swearing off tapping into her Battra side’s power. It would not hold power over her; but she would use that power. She slammed the doors shut on her forefather’s memories and took the reins of her life once more to return to the fray.

==========

The magnificent glow that had cocooned both herself and Pinkie swelled up in brightness to engulf them both. Ripples of light magic ripped across the amassed North vs. South storm, shoving both influences back and briefly forcing Australis and Boreas apart.

The younger windigo, raw against the light magic, recoiled and fumbled away; shrieking as she tried to back off and shield her eyes.

Shielded by his host body, Boreas glared at the growing mass of light with a leer. His eyes glowed with a crackle of golden hues, charging up a graviton flare to try and put an end to this distraction. His grin was split into a hateful scowl upon smelling Harmony’s wretched magic coming off the pink one.

A bolt of lightning lanced across his side, burning skin and forcing the windigo to stumble over and cancel their attack. Boreas winced and hissed, patting at his smoking jacket and charred hide before glaring at the source. Megalon weakly smirked as Gloriosa helped to hold him up, his forehead still sparking from his lightning horn attack.

The luminescence of the collected magic from Pinkie Pie’s efforts and Lea’s transformation reached its zenith.

Her rate of singing was commendable in how rapid-fire it became.

“~And tell that big dumb scary face to take a hike and leave you alone and if he thinks he can scare you then he's got another thing coming and the very idea of such a thing just makes you wanna... hahahaha... heh…!~”

The shell of light exploded outwards and Pinkie Pie was completely cloaked in a bright blue luminescence. Her attire had also morphed, from the second-hand sweat pants and night gown Sonata had let her borrow, into a beautiful two piece ensemble that bore a resemblance to a marching band conductor’s garb. A dazzling pink jacket studded on the shoulders, wrists, and hips with blue gemstones, and a frilly tan undershirt visible between the sides. The magic had also formed pointed ears in place of her normal ones, with an aura of magic covering her feet to resemble the shape of hooves. This wasn’t the state her friends gained using music to focus, this was something further beyond it.

Dazzling beads of magic floated all around her as she held her hands in the air in victory.

“~LLLaaaaaaaauuuuugh!~”

And she wasn’t alone, as indicated by the spinning cross-shaped rune, with pointed spurs surrounding it, appearing in the air above Pinkie Pie and ground below her. The magical aura burst outwards, emulating the outline of moth wings, though in a shape far more jagged and pointy than a Mothra’s.

Boreas glared daggers at the ascended Bearer of the Element that stank so heavily of his master’s enemy. Pinkie Pie, hair blowing in the radiating energies, only smirked and winked.

“Kick his butt!”

She lifted a fist that crackled with popping magic and soon chucked it at the ground. A bursting explosion akin to fireworks flew free and obscured Boreas’ vision.

Through the magical smokescreen, a pair of burning orange eyes were soon eclipsed in purple. Lightning sparked across the burning visage, the only warning before crackling torrents of magenta energy knifed through the mist and flew at Boreas. The windigo braced and let loose his own optic blasts, only for Lea’s unique prism beams to suddenly burst into fragments of themselves, arch up and around the graviton flares, and smash into the windigo from all angles after avoiding the counter strike. Boreas roared and hurtled backwards into a cabin that was dropped on top of him by follow-up blasts that divided and redirected to strike at every direction. It wasn’t a power the scourge of the first civilizations nor the archon of the biosphere who awakened in the 1990s had. Every generation getting stronger than the last wasn’t just something true with the mothra.

The mists were blown away by the misaimed graviton flare, revealing a well restored Lea unfazed as the golden plasma flew past her and hit the lake. Her tattoos were arranged slightly differently, pointed prongs arching up across her shoulders and almost fang-like markings visible on her cheeks. Her hair was completely changed in color, from a forested hue of green to a burning orange; with a likewise change turning her skin from a very pale viridian to a much darker green. Turquoise eyes were recast to blazing amber and red.

Even so, the Battra that was fully Lea was still smiling as she cracked her knuckles.

Another cabin some distance away shifted and all eyes were upon it. The sickly and yet monstrous-looking form of Australis ripped a door off its frame to get it out of the way, having been repulsed into the building from the shockwaves of Pinkie and Lea’s combined transformation. There however, was a change visible upon her. Behind the mask of ice composing a skull-like visage across much of her face, one half of it had been partially removed in the melee. The eye formerly completely covered up by frost was now exposed and what was visible spurred a tug at the heartstring.

“Nata…” Pinkie Pie stammered as she unconsciously took a step forward.

Her eye perched as it was on the body of a hulking, deformed abomination to sight, Sonata Dusk gazed back at the newcomers from the now exposed eye. It quivered, tears streaming from it; as it stayed visible like a tiny window into the windigo showing some fragment of the siren was still there.

Pinkie Pie took another step forward, only pausing when Australis arched her back and shrank away like a cornered animal; hissing through frozen fangs. Battra afforded to take their focus off Boreas for just a moment to step beside the Element Bearer just in case things went sour and Pinkie was attacked; but also to extend her hand.

“Please, I came here to heal you. You don’t need to be afraid. She just helped me, maybe she can help you.”

Megalon and Gloriosa also closed ranks nearby, looking between themselves and others before also offering their hand to someone who looked all the part of being a monster, but was every bit the victim.

Australis didn’t attack, but she didn’t approach either. She stayed in the shadows of the cabin after backing further inside it. The side of her face showing Sonata’s visage twitched and a whimper came from inside her throat. Pinkie Pie turned her brow upwards sympathetically and stepped forwards more, almost feeling like she was coaxing some scared puppy out of a kennel.

Then the Northern winds picked up steam once again.

Lea and Megalon both sensed the danger and about faced instantly to confront a recovered, but still smoking Boreas; who was taking in a deep breath before unleashing an unworldly wail into the sky above. It didn’t affect the group much, Pinkie’s radiating presence did more than enough to shield them, as evident by how all the snow and ice within a several meter radius of her was melting; but it didn’t seem to be an attack or declaration.

It was something both kaiju, members of teams, recognized for what it was; even in the disgusting, archaic tongue he spoke in.

“He’s calling for help,” Lea hissed while clasping her hands together to ready a seal.

Megalon frowned and made ready his only good arm, “He said one of them got taken out earlier, probably by the others. And Notus was Sonata’s sire. That would just leave-”

“Zephyrus…” Gloriosa gulped, recognizing the name from the night with Gigan and Adagio; the title that stood for everything the latter was afraid of.

The winds high above started to shift, a new direction joining them.

Australis seemed to notice as looked upon the heavens above. She glanced back down, recoiling upon realizing Pinkie Pie and all of her radiating magic was less than a meter away and just outside the cabin’s wrecked doorway. The windigo remained crouched back and tensed, her face twitching and convulsing, the two sides literally in visible conflict with one another. Australis grabbed at her own face and thrashed about, throwing furniture and splitting wood as ice crystals ripped through the floors.

Pinkie Pie, for her part, was undeterred and tried to advance with her arms out, not with any magic explosives but instead with an offered embrace. The very same she’d held her friend with to help her sleep these past nights.

“Sonata! Calm down! We won’t let them get you!”

Australis looked straight at Pinkie Pie, mouth twitching like she was trying to articulate a word.

“WA-AAAAAAAUGHGUAAAAAAAAAAAAA!” it slurred into a shriek before she suddenly exploded into movement, smashing out of the cabin through one wall and sprinting into the campgrounds. She turned to take one last look at her friends, convulsing across her body in ways that fractured her ice and undulated her form in odd ways. Clearly in a great mental struggle, the windigo shrieked her unworldly screams before dropping onto all fours and rushing off at high speed. She made it for the treeline before disappearing off into the direction of Canterlot, leaving a trail of groaning wood and splitting trees as her wake left numerous icicles in her path.

“SONATA!” Megalon, Gloriosa, and Pinkie yelled out, the latter taking off after her at surprising speed of her own.

“Pinkie wait!” Gloriosa cried out as she tried to pursue, knowing she’d be of little help against Boreas in a direct fight.

Megalon looked conflicted and his eyes darted between the remaining windigo and the forest.

-I’m a war machine, I-I have to stay in the fight to stop this guy! But Sonata- Pinkie- Miss Daisy! Ah what if I go?! What if Miss Lea loses?! What if she wins? What if she kills X’s body? Or what if Sonata is out of control again?! What if she get hurt? What if Pinkie or Miss Daisy get hurt?! What if-

The pandemonium within his brain was almost spurring him to cry at the distressing nature of it all. Until a gentle hand put itself on his shoulder.

As Boreas’ shrieking continued into the sky, Megalon found himself looking up directly into the eyes of someone he was once very afraid of.

“Go. I’ll handle this,” Battra muttered with an uncanny amount of calm.

“But- Him! X’s body! I can’t-”

Lea leaned down to equal their height, holding him firmly but not at all tightly, “I won’t be killing anyone, but I don’t aim to lose either. They need you, go save your friend.”

Megalon cried and shuddered, swallowing back his apprehension and remembering the burst of emotion he experienced coming off of Pinkie earlier. Sucking in a breath, he changed a whimper that slurred into a mild chuckle. A second attempt at a chuckle was enough to put some of the tightness in his chest at ease.

-Pinkie was right, laughter really does help.-

The cyborg saluted, braving a smile, “Still sorry I called you a palooka.”

Lea patted his head and nodded to the departing Gloriosa and Pinkie. A moment later, another set of feet followed after them,

The wailing by Boreas ceased and blurred into raucous laughter. He drew blood out of his eye that had been running down his scalp and licked his hand, “AAAAAAHAHAHA! She’s still got hate, she’s still got our mark! You can’t stop that! Ah I see what you were on about earlier Zephyrus! She's odd to her event horizon!”

“What are you talking about?!” Lea yelled back, perhaps hoping this was the theatrical type of villain who’d be inclined to yammer on, given he didn’t seem to be the one who came up with the plans. Psychopaths weren’t usually that smart and the need to know information was at a premium.

“Oh not like you’d know or be able to do anything about it. The Bearer would be a problem, but soon as this quibbles’ fixed, Australis will gut her as a threat without a thought,” Boreas shrugged, “Niece dearest, even as a siren, still had something she hated. Something unresolved! And to think, the one thing keeping her from fully changing was one of our own virtues. Tsk tsk tsk…”

Lea smirked knowingly at something Boreas didn’t understand the meaning of, only that he didn’t like it.

He stared at Battra as the winds howled, and she glared back. And then the distance between them closed in a near instant, as if Boreas was carried on the winds themselves to clear the gap. A haymaker was dodged before it could connect with her head, shattering part of a wall she’d been in front of. A jumping roundhouse kick from Boreas was met with Lea raising one forearm in a block that was supported by the other one. She braced to be sent hurtling back, knowing she didn’t have the strength to stop the blow or time to dodge.

Which meant it was to her brief surprise that her legs bent but she held her ground, intercepting the leg at her shoulder and stopping Boreas’ attack with some effort.

Lea took note of how strong she felt, physically now, and widened her eyes... Before laughing.

-So, this is what I was missing out on?-

Proficient she wasn’t precisely, not without practice, but that coupled with a brief surprise on Boreas’ part was enough for her to grab the leg before he could recover and twist around. In a maneuver she’d seen Junior do a dozen times, Battra yelled out as she mashed Boreas into the ground by his leg.

Her promise to Megalon was in mind, this was only aiming to stun him long enough to get a seal up. Bashing the possessed X into the ground and against the cabin several times, Lea threw him up and literally took Pinkie’s word, kicking Boreas’ rear end and launching him into the cabin before she let loose her prism rays. Instead of shattering into a scatter shot, she kept them focused and piercing, but not at Boreas. A long sweep of her face horizontally brought the cabin down in one swing, creating a shower of wood chips, ice fragments, burning embers, and blasted metal that groaned upon collapsing in on itself.

She jumped back to clear some distance and clasped her hands together again and focused.

And focused.

And focused more on the symbol and seal her mother had used on Godzilla Senior and that had been invented by her own ancestor eons back against Ghidorah.

Lea’s face contorted in confusion, not noticing any registering mana bending to her will. A quick check of the memory to copy the spell perfectly was called upon… Only for that mental door to remain jammed.

Battra’s eyes widened sharply.

The mental representation of all of her ancestor’s experiences, a set of doorways on either side of a long hall, was completely in disarray. The Mothra side was blocked, just like the Battra side once had been.

Why? How? There had to be a reason but she couldn’t draw up any. Her very existence was a first-of-its-kind anomaly, a hybrid of the lineages. Two different lineages with two similar, but distinct power sets.

And a battra couldn’t do the same sort of spellwork a mothra could.

“... Ah Daiei.”

Her seal failed to manifest and golden graviton beams burst out of the cabin’s collapsed roof, streaming up into the sky. The Guardian of the Biosphere braced herself and made into a readied stance, purple energy crackling across her eyes.

“Looks like I’ll have to make do…”

A growing distance between Pinkie Pie and Gloriosa and Megalon was only increasing worry with how the shrieks and echoing roars of Australis were still audible even with how far out she was.

Gloriosa panted and heaved, collapsing on her knees and holding her midsection. She winced as endorphins were wearing off and a pain was felt in her gut. She heaved and held back tears, trying to stand.

“Miss Daisy?! Miss Daisy Ma’am?!” A voice cried out from up ahead.

-Megalon…-

Gloriosa took light of her situation. She couldn’t help, and Sonata needed him.

A metallic jingle in her pocket jarred her attention and she got an idea.

Megalon, distraught at his lack of ability to keep pace with Sonata and having urged Pinkie to keep up with her and not slow down for him, had found himself doubling back when he’d noticed Miss Daisy had fallen behind. Sonata urgently needed his help, but Miss Daisy had been nothing short of great to him and the others. With how she’d cared for him and always made sure to check on Sonata. He hadn’t known culinary skills prior and he might have been partially proposing it to make sure Gloriosa didn’t catch Pinkie Pie, but she’d taken him up on cooking lessons with gusto and a grin.

She was like a big sister and he’d practically adopted her as such.

So he liked to think he could tell something was wrong when he doubled back to find Gloriosa standing on the edge of camp, explosions of Boreas and Madam Lea’s battle still echoing across the grounds, waiting for him with the previously discarded jacket from Adagio she intended to give Sonata back.

“I can’t keep up with them and you could use help,” she called out, drawing up a pair of car keys and clicking the unlock.

A beat up, aged, rusty sedan chirped from behind the master cabin; one of the few remaining intact structures.

The cyborg perked up and ran closer, trying to just take the good news where he could get it, “Oh that’s great! I-I can track Sonata through following Pinkie’s magic trail, and you can drive us-”

Gloriosa, seeing how close he was getting, threw the keys at the advancing cyborg and forced him to stop so he could catch them. A brief pause of confusion came upon his furrowed brow.

“... Miss Daisy Ma’am? Aren’t you driving?” He looked back up and tilted his head.

Gloriosa stilled and seemed to pale, but she wore a smile nonetheless. Her eyes darted side to side, as if in thought before she pointed the hand that had been holding the keys up and over to motion backwards with her thumb.

“Not much I can do to help Sonata. I’ve got to stay to help Lea,” she affirmed with a strong, confident smile, “Can’t let this Boreas jerk wreck my whole camp now can I? Plus we got more of our friends right behind Lea, they’ll need me to tell them where to find you. Your brother can track you right?”

Megalon quickly nodded as he looked up as a graviton ray swung across the sky before being intercepted by a prism blast. Even so, his eyes briefly darting down at movement as Gloriosa’s side. She had been keeping Adagio’s winter jacket against her the whole time. And he didn’t remember it being reddish on her pants.

The cyborg felt his gaze lock with Gloriosa’s wide, impossibly confident beaming grin.

“Trust me, I got this!” she swung up a thumbs up and wink, “Now go help Sonata!”

He felt a cavity in his gut, and more than because Boreas had hit him really hard there before; Madam Lea had patched that.

He knew something was wrong, not just with his brain but his heart.

Gloriosa’s smile held firm and she nodded to the car some distance away, pushing him to the choice. Stay and get closer to her to see what was wrong, or go and follow her wish to help Sonata.

The former Element Retainer closed her eyes and nodded as he, a moment of hesitation later, ran to her car and got in… having to crawl across the front seat as he forgot which side was the one with a steering wheel. Megalon hoped the Boss Ball would forgive him for swearing so much, he got it from his brother, as he swerved and careened out of the campground’s road.

Gloriosa smiled and waved as Megalon drove past, even jumping up on her tippy toes slightly to flash a ‘Victory’ sign.

As soon as he was out of sight, she screamed so hard she had to bite her arm to muffle herself.

She braced her head against her home cabin’s walls and probed at the hole in her shirt covered up by the jacket.

Her fingers felt a hot dampness at her side, along with a hardened bur of something that was decidedly not part of her body. Gritting her teeth, her fingertip gently brushed against the telltale jagged fibers from a chunk of wood about the size of a toothpaste tube. Withdrawing to look at her hand confirmed the presence of blood.

She grimaced, biting back the pain to prod at the huge splinter and test at it. When she first detected it, Gloriosa almost felt a spur of the moment instinct to pull it out. But she didn’t know how deep it was in her and having nothing to staunch the wound made that a horrible idea. She was coherent enough to recall those basic first-aid lessons and halt herself, hoping being cognisant enough to do that was a good sign.

-Must be a chunk of the cabin sent flying during the battle, was so hyped up I didn’t register it!-

There was no way she could keep up the pursuit of Sonata in this condition, as if she could even help there without magic. Running around might risk making it worse and she had no spellwork left to try and fix this even if she could have learned healing magic. This wound didn’t seem mortal, but she couldn’t have Megalon fretting over her like she knew full well he’d do if he found out she was hurt.

Another boom from Battra battling it out with Boreas sounded off and rattled the campground. This time, chunks of the lake were blasted into the air as the windigo fired salvo after salvo at his foe. Lea had broken up into a cloud of fairy battra and was dodging the graviton flares, which were sending geysers of water airborne.

Some of the spray even misted Gloriosa’s wrinkled nose. She slumped against the cabin wall and tried to just keep her breath stable and pulse controlled; trying to not let getting into the crossfire of a kaiju battle nor her current condition cause anything to race.

If Lea knew where she was and what state she was in, she’d have another thing to worry about in the middle of a fight. If Boreas found her, there’s no doubt the monster that tried to attack her as a child would relish the chance to do so again without a car door in the way.

She just had to stay quiet. Stay quiet, and maybe have the chance to tell the others everything.

She had this… hopefully…

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

The moment Gigan and Adagio had company, the four had split into two pairs. Adagio, after a moment to ensure Gigan wasn’t going to fall apart the moment she let go of him, and then a few moments more to be extra sure; sprinted over and pulled her cousin into a bear hug the moment Kaizer Aria landed.

“Woah, what happened to you?” Aria started, unused to Adagio being like this, before noticing how ruined the nearby terrain was for reasons more than having a kaiju manifest inside of it.

The forest had been upended into a messy chaos of snapped trees, broken rock, and shattered ice littering the snow. And the fact Adagio’s necklace wasn’t pristine as the eldest siren held it in her hand, the cordage having been snapped, was an alert to her attention. Without word, Aria ripped off one of her ribbons and offered it as a replacement. Sniffling and still looking more messy than she’d ever let the stage see her like, Adagio set to remaking her necklace cord whilst speaking.

“W-We were attacked.”

Aria frowned and looked aside before pursing her lips and letting a name slip, “Zephyrus?”

Adagio sucked in a breath but nodded. She motioned her necklace towards her cousin, and showed her trust in such a decision, before lifting her hair up to make the task indeed easier. Aria took the necklace and put the cord around Adagio’s neck, helping to tie it off so it would be underneath the hair.

“They attacked us too, almost got my necklace but star-breath over there managed to help force them back before the Bearers capitalized off it,” Aria shrugged whilst trying to inject a bit of levity into such a dire topic, “Funnily, that battle wound up ending in two people sucking face too.”

Adagio’s lips flattened and her cheeks reddened slightly. Her cousin, the taller one for once, ruffled her hair and bangs with a smirk and wink.

“We beat him, you beat him by the looks of it. Besides these things hate good vibes and I got a nice bolster from that Shimmer and Sentry pair; so you feel like lip-locking Mr. Roboto again for another boost?”

Adagio’s eyes narrowed and she whacked her cousin upside the head. Kaizer Aria no-selled the thwap and laughed.

A short distance away, Gigan stayed propped up on the tree trunk as a pair of boots stepped over to him. The cyborg didn’t look up, too tired to do so but knowing full well who it was. It was telling, given recent events and circumstances, he wasn’t reacting to Godzilla crouching down beside him. The King of the Monsters firmly gripped the battered cyborg by the shoulders and propped him up against the tree trunk more. Gigan withheld his mild surprise at how careful his former enemy was being. His mechanical eyes, only one of them actually functioning with any degree of capacity and only barely at that, looked upon a hardened gaze.

Godzilla inspected him for a moment or two more, before nodding slightly and pulling up something he’d picked up a short distance away.

“I believe this is yours,” Junior grunted whilst presenting a mechanical finger that had been near where he and Aria had landed.

Gigan’s arm shuddered and audibly groaned from worn pistons and servos, opening a palm after extending his arm as far as it could go; a measly two thirds of the normal range of motion. Junior put the lost digit in the four fingered hand which was missing the ring finger, helping Gigan curl his remaining digits around it to hold it fast.

“All this,” Godzilla muttered whilst motioning to the ruined landscape and Gigan’s very obvious disarray. It was to the point even with him being a cyborg, he was surprised Gigan was conscious.

He motioned with a hand back towards the conversing sirens, “For her right?”

Gigan’s neck craned over and tilted. Even with his joints sparking and somehow looking even worse in the face than when he’d had his head blown off, the resting-bitch-face levels of deadpan on him was downright legendary. As though the answer was just that ridiculously obvious.

"Her and another. That's why I have to ask for your help on this."

His deadpan expression was unseated by a hand on his shoulder. Gigan glanced at it without turning his head. Godzilla had his palm on the cyborg’s shoulder to help stabilize him against the tree and bore a slight smile, still shaking his head in mild disbelief at something he wasn’t disliking the prospect of accepting.

And perhaps, seeing someone put everything on the line and come out looking like this was just surreal for him to see from the outside, and on Gigan of all kaiju.

-Huh, so this is what it looked like on me.-

He couldn’t help but chuckle.

Gigan shrugged and looked to Adagio, who by some subconscious messaging stopped her playful berating of Aria to look back at just the right time. She nodded and pulled Aria along to bring her close to Godzilla so they could both hear this, getting on her knees next to Gigan and taking his hand.

“... In the fight, it turned out Zephyrus was wearing the Memory Stone that sucked up most of X’s memories, and likely those of this world’s Twilight Sparkle as well,” Adagio repeated what Gigan had told her, squeezing his good hand and trying not to frown at his condition, paying little heed to her looking like a mess too.

“I-I-I-I-” Gigan was lightly tapped on the head by the siren to help stop the sparking, “-hank you… I saw them both. X and the other Twilight.”

Godzilla and Aria glanced at one another before crouching down further to listen.

“I don’t know what sort of representation or manifestation I was looking at, some parts of their psyche made to be visible in a way my mind could comprehend them,” Gigan held up his ruined arm, the same limb that had grabbed the stone before it got destroyed beyond use. The metallic stump was held aloft and moved almost like a phantom of the limb could be felt, “... I couldn’t hang on long, much as I wanted to just-.. tear that thing away.”

He shrugged at his failures, his mechanical eye swiveling over to Adagio’s necklace. The siren squeezed his hand, in a silent reassurance of their own wins in contrast to any failings. It made him feel lighter even as he leaned on her a bit more; too tired to care about looking weak in front of someone else.

Adagio continued, “He saw the two of them, incomplete.”

“Incomplete?” Aria quirked an eyebrow and crossed her arms.

“Like they were missing parts of them.”

Gigan nodded, recalling the cavities within either of the two that appeared to him, with wisps of smoke seeping from them. It almost was like someone had torn off a piece of a paper figure and the strands were left around the edge of the holes.

“Most of the other Twilight was in there, and a quarter of X,” he noted while trying to estimate things only glimpsed.

Aria Blaze frowned, “X tore his psyche in half to split back between himself and Kaizer Ghidorah-”

Godzilla stiffened and looked a bit more closely at the siren, perking up at the word ‘Ghidorah’. He knew Monster X had something in tie to that monstrosity King Ghidorah, their powers and smell were so similar. But, for now, he knew it wasn’t the best time to prod and just listened.

“-and I can still feel Kaizer’s presence in my mind when he jumped into my body to protect me. But if X’s memories were mostly inside the Memory Stone…”

Gigan sighed, “Which means something of him is still inside his body. Shot in the dark? Probably his earliest memories and training of before and right after becoming the being he is now from his origins as an Xilian. It explains Boreas being able to use the martial arts and powers; unless your sire had similar tricks. My best guess is most everything up until his initial memory issues and split psyche is inside his body still, under Boreas’ control.”

Aria glanced back at the cityscape, unsure of where the location of both her most hated and loved was and trying to not let that eat at her, “So basically Boreas is piloting Praetorian 094’s body just like Notus was inside that Sentry guy’s body.”

Privy to exact relationships or histories he was not, but Godzilla was still more perceptive than most would think. He recognized that forlorn look on the siren’s face.

“Remember, Flash Sentry was able to fight from the inside and with some appeals to his consciousness, Notus was weakened and exposed,” he lightly tapped her arm with the back of his knuckles, “Did it once, we can do it again. This also means Zephyrus’ has a possible vulnerability, assuming that Twilight would help us.”

Gigan chuckled, “As I was getting to, she already has.”

Both Aria and Godzilla snapped around to get closer to Gigan.

“Zephyrus, sick bastard, broke her down mentally right before taking over her body. In doing so he showed her what he was planning on. He probably never thought anyone would ever see them when she showed me. The sirens, taking their necklaces, that was just step one to get enough power on their side.”

Adagio’s fingers curled around her necklace and she visibly shook off a wave of terror to hold her grit and speak up, “... Zephyrus got mine away from me. My body kept absorbing negativity and dark magic like a never-ending-void. Especially with a windigo nearby. I could tell, I was starting to become one of them.”

Junior’s thoughts briefly flashed back to Mako Island, back to the tour and history that Electra had run him through and Maui had also remarked on. That shameful part of their history regarding the two princesses’ whose names had come up again lately. Two of their daughters were right in front of him after all. Besides general malice, one grim question had stuck in his mind now that he’d come to know for sure it was these windigos that caused that calamity centuries ago.

“More windigos means more power, that’s why Adagio here started changing with them around you... And that explains why they sired you three in the first place,” the temperature around Godzilla started to climb a few noticeable degrees.

“They weren’t around when I took mine off to charge up X that first time, explains why I didn’t change,” Aria started, before her focus however diverted to what this lack of necklace topic could also mean.

“Sonata!” She gasped and nearly jolted up, “Bastards! That’s why they took hers! She’s been slowly turning into-”

“Aria, wait!” Adagio grabbed her cousin’s arm and nearly was yanked off her feet, Kaizer Aria about ready to get airborne again and launch, “Gigan’s in no condition to move and you need to hear the rest!”

Kaizer Aria’s grimacing face whipped around, fangs visible on clenched teeth and gold sparking within her black sclera. She heaved and panted for several long moments before staring at her cousin. Adagio’s face spoke enough. She didn’t want to remain here a moment longer either, but they had to put all the pieces together.

Catching her breath, Aria relented and hunked back down.

“Sonata, Adagio, you,” Gigan motioned to Aria.

“My and his team’s feud with each other,” he indicated to himself and Godzilla.

Gigan made a point to talk a bit quickly even if he was trying to be thorough, “All that was extra. Twilight Sparkle was the lynch pin. Her counterpart is the Bearer of the Element of Magic itself and an alicorn on top of that. Equestrian magic is emotion- and thought-based, so if her counterpart was even vaguely similar despite different circumstances; she’d develop similar magic if given the chance. Explains the telekinesis alongside the windigo hexes.”

The cyborg motioned with his arm stump towards Canterlot City, “The divide between this realm and Equestria proper is weak, might account for so many similarities. Zephyrus can sense magic and knows the right type can tear holes through the divides, not just between worlds but also space and time. Hence the distortion traveling from Equestria to here.”

“Like us becoming a millennium older suddenly,” Adagio muttered to herself and Aria.

“Zephyrus cultivated the right type of magic with Twilight, keeping her with a friend, instructing her in magic, making her think she was the heroine all in a bid to foster her power. Then bolster her with a stolen siren necklace, or three, and anything else he could get. Then take it all for himself. And use it,” He just shook his head, both at the audacity of the plan and the sheer magnitude of damage magic could cause; something he’d previously never even imagined, “To bring back Eurus, and start a reckoning.”

“Eurus?... " Aria furrowed her brow at such a term, but recognized it well even if it had never been a name she knew, "The east? But there were only-”

“Four.. windigo.. Originally," Adagio muttered grimly, recalling the description Gigan had given her that Zephyrus had subjected Twilight to. Some ancient conflict where the windigos were involved against some Equestrians. At the head was a blue-furred unicorn with bright raspberry pink eyes in a very distinctive wizard garb.

"Eventide was onto something after all... A younger Starswirl fought them before we were even born, alongside some other pony adventurers. Zephyrus showed Twilight the memory and Gigan described the ponies to me. Other than his color and age, the hat was a dead give away for Starswirl. Eurus was locked away and that permanently crippled their powers with only three of them… We must have been sired not long after,” Adagio frowned as she shook off how uncomfortable a lot of these thoughts were making her, “East to South, South to West, West to North, North to East. One horrid circle. Add us three in and they’d be stronger than they’ve ever been. Make a storm to end all storms.”

“That wipe this place off the map,” Godzilla growled with narrowed eyes, remembering the amount of reality warping, havoc, and damage just one apparently weakened windigo could cause when going all out with no heed to their constitution. Now the problem wasn’t just multiplied, but exponential, “Wipe this continent clean.”

“And if they can wrench open whatever hole Eurus was buried in, what happens when Zephyrus opens a bunch of portals on a leyline where the dimensional barrier is weakest to jam that storm into? You could hit everywhere on this planet, everywhere on that crazy pony planet,” Gigan frowned, trying to keep himself stable. He really should have been desensitized to devastation, but both being at the claws of one windigo up close and trying to grasp the scale of this all left him with only one suitable metric to compare against.

“Equestria’s own answer to Grand King Ghidorah. A full-blown planet scourger of a superstorm. Even if they get stopped, the damage they could do in even just a few minutes…”

It was telling how tense the scene was when a van very cautiously pulled up to their position and clicked into a park, a very shaken Princess Celestia stepping out on legs that looked like jelly. Her skin was white as a sheet and the de-aged alicorn practically had her eyes spiraling. Huffing some fright and strain away, she swallowed a breath.

“Oh ponyfeathers, been about a thousand years since I drove. Those bumper-cars Starswirl and I checked were a lot simpler when you’re not trying to bump into things,” Celestia panted, jaw a bit agape as she put her hands on her hips and looked at everyone’s rattled expressions and blank faces.

“... What’d I miss?”

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

In the back of the Cake's evacuating van, Wallflower Blush shuddered and twitched. Awareness replenished across her nerves, like water pushed down parched streams to fill them. Everything ached and she wasn't mentally reconfigured enough to fully understand what was going on around her. She only could react on impulses, such as clinging to the blankets wrapped around her and curl into a tighter ball to shy away from the sudden rattling that shook the van. A raucous uproar came upon the outside of the van and dark blurs shot past the windows. Wallflower whimpered and tried to cover her ears from the painful outburst. A large flock of birds and bats rushed by, squawking in fear and joined by numerous rats, dogs, and even a few deer in sprinting down the packed road. The animals weaved through the slow-moving traffic at haste, running for their lives.

Then, as fast as the horde came, it left.

A dead quiet devoured the airspace for a few protracted moments, before the van lurched downwards and forwards. Metal springs pushed on the suspension, the Cakes' van and several other cars all groaning from being struck behind by an invisible force. A strong, directed gust of wind bearing down on them from the south.

One that carried a unworldly wailing.

============================
The Winter War Concludes Next Chapter

Sneak Preview of the Finale
============================

Zephyrus finally let himself revel in success and loosed a victorious laugh.

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

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

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

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

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

Burning light and pressure waves pushed forth harder and harder as the microscopic fractions of a second ticked by. Gloriosa Daisy ran in front of the group. It was a foolish gambit. No powers, no skills, no defense, and she was still bleeding out from her injury. There was nothing she could do against a human sized kaiju, much less a true to form one. And yet she still looked back at the group. Hair blown back by the shock wave that slammed into her, simple tears running down cheeks that bore a brave smile. She looked at the shocked kaiju, the Bearers of the Elements, and beyond to two not present on the battlefield that had destroyed her home.

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

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

============================
Preview for Godzilla: New Era - Act 2
============================

Io had spent hours after the incident, totally alone. She didn’t know what was happening, why her body had suddenly exploded with phantom pains that had no source. She’d thrashed, screamed, and shouted out briefly before holding it all in; despite feeling like she was jabbed with needles, flooded with nausea, and then burning herself up.

Everything was distorted, messied, and blurry; in mind and in vision. There was only one thing made clear to her. One thing that cut through the pandemonium and stilled the mind.

A high pitched, shrill shriek that blurred into a booming roar, rattling between her ears. The call she once heard in the Kyoto Institute years ago, ebbing into the outcry heard on the cliffside a few nights ago.

Her eyes snapped open, the black veins surrounding them relaxing gradually and shrinking from their once heavily inflamed and swollen state. The world no longer spinning and her body no longer wracked with pains. She was laying on the floor, the scattered papers that had been her summer homework flapping about across the table when pushed on by the fans. Io Shinoda lay there, her pale white hair spilled out across the floor and sweat sticking to her skin.

She stayed put, breathing gradually in and out to control her nerves… Until a near-imperceptible sense of unease came upon her, like the feeling one gets when they know they are in someone else’s attention or line of sight. Perhaps it was just her mind playing tricks on her, or perhaps it was her mental gifts picking up something they didn’t know how to describe. Like some other sort of consciousness, one getting close.

Footsteps sounded faintly from the stairs leading up from the fisheries and to the front door to the apartment she and her father had jerry-rigged into the GPN headquarters.

Io kept quiet, eyes wide and expression blank as she slowly turned to get on her hands and knees. There was an unease in her nerves even without knowing who it was. One that made those veins chill and tingle like they were being pricked across her body.

Miss Ichinose always tapped off in a rhythm, waiting for Io to whack on a wall twice as a signal it was okay to come in. A bargain they’d made in exchange for Io giving Yuki a key to the apartment, after her father was kept away working with G-Force for the past week.

There was no tapping, and yet the door’s lock clicked open.

A person opened the doorway and stepped through, wearing a G-Force uniform that kept the fishery from asking questions. They wore a thick, dark coat and medical mask to obscure their features, but strode inside without complaint or comment. Tall in frame, with a size hidden by the thick coat, the officer withdrew from the doorway without taking out any key.

The officer looked about the room, eyes moving in different directions than their head. There was a sense they too knew they were being watched and were taking pains to avoid such notice, closing a window shade and shutting a curtain beside the front door.

Io Shinoda tucked herself into a more compact crouch, hiding under her desk and desperately keeping up the mental projection of the wall and floor behind her so a passing glance wouldn’t see her. This was an age-old trick of hers, just about the only psychic power she’d ever developed beyond some empathy that she couldn’t do remotely like others. Her abilities never fully matured and she had been content to think she’d never get anything particularly special.

Until right about now. Touching the mind of this intruder, even just cusping the edge of it to keep the illusion up; her skin and nerves crawled. They looked human, but the horrific sense of wrongness was unshakable from their mind. It wasn't any consciousness, it was something totally alien.

The intruder stepped down near the table and Io had to cover her mouth to hold in a scared whimper, so unnerved by the mind she could feel even just rudimentarily.

The G-Force officer that obviously wasn’t turned and headed back towards the door. Any fleeting hope the young miss Shinoda had that the monster in human skin was leaving however, was quickly dashed. They drew up a finger, which had a bony protrusion sticking out of the tip. It was stuck inside the door handle and turned, the lock snapping back into place. The bone piece, a key composed of organic material, was snapped off inside the lock without any sign of pain.

Not bleeding from ripping a chunk of their digit out, the thing paced back into the room and back towards the table. A hand snapped around the edge and gripped the hardwood with unnatural strength. The timber groaned and cracked slightly from the indentation of abnormally long digits into the wood. Without showing any effort in doing so, the entire table was lifted from the floor, the Millennian drone surveying where it thought it detected something a moment ago to find nothing there. By the time they’d approached, Io had gotten on her hands and knees and scrambled away as silently as she could into her bedroom whilst keeping her illusion up.

Putting the table back down, the drone’s face seemed to shift and perforate. Several openings appeared across the cheek and throat, varying in size and a few sporting whiskers as a side-effect of generation. Nostrils of various people and animals sucked gluttonously at the air; whilst the drone’s eyes perched upon the computers. It was here for more than just one thing, and it could afford to multitask.

After all, the girl was still here and had no way out now.

Author's Note:

No Reader Works section, as I'm saving the works of FallenAngel, LordShrek, and others for one big one to cap off the end of the arc

Illustrations by Faith-Wolff, the second one is a WIP so please be patient :)
Proofreader by Lance-Omikron
Warhawk byKrovgor Warhawk

Comments

[Moongaze14]

Just woke up to this chapter and it was great. I love how Pinkie and Lea develop in this chapter, especially how Pinkie develops her powers via the song she used in the second episode of the series and Lea gets access to the Battra side of her power. It’s great that Lea is overcoming her issues and I also enjoyed the description of Australis as a powerful yet pitiful creature corrupted by Windigo magic, especially since the artwork shows Sonata with ice piercing her body and ichor bleeding out along with a miserable expression on her face. The conclusion of the Winter Arc is near and happy that 2021 ended with such a great chapter. Only suggestion I recommend is bolding Boreas’ line since they are hard to read.

[Supersonic]

Top gear style recap 53 (from Goji's POV:)

Tonight, Sonata gets a horrifying makeover, Lea tests out some brand new powers, and Pinkie Pie becomes MVP.

[The Voice in the Water]

Ohh, this is getting good. I'm not going to read the previews so that I'm fully surprised.

[redandready45]

Jagged, icy antlers erupted in differing angles and sizes to crown the head. Glimmering frost seemed to gush forth from the place where Sonata’s scar once was, now an empty void one couldn’t look upon without feeling their mind begin to spasm at trying to perceive that cavity’s depth. One arm was twisted, stretched, and broken in a way sure to have dislocated the shoulder and elbow from their sockets; covered in a gout of ice that approximated a partway combination of a bludgeon and set of talons. The left arm was emaciated and covered chiefly in frostbitten, bruised and deathly pale skin, shards of ice erupting from some of the surface and encasing half the hand. Her right leg mirrored her right arm, face for several icey spurs jutting through her knee and lower leg; which arched around and reconnected back into the flesh. Her foot was entirely composed of frozen tissue and ice, roughly approximating a cloven hoof. Her left leg, by comparison, was entirely frozen inside and out, bent and broken into a digitigrade shape resembling a pronghorn’s limb. She bore no clothes, adding to her decrepit, pathetic and emaciated state. Mist seeped from her face and scalp, with jagged icicles crowning her hips and pushing through the skin of her rips to create the visage of a gaping, ever hungry maw on her starved looking belly.

Man, I thought Frostbite Sparkle was the most horrifying thing you could draw. But this is so much worse: at least with Frostbite, you can still some traces of humanity. Going from an adorable and bubbly girl to...this is a steeper fall from grace.

I can imagine what Adagio and Aria would feel if they saw their Sonata in this form:

Horror, seeing Sonata suffer the most horrific transformation possible.

Fear, seeing the fate their sires had intended for thme.

Anger, at the Windigos for orchestrating this.

But also, the feeling that they dodged a bullet: this is a form born from absorbing too much dark energy. Adagio and Aria might feel more relief that they (mostly) abandoned their desire for absolute power and buried the hatchet, thinking this would've been their fate if they kept relying on negative energy.

“You need to keep her away!” Lea yelled out as she reconstituted herself on the roof of a cabin and threw the barrier back down on Boreas, straining in the act therein being a struggle akin to jamming a bucket down on top of a geyser to try and keep the water in.

“Get her away from here! I can barely keep this one contained!”

Lea cringed as Australis’ shrunken, insane eye locked upon her; the other side of the former siren’s face covered in frost from the mask of ice resembling a pronghorn skull, that had grown overtop her face. She couldn’t tell if the malice in the glare was aimed at her especially, she didn’t know or cause offense to this siren personally but in this manic state of mind she was lashing out at anything. Or, if it was out of rage at the barrier keeping Australis from Boreas.

Man, this is a truly nail-biting and frustrating situation: having to both beat the bad guy by stopping your angry and vengeful friend from...beating the bad guy. While also keeping the bad guy restrained

It shows how horrifying Boreas is as an opponent: even if you win against him, you still can lose. Even if Australis "wins" she'll kill X's body, be consumed by hate magic, and Boreas would be free to possess another host.

She was a highschooler who still wore a skirt decorated in lollipops and gumdrops on most days, skipped randomly when walking down a street, and got ‘nervocited’, and used that exact word to describe it, when trying to consider asking the ones she liked out to a malt shop of all places. Magic was just something that had blustered its way into her life less than a few months ago; tales of an urban legend in her childhood withstanding. She was surrounded by magical warriors, monsters, witches, and now frost demons; and she was astronomically out of her league.

It was terrifying.

She was terrified. Voided of everything else but that.

Being a magical superhero ain't all sunshine and rainbow lasers: it means being the target of malevolent beings who want you to suffer...or worse.

All of the accumulated dark mist, the worst of thoughts and emotions, flooded outwards from the shattered seal. Boreas grinned upon glimpsing the blurry mass spring into the air and launching herself upon him, Australis bearing down with lethal intent. He opened his arms, like he was ready to embrace the first windigo truly born in over a thousand years; and let all of the dark magic he’d exuded flood into her all at once. It would be her baptism, a full removal of any impurities left behind by her mother.

Except, the seal below his feet leftover from Mothra’s spell rapidly shifted and reappeared. It didn’t enclose itself around him again, he was too quick and dodged aside; but it wasn’t specifically aiming for him. A hand extended towards the spellwork even as its owner lay on the ground nearby. Mothra Lea laid on her side, hair spilled over her face with a trickle of blood coming from her scalp and nose. And despite looking like she was in a world of pain, she’d dutifully kept her magic going.

Her arm raised up and yanked back, her seal rushing back to her with all of the dark magic being carried with it. She couldn’t keep them both locked on either side of a barrier, so she instead took all of the strife and hatred meant for Australis and threw it at herself. Her left eye, the only one opened with the right closed from pain, looked at the livid Boreas who’d finally stopped carrying that manic grind on his face.

She smiled as the darkness came close.

-I came her to heal her, like Daiei I’m letting you hurt my patient…-

The mists accumulated by all of Boreas’ efforts, not easily replaceable, flooded the downed Mothra and were completely absorbed into her. They seeped and trickled in across all of her tattoos, eyes, and mouth, which flashed dimly and pulsed with light. Agony ripped through her, not just in body but also in mind.

You go girl! Lea going to such lengths to protect someone she doesn't even know proves she is truly a hero.

She smiled when Pinkie Pie, without even looking, as if she could sense a part of her coming close, caught it and was engulfed in a flash of light.

Within both of their minds, Retainer and Bearer, a proud, gentle voice whispered to them both.

-Pinkamena Diane Pie, you are capable of encouraging great joy and courage through Laughter…-

Gloriosa could only weakly smirk with pride as she watched Pinkie’s magic fully erupt into being.

-You got this…-

Words of encouragement from Harmony...the sweetest prize after the most bitter of fights. It shows that laughter can help you stand against the dark.

The moment Gigan and Adagio had company, the four had split into two pairs. Adagio, after a moment to ensure Gigan wasn’t going to fall apart the moment she let go of him, and then a few moments more to be extra sure; sprinted over and pulled her cousin into a bear hug the moment Kaizer Aria landed.

These two must go on a date. Even in battle, they look out for one another.

“Remember, Flash Sentry was able to fight from the inside and with some appeals to his consciousness, Notus was weakened and exposed,” he lightly tapped her arm with the back of his knuckles, “Did it once, we can do it again. This also means Zephyrus’ has a possible vulnerability, assuming that Twilight would help us.”

Gigan chuckled, “As I was getting to, she already has.”

Both Aria and Godzilla snapped around to get closer to Gigan.

“Zephyrus, sick bastard, broke her down mentally right before taking over her body. In doing so he showed her what he was planning on. He probably never thought anyone would ever see them when she showed me. The sirens, taking their necklaces, that was just step one to get enough power on their side.”

“Zephyrus cultivated the right type of magic with Twilight, keeping her with a friend, instructing her in magic, making her think she was the heroine all in a bid to foster her power. Then bolster her with a stolen siren necklace, or three, and anything else he could get. Then take it all for himself. And use it,” He just shook his head, both at the audacity of the plan and the sheer magnitude of damage magic could cause; something he’d previously never even imagined, “To bring back Eurus, and start a reckoning.”

I'm really curious as to what the Sirens and the Dark-Hunters think of Sci-Twi now, knowing that she was manipulated and worn down and is now divulging Zephyrus' plan. They probably are not going to be buddy-buddy with her. Manipulation or not, she still worked with Zephyrus of her own accord. But their burning hatred might dissipate.

---

My only real critique is that I feel that Pinkie's transformation from "Sonata's funny friend" to "laughing hero" is a bit abrupt. Pinkie using that power is good, but she didn't have any personal struggle to go through before she gained that power in the first place.

The scene is found, but Pinkie only goes through... a few moments of terror and pain before she suddenly rises to the occasion.

[Late_Night]

..what is Godzilla: New Era?
also, sure hope that next chapter comes soon

[ScourgeofLightning]

Wendigo Sonata has a really cool look to her and I liked the whole brawl in the campground. That said, I do think that Lea's issues were resolved a bit oddly with Pinkie. I do like the ideas present and I feel like the optimism angle is absolutely a valid one, but I dunno, just something about it was off.

The exposition at the end is actually pretty welcome given how spaced out the chapters have been, it's nice to have everything freshened up so we have a good idea of what's going on as we head into the finale. I really like that extra context and look forward to the next.

[Temnizziv]

Okay. So first impressions.

I liked the action of the campground brawl. Windigo Sonata was simultaneously eerie & sad. Boreas is still a creep. And our heroes still have a good rapport between them.

As for the Pinkie scene, maybe it could've been done better. But honestly, the scene as is works for me. I like it well enough.

Aria immediately teasing Dagi about kissing Gigan got a chuckle out of me. Though the exposition in the scene did drag on halfway through. And the ending is fucking ominous for what Sonny is gonna do next.

Overall good chapter.

The 53 promo has me curious on how X's Kaiju form is functioning under the Windigoes & the notable changes to X's powerset.

For New Era, fuck that scene. Why you gotta remind me on why Millennians are fucking creepy, Tarb!? Lmao

[mjadino8823]

Nice to see the battra part of lea being delved into. The finale of the current arc is giving me vibes that it's going to leave many of us exhausted from all the action not unlike the finale of GKG.

[CrystalMaster76]

I’ve been very positive of the direction this arc has taken in the last several chapters, the third act was really hitting its stride with some solid to excellent payoff. So it bums me out to say that this, the penultimate chapter, kind of dropped the ball. It’s not bad, but I walked away mostly lukewarm.

The bookends were solid. Wallflower is well out of position to get help from any of the allied forces, but random acts of kindness is something Zephyrus couldn’t account for. He also didn’t account for certain deities taking an interest in his machinations but where that goes is anyone’s guess.

Solid in a vacuum but awkwardly placed in practice is the reunion scene at the end. Little character bits like Aria using her hair braid as an improvised necklace, Junior returning Gigan’s lost finger and especially the imagery of kid Celestia driving a car are cute, but the scene largely consists of catching two characters up on information the readers already know. So it being placed at the end of the chapter after the main action brings things to an awkward halt with a decent chunk of the chapter still to go. This scene is fine but would’ve been better served at the beginning of the chapter.

So the main bulk of the action is the battle at Camp Everfree, and most of this is pretty good. Sonataustralis’ description perfectly captures something that is both horrifying and pitiful, especially after her skull mask is broken. Double kudos to Faith’s artwork on this one. Her actions also avert my worries from the previous chapter. Her being like this is still very bad for the heroes, and she’s already getting worse, but she’s still trying to fight back and not going after her friends deliberately.

Gloriosa and Megalon don’t get as much to do, but the duel use of Gloriosa’s catchphrase was striking both times. She’s been treading the line between mama bear and cool big sis for the Hunter-Sirens this whole arc, so this was good payoff. Her being wounded is ominous, but leads to a great bit of reasoning under pressure from her. 

Which leaves…Pinkie and Lea. Everything they do before and after Lea’s down but not out moment is great. I especially enjoy Lea having to work around a new set of powers and Pinkie almost talking Sonataustralis down. But then there’s Pinkie getting Lea out of the negative energy induced breakdown and that just didn’t work.

Getting something subjective out in the open. Giggle at the Ghosties is a song i find really annoying, so this scene already had an uphill battle with me. Here are the less subjective issues. Numbered for ease of response, if desired.
1. Song in test form. You can’t listen to written text (audible notwithstanding) and that especially affects the way music works. A song is simply not going to have all of it’s elements just by writing it out. At least in this arc, both songs are at least from MLP FIM, but that can only carry so much.
2. It's Jarring. While it was jarring during the battle of the bands, at least Welcome to the Show and Music in the Heart were written with use in a final battle in mind, so imagining them played during that scene isn’t that unfitting. Giggle at the Ghosties is a comedy song from by far the most light hearted of FIM’s two parters. It’s so jarring so as to be distracting, when it’s surrounded by Sonataustralis, Lea’s trauma memories and everything else.
3. I get that the point here is that the song itself isn’t what pulls Lea out of it, but the sheer absurdity of the situation. That’s what makes her laugh. I personally did not find it funny, but what actually matters is that I do not buy that Lea would think it was funny. This is the kind of pick me up that would work on Rodan or Megalon.
4. No Good Set Up. I know the chapter points this one out as part of the absurdity, but Pinkie and Lea have barely interacted in this story, so it’s just so weird that she’s the one to pull her out of this. If the story had played up Pinkie being genuinely scared of Lea during her breakdown phase and Lea was more prominently worried that she chased Pinkie off, this would’ve worked a lot better. 
5. The sheer amount of times the writing draws attention to the situational absurdly of the situation gets annoying fast. The arc in general has a bit of an over explaining things issue and this is just a notable case.
6. Lea’s ‘plan’. Lea trapping a wave of negative emotions heading for Sonataustrailus and redirecting to herself? Cool. Nice spin on Mothra’s habit of taking bullets for others. But she didn’t have any plan to try and mentally hold off the negative emotions afterwards? Especially since, by now, she knows what the Windigo’s MO is.
7. Repetition. This whole thing is far too similar to Junior’s talk with Lea for my liking. Yes the circumstances are wildly different. But it’s still Lea needing to be pulled out of a negative spiral by a benevolent party. And after the tender and thoughtful interaction in that scene, Pinkie’s random song number just can’t hold a candle. I would’ve preferred if Lea was mostly able to save herself here. 
8. I do not buy that this is what triggers Pinkie’s element. To be blunt, a random, desperate song number pales in comparison to what Pinkie did a few chapters ago with the party she threw for Sonata. That was much more deliberate, thoughtful, and believably helpful to both Sonata and Megalon. Maybe if it was treated like this was an afterthought and Pinkie was already worthy, but the Harmony voice tells me that this was meant to be the big Pinkie moment. 

Okay, that was a lot, but if i’m being honest, nothing about this worked for me for one reason or another. But in the interest of not just bashing, allow me to present how I would’ve handled this.

Lea absorbs the negative energy, but she actually has a plan to try and fight back. Before it hits her, she latches onto as many happy memories of all of her allies as she can, hoping to weather the storm. The Windigo energy combined with Batra’s hatred steadily win out. Her allies back on Terra? Frustrations like being blasted by the D-Tide or Raiga always wanting to fight. And repeat that trend for her allies in Equestria, the Rainbooms, the Hunters, Twilight and finally her fellow defenders. But! They aren’t able to corrupt her visage of Junior. The earlier scenes with the two of them pay off, as no matter what happens, that solid rock of a friendship cannot be twisted.
On the outside, Pinkie doesn't suffer a brief lapse to despair, instead she notices (via her Pinkie sense and Sonataustralis’ actions) that Sonataustralis hasn’t been trying to harm them deliberately, and laughs. Laughs that for all of Boreus’ boasting, her friend is still in there. Gloriosa has her character beat and gives Pinkie the necklace. It activates on the spot and the resulting harmony magic wave takes the edge off of Lea’s attack.
Lea, building off of her memories of Junior, steadily works through all of the horrible images that had been thrown at her. Culminating in her looking at the visage of Senior killing her father.
“All the fears of the bygone times were real, but the grip they’d once commanded drowning and strangling her heart was pried off. Junior was not that Godzlla. She pushed forward and spared the memory no further thought. Lea laughed victoriously as she reached the doorways, braving the tides spewing out. And she was not that Battra.”

That’s how I think I would’ve handled it. But hey, several others have said they liked how things went here, so this may just be me. In the end the outcome of the scene is still good, so it doesn’t harm the surroundings too much.
In the end, it's a good chapter, but not as good as what has come before.

[Seraphem]

Damnit Tarb.....

And when a multi-story tall monster taller than any building in town roars out something that sounded an awful lot like “GO AWAY”, pretty much everybody had unanimously decided “OKAY!” and started high-tailing it out

Just starting and already laughing my ass off!

Though... you have a tense shift from present to past in there

Also... shut up editing brain... but nouning an adjective feels odd and incomplete. The whole just saying "the unconscious" Still, nice, sweet opening

Though... hadn't Wallflower been pretty badly beaten too? At least enough that should be remarked on aside from just her being freezing, or do I misremember?

Tarb... dude... damn... that is just... damn that description of Australius is creepy AF! Some one make with Friendship powered healing wave asap for the poor thing!

Don’t you see, she can’t feel the shackling restraints of love and friendship anymore!”

Blah blah, we'll see you damn wind bag.

Hell yeah Lea!

Back to editor mode

But given her extreme departure from how Sonata should have looked and sounded, it was very evident there was nothing resembling the mermare portion of the hybrid’s mind holding onto the mental reins

Here, it's a sample of something I tried to explain in general. The story over explaining things. Going a bit too detail about yelling us stuff that it is already showing and would be better to let be conveyed through actions where it has more impact. Still a freaking awesome fight so far though!

Her arm raised up and yanked back, her seal rushing back to her with all of the dark magic being carried with

Oh...oh dammn... okay that arc isn't over..... fun times ahead.

Australis had a chance to attack, and yet she’d run right past her; crying this dark fluid the whole way.

Yeah... blow hard didn't know what he was talking about.... Come on Pinkie! Nakama time!

...............
............

~when I was a little kiddie and the sun was going dooo-oown

Yes... yes... yesyesyes.....all the yes... do this... very much do this!!!!!

Damnit Tarb.....

She knew fear well. Fear led to despair and that was the opposite of hope. And hope was the predecessor to what she stood for. Some would take the joy she reveled as silly party affairs, but there was much more to it than that. Laughter wasn’t just about happiness in the times that were going good. It was just as much about fighting off the worst of times. Be it trauma of the ancients afflicting a heroine or a scared little girl hiding under her bed after stories of frost monsters. In that way, laughter gained through hope, stood for courage

I'm at work... I don't need you making me cry right now!

Oda and Horikoshi do that enough!

You know... on second look....

Betrayal, when an upstart ancient city tried to seize more power and slay the Battra calling for them to stop their devastation of the living world around them. Despair, when the wise titan that had virtually raised their ancestors suddenly changed one day due to actions the Battra had failed to stop and ripped the world apart

Huh.... well now, by any chance might these two thing be connected?

The cheer, the positivity, the laughter it engendered by proxy and action. It wasn’t Pinkie Pie fighting off the darkness alone, it was her giving Lea the gumption to do so herself. All, with a laugh.

Yeah..... yeah.... this whole bit was amazing! This is just..... this is Pinkie Pie at her best...

I'm not crying.... it's liquid pride!

Even so, the Battra that was fully Lea was still smiling as she cracked her knuckles.

Oh hell yeah! it is ON!

And a battra couldn’t do the same sort of spellwork a mothra could

. Can't make things too easy.... oh well just beating his smug ass is going to be FAR more satisfying anyway.

She braced her head against her home cabin’s walls and probed at the hole in her shirt covered up by the jacket. Her fingers felt a hot dampness at her side, along with a hardened bur of something that was decidedly not part of her body.

Oh.... oh boy.... this is not good

Gloriosa almost felt a spur of the moment instinct to pull it out. But she didn’t know how deep it was in her and having nothing to staunch the wound made that a horrible idea.

well smart enough for that at least.

I mean on the plus side... As much as she's moving around and still conscious, it clearly didn't hit her heart or a lung, so likely isn't that deep. Definitely some long term issues with infection and such, but Lea can deal with that easy after the fight, or even just a hospital. The only real immediate danger given the lack of any other issues would be blood lose, but it doesn't seem to be bleeding that bad and she's not pulling it out. Main thing now would be find away to immobilize the thing.

Heh

Privy to exact relationships or histories he was not, but Godzilla was still more perceptive than most would think.

"Yeah yeah I, I totally get what's going on!"

Oh.... oh fuck...

The divide between this realm and Equestria proper is weak, might account for so many similarities.

So he plans to Go full Midnight Sparkle Greeeeaaaat, though on the plus side... please do try that and meet the OTHER kaiju and a fully active and operation Orbital Friendship and Unity Cannon Krew.

“To bring back Eurus, and start a reckoning.”

Oh..... or not... still bad though

A large flock of birds and bats rushed by, squawking in fear and joined by numerous rats, dogs, and even a few deer in sprinting down the packed road. The animals weaved through the slow-moving traffic at haste, running for their lives.

Okay, this is the universal sign for, you aren't running fast enough get. the fuck. out of there. NOW!

Okay..... yeah... This chapter was freaking amazing!

Only real critique is the already pointed out tendency to get a little over explainy about stuff rather then just let the characters actions speak for themselves issue that's been cropping up, but beyond that, this was pure gold!

Going a bit deeper.... do have to say that Lea's whole arc does feel like it most really could have used more focus and development to really hit as well as it should have, but the Pinkie bit... oh that Pinkie bit.... that was pure an utter gold and just, so perfect for so many reasons. And since
11094457 put out a good list of potential issues, my rebuttals to them.

1. Yes, on the whole pulling off a song in text can be tricky, but this is how you do pull it off, use a song that there is a very good likelihood a large portion of your audience will already know and be able to fill in the sounds for just from memory, much like the last time, or in more general terms those "They say you can't hear an image" memes. And this song is one that yeah, pretty much all the main audience will know, and for an added help, her did embedded a version of the song to match what is going on as an extra aid (though it was kind of low in the story to really help with that, only coming in near the end of the song.)

2. Being jarring is kind of the point. It is a response so outside of what one would expect given the situation that no one really knows how to react, and yet, reacting this way is so perfectly Pinkie Pie. That the original version of the song is a much lighter situation doesn't change the similarities between the two nor that this is actually a kind of perfect response and way to fight back against a being made of pure hatred and fear. That it is such a much more serious situation just makes her doing this all the more powerful.

3. Yeah, Rodan or Megs would be far more into this and far more quick to laugh, but being confronted with something so disjointed and so out of place when already running at near maximum emotional stress, even without the song itself directly encouraging laughter making it more likely that a momentarily blue screened Lea.exe would just pick up on that input to go with, laughing is a perfectly valid and probable reaction.

4. If anything about this directly relied on Mea and Pinkie bonding or having the connection to work, then yes, it would need more set up of that. But this just relied on Pinkie being Pinkie, someone was hurting and she did everything she could to help them.

5. Yeah can't argue with this one, do agree that the story over explaining things has been kind of an issues throughout this arc.

6. There really wasn't time to come up with any 'plan', this was just pure reaction to a bad situation, and Lea trying to first thing she could think of to have any effect on things.

7. Not really any idea what to say to this one since I'm not seeing how the two are that repetitive beyond the most broad strokes concept

8. But Gloriosa wasn't there for that party. This was the first time Gloriosa has been near enough to Pinkie Pie while Pinkie was doing her thing for the geode to react. And I don't really see how this is some proof that Pinkie is worthy in and of itself, anymore then Pony Pinkie singing in the forest was some singular moment of proof beyond it being what Twilight saw that made her realize this. None of the other Rainbooms had to do anything like that. It's just that this is, as noted, the first time Gloriosa was able to see it and realize who she should be giving the gem to. Harmony's voice, while her being a bit melodramatic potentially, rang to me more like when a Lantern Ring locates a new bearer, it's just a reaction to the object finding someone worthy of it.

This was just, quite possibly the most quintessentially Pinkie Pie way to handle this situation.... at least when Pinkie doens't have the power on hoof/hand to just drop giant cupcakes on her foes And an amazing showing of what makes Laughter so important and the power it can have and I loved every moment of it!

Except for the bits about Sonata because that is just.... ow..... right in the feels.....

[KRMebius]

Looks like the pendulum swinging in the teams favor lets hope some of this good luck last but for long can the truce between both teams last for and with Zephyrus and the wendigos at the gates ?!

Find out next time on the last chapter Godzilla the bridge winter arc!!

[Tyrant King]

Can you do The Bridge: The Rise of Belial.
It's about when Godzilla Jr and Luna have a daughter and becomes Celestia's new student along with Twilight. But a New threat has come to Equstria, Ultraman Belial. Belial unleashes his 100 Kaiju army all over equus. New allies to Godzilla: A Unicorn named Ray and his Monsters Gomora and Litra, Ultraman Zero and Gamera. New enemy: Ultraman Belial. It's up to Godzilla, The mane 6, Ray and his Gomora and Litra, Anguirus, Rodan, Zilla, Celestia, Luna, Godzilla and Luna's daughter, Ultraman Zero, and Gamera to stop Ultraman Belial and his army of 100 Kaiju.
Please do this.

[Tyrant King]

I like the chapter. 👍🙂

[GodzillaGeek 2002]

Okay so I know that these characters have had absolutely ZERO interaction but, I wonder if in the upcoming chapters Godzilla will try to help get through to Sonata by sympathizing with her. I mean he has been in a very similar situation to her, what with being taken over by NightMare and all. I mean being infused with dark magic, having their bodys stretched and contorted in ways that it NEVER should, having their minds so messed up that they are barely even conscious anymore and are basically turned into beast's working off of mostly instinct, wanting revenge against and or to kill someone that is partly (In Godzilla's case) or fully (In Sonata's case) responsible for their transformations, while also trying not to directly harm their close friends, and all the while being incredibly pissed off and completely terrified that they have been turned into the monster that they deep down probably always feared they were dammed to become.... So like I said kinda similar situations.

I don't know just a thought

[Evowizard25]

Alright, let's get to reviewing. The battle was fantastic as always. In all honesty, I love how you combine horror with action when it comes to the Wendigos. It makes them probably some of the most frightening fights in the entire story. I think that's why it's so satisfying to see them go down because of how they are built. Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant take on these terrifying creatures.

As a Mothra fan, the way you combine both sets of her in this fight was well done. How she had to redifine herself and what it meant to have both Battra and Mothra aspects to her. While she doesn't have it fully set in place, it's still a great boost for her. Really emotional and a great part for her character. Love Mothra Lea in this.

The song was a nice bonus and lovely to see Pinkie aiding in this fight.

While I can't say too much about the last part. Mostly exposition but there was some nice character dynamics.

Overall, a really great addition to the battle. I'm glad it's still going on. I feel really sorry for Sonata and the torment she's going through. The pictures really add to the description. Hopefully her friends can get through to her soon. I can't wait to read the next part.

[Hunter101]

I know this is a little late but Happy new years everybody!

[Tarbtano]

11105285
Tomoyuki Tanaka was the principle creator of Godzilla and the Kaiju genre as a whole, alongside others who worked with him on the original Godzilla film and it's sequels. So I used his name in place of "god" for the Kaiju cast as a joke.

[Rookie109]

With these windigos, I just play go tell aunt rhode

[KaijuFanForever]

-Pinkamena Diane Pie, you are capable of encouraging great joy and courage through Laughter…-

Tarb, is this a reference to the Lantern Rings from DC, cause I'm pretty sure that they say something like this when they bond with their new users

also, Poor Sontana. good thing Mothra knows healing magic

[Supersonic]

11128185
No, I actually wanted him because of his voice as Khan in Star Trek Into Darkness.

[Loa of Lore]

This was probably one of the most interesting chapters that I have ever read in a long time, the character interactions were great and the whole of the chapter was great overall, especially when you decided to put in a reference to something else. Though I do wonder who the deity is that was mentioned?

Anyway, I was wondering would it be alright for me to write my own sidestory to this, it would be non-canon, but I would do my best to keep to the canon of the overall universe, though I would mostly just be focusing on the Titans from the Monsterverse, though I did think about how to incorporate Ultima and the other monsters introduced in Singular Point though I am thinking of having Ultima being a time god of sorts, my reasoning is that Ultima was essentially the living embodiment of the singularity, meaning that it was possibly a being that was beyond the scope of time. And just to let you know, I have been getting some experience on doing some non-canon sidestories, where I do my best to be respectful to the canon material that I am using. And well, I have thought of what I would do with the whole concept of the Hollow Earth and well, I began to wonder, what would happen if a Titan or a Kaiju were to gain access to the Hollow Earth Energy and how many other planets are like Earth, and for Titanus Ghidorah, how powerful is the Father of Ghidorah? Plus, I did learn about more of King Ghidorah from Dangerville, and I want to see about incorporating some Monsterverse stuff, while also being respectful to the other established stuff.
The main reason why I am saying this stuff is because I want to first get permission to do so before I actually start working on anything, but even so I can't really guarantee that it will be done as soon as possible because of other things that I need to do, but I would probably first focus more on establishing a Timeline of sorts which would be modified to incorporate as much lore from the different eras that are included in this Amalgam'verse, so I would most likely do my best to modify some past events to incorporate the Titans cause those guys are really old and with the Hollow Earth seemingly being a different realm that exists within the Earth, I have a feeling that the modifications will first have to deal with how to have some prior events to incorporate the Hollow Earth and why it wasn't even mentioned nor used by the Kaiju as a new home, plus, I have a feeling that the impact of an asteroid wouldn't really affect the Hollow Earth and that includes any other extinction events that occur on the surface. But anyway, is it alright that I do it or is it not ok for me to do it?

[ThePMB-Brony]

I see that you're revamped Starlight Glimmer and Wallflower Blush (Two of the most hated hated in MLP IMAO), into more better characters. What are the chances that Haruo Sakaki is going to get the same treatment. (I mean if you bring him in, then you would have offically revamped the 'Toxic Trio')

P.S. I know that you've post an Halloween special with him in it, but I'm excluding that.

P.S.S. Perhaps Haruo was the one who fired DT in the first place. Haruo Sakaki Caused the Bridge!

P.S.S.S. I like Pie!

[THE_NERD]

static.wikia.nocookie.net/legendary-series-monsterverse/images/8/8b/61m9VoGmt1L._AC_SY606_.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20200225145735 static.wikia.nocookie.net/legendary-series-monsterverse/images/6/63/Godzilla-king-of-the-monsters-mothra-poster.jpg/revision/latest/top-crop/width/360/height/450?cb=20200219191402 wallpapercave.com/uwp/uwp606333.jpeg i.pinimg.com/474x/ee/ec/15/eeec15b9ffe79208e61cc6d90e4bb4b1.jpg i.pinimg.com/originals/b8/d0/57/b8d0575d6035d45f596ebbb168d185bd.png static.wikia.nocookie.net/legendary-series-monsterverse/images/f/fc/56edf9144028c477a92c39fe722250aa.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20200422151350

[redandready45]

11016366

And now I can't unsee SciTwi being given a panel with 3 judges, given negative marks for her misdeeds but finally one good one for this sequence XD

The one good judge was probably Harmony.

The first judge would probably scold Sci-Twi for blindly trusting a total stranger. Though granted, Zephyrus was very good at playing the good guy, and Sci-Twi had no other real frame of reference for magical creatures. In this case, her actions can be described as ignorance. But even still, trusting a stranger is a downright foolish decision. She gets a demerit for that.

The second judge would definitely scold her for injuring and scarring Sonata and stealing her gem. Granted, the Dazzlings were once upon a time magical criminals, and Zephyrus was feeding her lies. And Sci-Twi certainly didn't deserve to be beaten to the point of hospitalization-Aria went way too far with revenge. But following orders isn't a good excuse for doing them, and Sci-Twi should've observed the Dazzlings to see if they were in any acting maliciously. She definitely deserves a demerit for badly injuring and robbing someone who wasn't acting maliciously.

Harmony would walk up to Sci-Twi and give the poor girl a hug, telling her that all of us make mistakes and she can try and be better. And she is doing that by revealing Zephyrus' plans.

Conclusion: Sci-Twi needs a little bit of punishment to learn responsibility, but she isn't undeserving of love or compassion and clearly wants to make things right.

[alexme7cer]

11180945
Ok

[Blodhgarm]

I'm only on 25 at the moment of this coment, having fallen out of FimFiction for a bit...

I just wanna say thanks for making one of the first, and best, fics that ever absorbed me so and made me realize why I love this fandom.

[Tarbtano]

11185571
You are most welcome. If you want to see more, I'd recommend checking out my blog posts for Godzilla: New Era, and keep your eye out for the neck chapter there and for Bridge proper.

[THE_NERD]

11175077 Luna used “Distraction”! It is super effective!

[FiredragonX]

Here’s hoping that Zephyrus gets what coming to him

[Mr Lore miser]

Love the story 💓 I just have one question when is the next chapter coming out it doesn't come out for a while and I'm starting to get worried

[diverseinterests47]

11258812
Tarb is working on the next chapter. He was just working on a little side project first. Said project was finished a few weeks ago, so the new chapter should be done sooner rather than later.

[Mr Lore miser]

Oh thank God

[Mr Lore miser]

Question is the bridge eclipse times still Canon or not

[Shrekzilla]

11263787
It still is.

[Shrekzilla]

11259937
If you are wondering, there was a prequel spin off of the story that you can check in Tarbtano’s blog.
It contains 24 parts.

[THE_NERD]

People waiting for the next update:
media1.giphy.com/media/10U98RnN2wbbry/giphy.gif

[Devonlui]

11275524
I have read that part, and while I'm fine with tarbtano juggling the kaiju's personalities. It just kinda feels underwhelming in hind-sight, but, the execution makes that slight disappointment just that, slight.

[Dragon-from-down-under]

11275578
If I remember correctly I think it was mention that Bagan was imprisoned under Attu island with the exception of two thwarted break out attempts later down the line , one just before the events of godzilla return in 1984 and from what little fragmented memory we have from senior via Xenilla dreams showing what he encountered near one of the planets poles which seems to be the catalyst that caused senior to rampage and target both Mothra and Battra when they awakened early.

[Hunter101]

So I have to preface that this comment was originally made back when Chapter 48 was the newest chapter and I’ve been adding to it since then, so if this comment seems a bit all over the place thats why. I wanted to get all My thoughts written down before the next chapter, so some of this will be about Chapter 48-53 since I never got around to commenting on them despite reading them day one as I procrastinated pretty hard on this comment, as well as a bit of New Era at the end of this.

First off I just want to say that I've enjoyed this arc, I know some people have had issues but for me I've actually got what I wanted from this arc since it started, I got to see the Dark Hunters and Terran Defender’s fight without killing each other(although I originally thought it would be X and Jr fighting before Chapter 48 came out), and I got to see both teams interact with each other, as well as stuff i didn’t expect like the concert, Jr sparing Iris and Gigan, the peace talks, and especially Godzilla Iris Anguirus and Aria’s team up against Zyherus. and let’s be honest the Windigo’s had an already partiality melted snowballs chance in hell of actually winning, so since I already thought that things would turn out all right I never had a problem with the Windigo’s or this arc’s tone even when it got heavy at time’s, I would like to see the two groups interact with each other more after the Windigos are defeated, personally I would like to know how Adagio would react to Godzilla Jr and Mothra lea being the de facto King and Queen to all the kaiju there including (technically) the Dark Hunters?

Godzilla Jr Twilight Sunset Gloriosa and Pinke are the main MVP’s of this arc so far Imo, of course the other characters have also done a lot as well.

I love how it's when Godzilla shows up that Gigan goes OH SHIT, Mothra's here and she's protecting Twilight? everything’s fine, We got the wrong Twilight and know for a fact Mothra will be looking for her with a vengeance? everything’s fine, Anguirus is here now as well and he's related to Irys? everything’s still fine, Godzilla Jr’s here? WELP plans fucked everybody panic! It give’s me joy and also make’s me in a wired sorta way proud that Jr even being one of the most heroic Godzilla incarnations I’ve seen, can still instill a powerful sense of dread in his foes, especially the ones that know him, aside from Grand King Ghidorah and Bagan(for now) simply by being there, I also find it funny how in spite of that, and despite it being more Mothra’s forte, He’s also the voice of reason this time! since she’s in a bad mental state for most of this arc.

The part where Jr’s transformed in chapter 48 is a highlight for me, seeing Godzilla from Iris and Gigans perspective was awesome to behold, and them finally feeling what a lot of humans have felt before as well, how he seems like a God that could crush them without effort and the fight they put him through and the scar's they gave him beforehand giving him a reason to, how he could at any moment crush them or completely atomize them and yet he spares them and how him doing that effect’s them, and the fact he was holding back somewhat during His fight before with Iris and Gigan despite how hard they were going at him show’s just how lucky humanity as well others got that Azusa Gojo was the one who found and raised him all those years ago.

For Twilight its nice to see that she was actually trying to get the Siren’s and Dark Hunters to have peace talk’s with her friend’s even if they didn’t listen until now, I was actually irritated with her for bit because I thought she hadn’t tried to broker peace between the two groups so I’m glad that got cleared up, and it’s awesome to see how she pretty much took over the Sirens and Dark Hunter’s simply by being so damn nice that they ended up just trusting her without much problem’s! I find it funny in a dark way that thing’s actively start to get better after the Dark Hunter’s and Siren’s plan fail though as they’re the one’s who we’ve been fallowing the most so far, yet the Defender’s and Rainboom’s are the first ones to land serious blow’s to the Windigo’s in their encounter’s with them without even knowing what their up against at first and when they do know Sunset Aria and the other Rainboom’s actually destroy Notus!

Also Notus thank you for sucking at your job so much! seriously he overestimates his own power and he underestimates Jr completely( and even if Jr was in the same mindset he was in before the Nightmare incident, I doubt it would have gone any better for him here then it did there) and when he barely survives that he possesses the one guy that could give him trouble by just being a normal good guy! again Notus you suck at your job and I couldn’t be happier about that, and while Jr’s mental beatdown of Notus is still my favorite moment so far I really like how it’s mainly Sunset with the help of her friends that ultimately destroy him for good, because not only did Notus fail to do any lasting damage in the fight but he was defeated not by Harmony, not by Godzilla, but by relatively normal people is a fitting and humiliating end for him.

The part where Pinke helps Mothra overcome her Battra ancestor’s memories by essentially being as jarring as possible and making her laugh and Lea gaining her new form by essentially telling the past Battra’s to STFU is great and something I really liked, though I think more time could have been given to that scene since it did go by rather fast Imo, I still like it though! Im not sure that the Battra situation is fully resolved though.

For Gloriosa her helping Adagio and Gigan shake off Zephyrus’s effect on them, helping them get over their paranoia and actually talk with the Defender’s and Rainboom’s, and despite worrying about her own worth, giving up the elements to their rightful owner’s thanks to Adagio and Gigan giving her a pep talk earlier has made her a favorite from this arc for me, hopefully she survive’s the next chapter.

Two of my favorite parts are the Godzilla Jr vs Notus "Fight" and Jr’s new attack, seeing the Wendigo bastard not only get his ass kicked but feeling genuine fear for the first time in its horrid existence was beautiful to read, and seeing the new Ultima burst as well as how surprised his teammates were to see it was a surprising highlight. I did not expect something from Godzilla SP to make an appearance here, on a different note I wonder where Godzilla Jr is in the ranks of most powerful mortals now since his power seems to be rising very quickly, either way don’t fuck with the King!

Also good lord Sonata is being put though a lot this arc holy shit! Faith did a great job making her Wendigo form look like she’s in constant pain. I hope Megs and Pinke can help her though this… and stop her from killing Wallflower considering the end of the chapter.

here’s some of my unrelated thoughts and some theories.

Seeing Aria poke a little fun at Adagio and Gigan was funny and heartwarming to read for me, I had a feeling that Adagio and Gigan were developing feelings for each other for a while now, so it’s cool to see that confirmed here, I hope that Gloriosa survives the next chapter so she can be a part of this relationship to considering the hints before this, though I might be reading to much into that, but we’ll have to wait and see, What I didn’t expect was Adagio to actually use her Windigo heritage not only for good but against Zephyrus, taking his plan to corrupt her and turning it on him by using it against him was cool to see! and Gigans moment was cool as well if a little spooky considering his thoughts about himself not wanting to be a soulless killing machine, as well as being an inverse of what Gigan did to fight Kaizer Ghidorah, both of them becoming what they never wanted to be in order to save each other and kick Zephyrus ass! I’m glad they went back to normal afterward’s.

What might be one of my favorite parts is actually a small sentence in Chapter 51,

He glanced back at Aria, feeling the air distort from warping gravity as she pooled her power into a well with her necklace at the epicenter. Unknown as he was to this kind of magic, he knew a building force about to reach its peak when he sensed one; the calming and yet melodic singing Aria Blaze emitted compiling atop itself with growing echoes. A curious thought crossed his mind both in notice of Aria mixing Ghidorah-like gravity controls with her own magic, using some intensification of the latter to almost ‘pile up’ her singing voice and echo to make it sound like there was more than just one of her. -Powers synergized in a new way than the original, like what happened when the Nightmare bonded to me or Rarity. Our new forms weren’t exactly like Luna’s. Rarity said it happened with that thing that afflicted Sunset Shimmer as well… What if…!-

if I’m right about what he’s saying, this could be some very interesting foreshadowing for something major later down the road, anyone who’s seen or played a certain game might know what I’m talking about, and even if it isn’t, Godzilla Jr getting Kaiser energy would still be one powerful combination.*

Edit* I made a mistake here as Jr continues this thought a bit later and it was about how the element of magic needed to have a native bearer. while I still think that foreshadowing is going on elsewhere especially in New Era and that Jr getting Kaiser energy would be badass and powerful, I should have checked to make sure before and after, sorry about that.

It seems at least to me that Jr and Bagan are going to start being compared and contrasted in the future with how they operate and the decisions they make, at least with how the text describes what Irys and Gigan feel when Godzilla is transformed and how powerful he is compared to them at that moment, if Bagan were in his place he would have killed them without a second thought but Jr lets them go keeping his promise to Anguirus and by just being a more forgiving person in general, and considering what might happen in the future as well as what Jr might become, I’m all for it, and to all those who say Harmony is slowly turning Bagan back to the light, while I love the optimism and would love to agree with you I can’t help but think that he’s going to see something that in his mind that solidifies his world view or see’s something that angers him to such an extent that he no longer listens to Harmony, or maybe he does listen for a while but Grogar or someone else does something that damages what progress Harmony makes, but hey I may be wrong who know’s.

To cap this comment off, and take this with a grain of salt as this is just a tinfoil hat theory I’ve had for a while now, does anyone else feel like something big is about to happen in the story? considering the reference to the Leviathan and the 2017 Halloween Special in Chapter 49 as well as all the prayer and faith motif of New Era and the hints to Jr actually having something divine/godlike about him, I don’t know it just seems like something Big is going to happen in the story soon. like something that might tie into New Era and maybe even the Halloween Special?

[Dragon-from-down-under]

11279546
Yeah, also remember the chapter where flurry heart showed up from the bad future to help bring asuza to jr to calm him down, and as you said before something big is going to happen and it involves jr in some way or form that we don’t know yet, also there theogony but that’s after the incident with Bagan
https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/722238/the-bridge-theogony

[Escalator]

11280670
Mother nature is what Godzilla is represented as. Mother nature is unpredictable and even at mercy it can turn on humanity or in this case pony kind sure Junior may have made his choice don't forget that his father destroyed and even killed the Japanese imperial officer who is a well known financial business man and well if you watch Godzilla vs Ghidorah you would understand the tragedy of humanity and nature with revenge

[diverseinterests47]

11286002
Forgiven, but not forgotten.

[THE_NERD]

11287339
If this was the Monsterverse Godzilla instead of Godzilla Junior, then “She’s one thousand years old” would have a WHOOOOOOOOLE different meaning.

[Tania tokustar]

11298671
Hoooo neat

[kolbdog32]

Hope update soon. Am looking forward to next chapter

[Mr Lore miser]

In all honesty I cannot wait for the bridge to crossover with the sound of thunder Godzilla versus evil Godzilla that sounds like Blockbuster material to me

[Moongaze14]

It’s genuinely incredible that today is the 9th anniversary of the Bridge. This was one of three stories in the site that inspired me to create an account on Fimfiction. It had amazing fight scenes, hilarious moments, a good amount of romance, and a diverse cast that underwent massive character development with each chapter. It helps that the story is complemented by the amazing artwork of Faith-Wolff and a plethora of entertaining side stories that enriched the main one. Even after MLP: FIM ended, this story is still ongoing and it created a gigantic community that became fans of Toho and Toei Kaiju films and books, mainly because of the amazing quality of the writing and the art, but also because of how approachable and friendly Tarb and Faith are to the readers. May this story continue until it’s eventual conclusion.

[Shrekzilla]

11321142
Welcome!
Be sure to read the prequels, spin offs, and side stories once you catch up!