The Bridge: A Godzilla-MLP Crossover

by Tarbtano

Chapter 54 Part 2: Bonds

Zephyrus was still hyperventilating when the portal closed and shunted them away from the campground. Even with all their experience with portal magic, having used a modified version of the spell he had been in the process of using when Starswirl interrupted him all those centuries ago, it took much from him. Upon landing next to Canterlot Highschool and laying eyes upon the statue in its courtyard, something caused them to briefly go still in recognition. The windigo himself had seen that statue before with no special tie or importance in mind, leaving the reason why it was creating an uncanny sensation within their mindscape unknown.

Something about this statue created sensations that an abomination like them had no context nor word for. They blinked, Frostbite Sparkle’s eye very briefly becoming normalized as if caught in a camera flash. And something jumped at the brief stirring of the soul within.

The Element of Magic sparked as a power surge came out of it and electrocuted their body, reaching within on a level beyond the physical to try and combat the dark force possessing its power in even an extremely rudimentary form. The body the element was tied to was not a proper bearer, but that didn’t stop a fragment of a benevolent goddess from trying to save them. Slithering through the air essence and spirit, the talisman of magic was not powerful enough to expel one of the most powerful creations of Harmony’s equal and opposite on its own, especially given it was meant to work with a bearer to magnify what was already there. But if the element could perhaps reach out and connect with the good soul this monstrosity had taken over and used as a shell…

Through the spiritual presence, the magenta magic started to reach for and touch the comatose flickers of the dormant girl’s psyche. That psyche started to stir again.

A shrieking, horrid gale pushed the Element’s efforts back.

“GRAAAUGH!” Zephyrus roared, smoke emanating from between their fingers as they clutched the crystal and froze it back over again after it had already started to melt its way back through. The Element of Magic pushed up against and was entombed beside the stolen siren heart and Memory Stone. The former isolated a rapidly dim flickers that grew increasingly dark once again. Its uprising was overpowered, if only temporarily.

And it took several minutes in itself to stop that uprising.

Frostbite Sparkle gasped and hissed, drooling black bile before spitting it aside. An enormous, armored fist touched down on the ground a dozen meters away, Boreas tilting his enormous head in a rare moment of contemplation. Frostbite heaved several breaths before regaining their composure. The glowing aura forming rings around her eyes resembling glasses reformed and they rolled their shoulders whilst snapping their wings back out to their fullest extent.

“We have a limited time, now even more so,” Zephyrus spoke through the roaring winds as the blizzard formed by their mere arrival began to intensify.

They levitated up back into the sky and spread their arms out, focusing on feeling how the magic itself flowed through this area. This was not just the typical exit point of something coming from Equestria at random. What he could magically sense and the once useful Twilight Sparkle had figured out was that this was a ley line, a place where the boundary lines between space and time that created dimension and sectioned off different dimensions was at its thinnest. So many places were now at their fingertips, if only they had the proper time and awareness to find the right doorway…

Closing their eyes, Frostbite Sparkle drew up their arms straight and focused everything they had for a minute. Boreas could not do the same, but he could contribute his presence as a fellow directional wind. Having more of their kind together always made them individually stronger. Frigid gales billowed out of his gigantic maw, Monster X’s jaw distending further than it should have as the screaming winds engulfed and encircled Frostbite Sparkle. Winds whipped about and a cold cyclone started to form high above.

Gathering all of their combined force, Frostbite Sparkle’s eyes shot open, and they cried out whilst swinging their arms down.

The sound of rending barriers in space was like hearing a living thing get eviscerated. Jagged holes were ripped into the open air and showed other locations inside their span. About a dozen openings, some spanning several meters across and others magnitudes larger, started opening up in the airspace around Frostbite, about the school, and across town. Some led to other locations in the very town, others showed gateways into the gawking and stupefied onlookers in Equestria. A pair of stallions and their filly pointing up at the sky in Manehattan’s central park before having to scramble for cover due to the storm billowing out of the portal.

Thundering earth and the echoes of roaring storms opposite his own drew both his attention and ire. The manner of beasts coming to confront them were outside of Zephyrus and Boreas’ known pool of references, though they were not in some ways astronomically different from various beasts of bygone eras or types familiar to them. In some sense of irony, few even somewhat resembled the unthinking, destructive monsters their master had loosed to end the Third Era right before his war with the traitorous goddess. Only this was no back-up, but a nuisance.

The warring kaiju had proven to be both an unforeseen boon for the conflict they carried themselves being twisted to serve the windigos’ ends, and an unexpected foreign thorn in their sides with how that same unforeseen element made them unpredictable. Zephyrus learned that the hard way with that mechanical meddler interfering with his father-daughter reunion. Notus had learned even more so, and the plan would already be going sideways if Zephyrus hadn’t helped Boreas get creative and the South Wind’s spawn wasn’t active.

The Element Bearers and their company were the real threat, no mistake there. But these living titans were their literal biggest enablers.

Boreas snapped to attention and engaged, loosing a quick salvo of ghostly white-hued graviton flares at the center of the incoming formation. As the spiraling pale death rays careened closer to their targets, the two airborne giants reacted to cover their grounded company by flying forward. A creature resembling a bat-like dragon flew forward and her pale body intercepted the blast. Boreas’ thirst for wounds wasn’t sated so soon from the collision however, as Irys did have the time and intent to throw up a sonic barrier and weather the hit. Graviton crashed against projected sound with the smashing of a gong as the second flier swooped in rapidly through the smoke parting around her.

Battra Lea smashed into Boreas’ middle, knocking the possessed kaiju off his feet, and lifting him into the air. Boreas thrashed and kicked, trying to get free of the hold that was secured with Lea wrapping her scythed arms around his back. Weathering return blow after blow against her armored chitin, Lea showed just how much physical force she’d gained from losing most of her spells. Ascending despite the sheer weight of Monster X’s form without losing any speed, she started to pivot upwards into a circular arc, circling in the air whilst still holding onto Boreas.

Looping end over end in a ring, the diameter of the rotation increasing with each loop in tandem with the speed. Boreas tried to counterattack and perhaps Monster X could have with mastery of gravity control defined some means of stabilizing himself. But while the windigo was essentially a spirit and was immune to inhibitions of the body like pain, he was still controlling a physical body that had its limits. Try as he might to fire the graviton flares, the body’s systems were completely out of control due to sheer vertigo.

Lea sharply descended, cold air billowing past her as she suddenly dive bombed towards the ground with her cargo in tow. The Battra’s flight arc snapped upwards just before hitting terra firma, throwing Boreas into the sports field behind the school hard enough that the seismic shockwave was felt across the city and shattered glass for multiple blocks. Boreas was smashed into the ground down to bedrock, throwing up hundreds of tons of debris ranging from sod, concrete piping, blacktop, and building foundation.

Unhurt as he was, Boreas still let loose screams of frustration and spite partially aimed at his attacker and equally so at the stubborn body not instantly obeying him to get back up. He had his playtime with the cyborg earlier and his niece, and even he was privy to how there was no time to dawdle in this. He did his best to ignore the mass of white blocking out part of his vision as Irys dove in to engage and try to knock him back down to the ground in order to keep him pinned. By the time Boreas was able to get his body to yield to his will once again, the gyaos had already managed to slam down onto him from behind and above. The albino’s powerful feet secured a hold on the back of his shoulders, and she quickly doubled on the effort by retracting her wings to use her hands in a further effort to pin him down.

By now Lea had circled around from her swoop and landed on to the now thrashing Boreas’ legs. She stomped her own limbs down upon one of the kicking legs and tried her best to both resist his thrashing tail and keep the kaiju from rolling over. Boreas let out a roar of frustration into the storm, ghostly white energy beams flying out from his face uselessly off into the air. He couldn’t turn his head enough to land a shot with Irys grabbed onto the back of his skull with her hands. Thrash as he may, he could not dislodge his attackers even without the third member of the counterattack party having even caught up yet.

Lea called out to Irys and the rest of her group with a sharp trill, affirming her own hold, making sure the gyaos who was once her enemy was all right after another useless salvo of graviton flares ripping the sky apart. Irys was just about to respond when something caught her eye.

Lea’s face right in front of her, despite Irys facing away from her as to keep a hold on X’s upper half. It took her a moment to realize the Battra was not actually before her, but a view of her was. Like a suspended reflection or a…

Boreas grinned and shot the portal Zephyrus had opened up in front of him, the energy beams launching through the tear in space to come flying out above and behind him. Irys and Lea cried out as their backs were blasted and concussed by the white beams of energy that left painful growths of ice on the impact sites. Thrown off of the possessed Monster X, both kaiju were momentarily stunned and sent rolling across the field; Lea crashing through several of the outdoor pavilions whilst Irys was blown backwards with enough force to completely flattened the bleachers.

Boreas punched the ground with both fists and pushed off to help launch himself to his feet, whilst ripping a huge multi-hundred-ton chunk of bedrock out of the ground to heft over his head. He began to take aim at the downed and stunned gyaos when another force demanded his attention with a roar that sounded like a pack of oncoming freight trains. Anguirus had dropped off his cargo, having been the chauffeur for the elements on the correct assumption his two compatriots would better be able to defend themselves and draw fire on their approach. Now with his other duty taken care of, the ankylosaur charged forward on all fours before pouncing.

Landing in the destroyed field on only his hind legs, the ankylosaur chimera reared up fully to close as much of the gap in height between him and Monster X as possible. Furious, burning hot roars pushed past his fangs as he brought his forepaws up into what almost looked like a readied stance to challenge the other combatant.

Boreas tried to fire upon him instantly, something stirred deep inside the head of Monster X that didn’t come from the windigo. Tiny flickers of some kind of distant recollection compelled the body into muscle memory and it also entered a readied stance against its sparring partner. Boreas snarled and resumed control, but by the time he kept his stolen body from resisting him Anguirus had already closed the distance. The earth shook as the brawlers locked onto each other, feet digging into the ground in the shoving contest of who could topple who first. Boreas angrily fired stray blasts into the air, Anguirus having rammed his crown forehead into Monster X’s jaw to crane his head back; as Lea and Irys regained their wits to re-engage.

Zephyrus was about to try his old trick again when suddenly sparks of energy started to conduct underneath the ice covering up Frostbite Sparkle’s collar. Manic eyes snapped open and looked aside just in time for a cyan blur to zoom past. Had they not dodged backwards at the last possible moment, the knee strike Rainbow Dash launched would have connected with their gut instead of glancing off of it. Hovering backwards they were soon assailed by more painful nuisances that threatened to allow their power source to rebel against them.

Not even given a moment to recalculate what was going on, Zephyrus found himself under attack again. Sections of the ground were eviscerated with tendrils of flora shooting up and lashing the air in an attempt to swat them from the sky or grab on to them. One woody limb snapped around one of their wings and suddenly yanked them into the side of the school building, banging Zephyrus against the concrete and glass before trying to drag them down to ground level. Gaea Everfree, the orchestrator of the attack, waved her hands back and forth like a conductor organizing a symphony orchestra; bringing more of the subterranean plant life to bear.

Frostbite Sparkle slashed at the air, telekinesis extended from their claws to shred the open space. A portal opened up briefly across the width of the tendril that had grabbed onto their wing, before abruptly snapping shut. A long length of what used to be oak tree fibers abruptly dropped across town out the other end of the portal and the windigo attempted to fly upwards to get some space.

Heaving in a breath, the rebelling Element sparking and pulsating with light underneath the ice, Zephyrus was starting to panic. More and more attackers were piling in and they were at the 11^th hour with no sign of success as to what they were aiming for. In a blind panic and rage, the possessed Twilight’s body let out an ungodly shriek as they started slashing and swiping at the air.

Dozens more tears in space time, dozens more portals, started to open up. They weren’t big enough for the oncoming storm to be pushed through with any effectiveness, but the sheer number of them was rapidly beginning to pile up around the school. Most led to other areas in the human world, a few others to tangent worlds associated with that dimension. A majority of the remainder showed more and more of Equestria, both empty landscapes and gobsmacked equine onlookers. A few of them even seem to have opened up under the ocean or in the middle of a desert, spurring torrents of seawater or tumbling sand to start spewing out in abject chaos.

One of them, either from the latest batch or the first one, was oddly dormant in the void it seemed to lead to.

Distracted in their frenzy, Zephyrus was blindsided once again.

Numerous crystals burst into existence to surround them and pushed inwards, trying to block off their escape paths. Through their number, yellow energy in the shape of dozens and dozens of city pigeons and gulls, the types of animals one would find around a coastal school, started to mob Frostbite Sparkle. One would think they could barely do anything, but the magic that composed them made touching either the crystals or animal constructs agony. Sparks of magic conducted from each point of contact and attempted to reach out to the captive Element of Magic. The mobbing birds and surrounding crystals covered for each other. Rainbow Dash had grabbed onto someone and spun her about at high speed to build up momentum, flying through the air and hurling the orange blur into the cover Rarity and Fluttershy had made.

Just after back handing a seagull construct out of their face, Frostbite Sparkle was soon subjected to the sight of a very livid Applejack bodily tackling them out of the air. The Element of Honesty, wrapped in a glowing aura that gave her an innate hardiness to resist the freezing cold of making contact with a windigo for at least a bit, blocked an attempted swipe at her face. Jack responded by grabbing the windigo by their antlered crown and headbutting Zephyrus square in the forehead with enough superstrength to cause a small shockwave. The horticulturalist hit them so hard that Zephyrus was briefly seeing apple-shaped stars as the body locked up against their will.

“This ain’t yer’s!” Applejack hollered as she wasted no time trying to go for the necklaces adorning Frostbite Sparkle’s neck, her own element calling out to its counterpart with her fingers beginning to melt through parts of the ice.

A shock traveled into both the Windigo of the West Wind, and into one of the numerous portals ripped into the airspace around the school. A small, seemingly insignificant one overlooked until now, hovering above the back courtyard. The viewpoint of where it lay was a dark void more unseasonable than the richest blackness.

And unlike the others, something was starting to blow out of it rather than into it. An eastern breeze, both contrary and companion to Zephyrus’ westerly one.

The shock sent into Zephyrus spurred their eyes to snap open and they screamed. Instantly their body became alight with power. Dark wings snapped outwards despite their dissent and a massive shockwave of telekinesis smashed into Applejack before she could fully rupture the ice. The ungodly shriek Zephyrus unleashed howled over the storm and carried with it chaotic strands of more telekinesis that twisted power poles and shattered concrete.

In tandem with the uproar, there was a sound of walking thunder as Anguirus called out. The armored dinosaur was thrown aside beside the school just as Boreas took the split-second opening he had to kick forward. That one second of clearance was enough for his foot to come crashing through the PE hall Rarity and Fluttershy had been in front of. Debris and shrapnel exploded forth in all directions, their flight path hopelessly chaotic and randomized thanks to being grabbed and tossed about further by Zephyrus’ outburst. It was only thanks to the quick actions of a cyan blur being fast enough to rush in, grab them, and get the pair out of the way, did Rainbow Dash get them to safety as the onslaught continued.

Boreas tried to track their movements but a dive-bombing Irys slammed into him from the side and forced the kaiju-possessing windigo to re-engage. Under the roar of the clashing giants, the team of heroines had to scramble through the flying debris to get across the courtyard and towards the main building.

The Element Bearers in the active fray had to take cover behind Rarity’s shields, with Rainbow Dash grounded and Fluttershy’s projections turned to sparkling dust by Zephyrus’ attack. The still-fumbling Applejack was caught when several woody tendrils erupted from the nearby trees and shot up to her airborne descent, matching speed before catching and slowing her down to join her fellows. Gaea Everfree, conductor of the saving catch, paused and looked warily in the direction of the unseen portal to the blackness.

Something was very, very wrong….

The screaming Zephyrus hit the pool like a meteor, kicking up large geysers of water both from the impact as well as their magic flying out of control.

“Everybody okay?!” Gaea Everfree called out as she reeled Applejack in and rejoined the group, a wary eye still on the dark portal.

"Did you all feel that?" Sunset shimmer whispered a bit breathlessly, feeling like the wind had gotten sucked out of her lungs. And she was like that even before jogging up to her compatriots alongside Twilight, after having hung back for lack of combative magic.

"That chill just when I thought these frozen jerks couldn't get any colder?! Yeah, I felt that in my bones!" Rainbow Dash griped as she melted off some ice that had started to fester on her wing.

“It’s coming from there,” Gaea huffed as she nodded towards the portal, “Zephyrus is trying something new.”

“Ah that’s great, that is just great!” Dash whined before they all abruptly jerked down and ducked.

They gazed upwards just as the skyline was swallowed up by a span of broad, leathery wings as Irys was thrown backwards after a powerful blow. The gyaos careened through the air, catching herself with her feet to avoid plowing into the ground and bounding down the city main street in a series of great leaps before kicking off to get airborne again. The albino reacted to a telltale glowing mass appearing above the school and summoned her shield to deflect an oncoming energy blast. Only her attention quickly diverted away from looking head on and instead shifted to her periphery off to the side. Sunset Shimmer detected a shift in the air off to her left, and it was the only warning they got.

“DIVE! DIVE INTO THE PORTAL! GO! GO!” Sunset screamed as she rapidly shoved her friends forward and towards one of the dimensional doorways nearest to them and next to the dark void.

“SUNSET?! What- Why are?!”

Shimmer cut Twilight off by grabbing and throwing her into the gateway, “NO TIME JUST RUN! RUN! RUN!”

Sunset Shimmer tried to ignore the presence she detected, the one Rainbow Dash had been talking about, as she passed by that dark void. Not entirely effectively given she had the very distinct inclination somebody, or rather something, was watching her.

Boreas fired into two portals adjacent to one another. While the majority went into one entry way and erupted out beside Irys, a portion of the torrent was diverted off into another that opened up across the courtyard facing the assembled heroines. Not three seconds after the lot of them was shoved into the portal, that entire section of the school courtyard was utterly destroyed.

The sense of vertigo going through the portal was uncanny and nearly debilitating. Like falling through the air several feet. She hadn’t even known if the emergency exit led to the human world or Equestria and didn’t get that answer until she crashed into an earth pony mare with the same general look and color scheme as Gaea Everfree upon falling to terra firma. The heap of assembled mares, two pegasi, two earthies, two unicorns, and an alicorn quickly tried to get untangled from each other.

“Alright, who’s not dead?” Applejack, ignoring her bemusement that somehow her hat of all things carried through the transition, grumbled out as she hefted her entire group onto her back, “Sound off!”

A small chorus of dazed groans were the response. One of which however shouted over the choir as a head of a young alicorn shot up.

“Quick! We gotta get back to the school before-” She looked up to the portal they had been spat out of, the rest of the group following her line of sight.

Visible through the tear in space several dozen meters away, the view through the gateway showed the schoolyard near the swimming area. The pool violently erupted upwards in a geyser accompanied by a powerful scream. Zephyrus shot back into the air, beating their wings and sporting a strained, manic visage. An eye snapped over to where the Bearers had been, spotting the enormous scorch match left by Boreas’ blast. Zephyrus fought the shocks their own power source was giving them as they quickly put two and two together as to what happened. Boreas having used his brain for once was a welcome assist, got the meddlers out of Zephyrus’s way for at least a moment. The western wind was not so foolish as to think the biggest threat to the dead without cause however, but the sight greeting him did spur a smirk. He soon saw the group looking at him through the portal upon approaching it.

Several of them had already recovered and were closing in, commendably adjusting to their Equestrian bodies well for all of them who weren’t native. Twilight, Rainbow Dash, and Fluttershy were airborne; with Gaea Everfree lifting herself up with several vines to carry herself and the non-flighted party members aloft. They closed in rapidly and were about to make contact.

Summoning every ounce of power they had in the moment, Frostbite Sparkle cried out and slashed the air. Their magical talons shredded the portal, breaking it apart and shattering it like glass. The view of the Equestrian forest was gone, as was the immediate way back for the heroes.

Zephyrus gagged and rasped, collapsing as the shocks the Element gave them began to slowly subside without a Bearer immediately close by to reach out to.

-That will not keep them away for long…-

At the very least, his gigantic partner in crime and their own quick thinking had bought them a moment of breathing room. And now that Zephyrus wasn’t under attack constantly, it was time to return the favor. This was going to take a lot out of them, but it might be worth it to push to their limit and take risks. Convulsing as they gripped at their collar, Frostbite Sparkle gathered up all the power they could and took hold of a few dozen of the portals already opened to be repurposed.

======

Boreas was being overwhelmed despite fighting back as hard as he could. While he had managed to topple a charging Anguirus, having torn the gymnasium and its foundations out of the ground and clipping the ankylosaur across the face with it in a bash, both of the flyers were on top of them. Irys had one of his forelimbs in her mouth, biting down to both disable and restrain the limb whilst holding the other arm at bay with her prehensile feet. It did leave her wide open for an energy blast, but Battra had sought to defend her teammate. Swooping in and tackling Boreas from the side whilst whipping her thorax and abdomen backwards. She was still figuring out her new abilities, but she was willing to take a gamble on one of them now obtained in her true form outside of a human body.

A recurved dagger of a stinger erupted from the end of her body and was swung downwards, the sharp tip oozing venom as it buried itself into a gap between Monster X’s armor near the abdomen. And like an angry wasp, Battra was not resigned to just one sting, follow-up stabs and injections stitching across Boreas’ side. The venom might not be meant to be lethal, and Monster X had a tough enough constitution even if it was, but the effect of multiple thousands of gallons of poison was beginning to have an effect. Boreas himself couldn’t feel it, but his body could. He could feel some of his nerves locking up and vision starting to blur.

Anguirus’ tail swung out and swept Boreas’ legs, toppling the possessed kaiju and forcing him to the ground. Through his blurry vision however, he could detect two observations. The first was a large shadow indicating Anguirus had gotten back onto his feet and was pouncing forward to body slam the temporarily downed Boreas, with Irys and Battra no doubt right alongside. The second was the westerly winds roaring, indicating Zephyrus was putting everything they had into a desperation move and telling Boreas where it was going to be.

Through his blurry vision, gradually correcting itself as the body fought off the venom, Boreas tucked his legs in and kicked outwards with everything he had. Anguirus grunted as he felt the impact reverse his momentum. Boreas kicked him into the air with respectable, but not overwhelming force, launching the armored kaiju careening off to the side. But just as Anguirus felt gravity should bring him back to earth, the rushing air kept coming. His shell hit the side of a rocky mountain and he was hit with a wave of vertigo that scrambled his sight briefly. The kaiju banged into the stony slope on an incline as Anguirus started rolling down the earthen rise. A vague sense of familiarity came to him as he realized he was rolling down the side of the mountains back at Everfree national forest, catching a glimpse of a giant handprint left in the stone.

Irys and Lea both called out in surprise after seeing the sky swallow up Anguirus, concern slightly abated at seeing their spiny companion quickly recover and charging back towards the portal. The momentary distraction was enough for Boreas to shrug off some of the effects of envenomation to rise. Grabbing onto Irys’ wing, the windigo of the North threw his full weight aside and whipped the bat kaiju at the portal. Irys flapped chaotically to stabilize herself and avoided being hurled into her elder sibling after being heaved through the rip in space and time. The two Guardian Beasts reoriented back towards the portal they’d both been forced through and made to close the distance when the portal shrank away and snapped shut.

Stupefied in the moment as they stood in the national park dozens of kilometers away, Irys and Anguirus didn’t remain idle for long. Anguirus grunted to his sibling and motioned to the skyline. Irys hovered over and grabbed her sibling by his shell, avoiding most of his spines as she lifted him into the air. Carrying him out of the valley, the gyaos set the ankylosaur down before Anguirus curled into a ball. Within a few moments, he was rapidly spinning his way out of the park as she flew alongside to make their way back to the city as fast as they could. They were out, but not out for long. Zephyrus' stunt had bought their compatriot maybe a few minutes.

Zephyrus collapsed after assisting Boreas, hitting the ground from exhaustion as energy sparked and arched across the body. Indigo magic conducted into their wings and caused the construct to briefly flicker out of existence. Frostbite Sparkle staggered and grabbed at the Element to focus. Working through pain they didn’t feel but could register, the windigo felt themselves battling not just the Element; but the dormant consciousness of Twilight Sparkle’s remnants not absorbed into the Memory Stone as well. Looking to the source, they spied the school statue as latent memories began to flood in. A brief visage of Wallflower Blush assailed their mind, some positive memory the Element was trying to weaponize.

In a moment of desperation, Frostbite Sparkle threw themselves into a portal leading to another side of the school, crashing into the courtyard as far from eyeshot of the statue as possible. Zephyrus heaved and struggled to stand. That last effort assisting Boreas had taken a lot out of them, making this form more and more unstable by the moment. The power of the Element of Magic was the antithesis to their own, trying to burn away at them. It was like trying to smother a flame by dumping a mountain of kindling on it.

A harsh effort, one even harder because they could detect a pull of the Element to another source nearby. Zephyrus snarled, absorbing the influence of what dark magic he could as he snuffed out the Element’s weakening; but not ceasing, rebellion.

-The Bearer was tossed away and banished, who could this blasted Element possibly be calling out to?!-

They were already on borrowed time, and the countdown clock to when they would be forced out of this body was accelerating quicker than whatever time Twilight Sparkle’s body would have left holding itself together. And if Zephyrus was expelled, he’d come out weakened and vulnerable whilst right next to one of the few things that could actually destroy him.

The super storm above only had two of the four directions in full. Noteworthy but not enough: not nearly enough. Notus’ spawn that would serve as his replacement was en route, Zephyrus could feel her presence as distant as it was. If all had gone according to plan, his bastardization of her rightful desire for revenge would have made Australis spiral and surpass her father. That just left the East to be fully unleashed, which was their responsibility to unchain.

The same winds were carrying with them a warning about another pest to deal with at the moment. If they were to succeed, now was the time for action.

Spreading their wings and flying across the school grounds as Boreas faced off against Battra. For a brief instant the windigo could remember being back in Equestria the last time their master had called them to arms and out of that dark realm they had been waiting in. First Notus and Boreas, then him; summoned to counteract and confront the six heroic mortals representing some kinds of virtues the goddess embodied. Zephyrus had been attempting to further tilt the odds and bring forth the last and mightiest of them when that damn bearded unicorn interfered.

He remembered, burned into his consciousness for what amount of it he constituted, the look in Starswirl’s eyes when he and his compatriots charged forward, a jury-rigged spell at the ready just as Zephyrus was about to bring his counterpart and the most powerful of their kind into existence beyond the void. The amethyst hue in the sorcerer’s eyes at the time…

Frostbite Sparkle balled a fist, knuckles whitening. Beneath them the ground shattered and cracked from restored waves of telekinesis, sheer spite helping motivate and focus Frostbite. The glint and color of Starswirl’s eyes was something Zephyrus was never going to forget, and in some ways the ancient demon was still avenging that setback and defeat.

It helped to steel their grit even as the Element of Magic continually tried to rebel.

The Western Wind closed in on the portal that led to the void, standing in the presence of the Eastern gales coming out of it. He just had to hold it together a little longer. Clasping their hands together, Frostbite concentrated their magic. Glowing indigo overtook their eyes and surged across their clawed hands just before the demon plunged them into the dark void. Like rending open flesh or tearing open the door, Zephyrus wrenched their arms apart and cut the empty space surrounding the portal to widen the gash. With the swing of their arms outwards, the view into the void widened considerably to a dozen meters across. Far off the edges of the tear in space, several other portals started to realign themselves with the new location, showing the darkness into a beyond that stretched across their span.

Zephyrus sucked in their breath and let out a scream that no living creature should ever be able to make, calling out into the void in a way that was audible from all of the portals.

Frostbite Sparkle collapsed; but deep in the void, something called back as it closed in.

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

Kaizer Aria swooped down onto a rooftop across from the school and deposited her cargo, Adagio slipping off her cousin’s back and landing on her feet as Celestia let Godzilla catch and place her down. Godzilla glanced at the bizarre skyline and airspace around the school, to the myriad of portals torn into space and showing glimpses into lands near and far, some he recognized as part of Equestria and some that looked completely different. All of which had bits of frost starting to spread across the ground from the gnawing cold whipping about in the winds that flowed into them.

“Zephyrus’ plan has begun. We need to act fast before they can summon what dark magic they need,” Godzilla noted as he cringed at the dark energies flying about so thickly in the air; all of which he could detect.

“Damn, I’d have liked it if Gigan and I were wrong for once-DUCK!” Adagio yelped as she pulled her cousin and Celestia down to anchor them as massive gale force winds blew over the building that were not of windigo origin.

All eyes quickly cast themselves skyward as Battra Lea rapidly flew several hundred feet ahead, kicking up wind gusts that forced the group to take cover even before rapid salvos of white, cursed graviton blasts followed her in the air. Lea dove and weaved to avoid the blasts, swooping in a wide arc as Boreas failed to shoot her down but did manage to keep the moth at bay.

Adagio cringed as she rose back up, dusting some frost that had built up on her hair as she looked to the clashing giants, especially the possessed body of Monster X, “Don’t think I’m ever going to get used to that. We’re going to need some big back-up to get close enough to that school to find Sunset Shimmer and finish the plan. If we get Boreas’ attention, we’re dead.”

Aria’s eyes were locked onto the sight of her significant's true form, having previously only seen it in memories, her expression unreadable. A hand on her shoulder and a gentle nudge spurred her focus and to her mild surprise, she found herself looking at the shrunken Princess Celestia.

“Hey, we’ll get him back to you. I promise. And I for one intend to keep to that!”

Aria chuckled slightly and forced a bit of a smirk, “I see where Eventi-Twilight gets it from. So, think you got enough juice in the magic tank to help him help us beat some sense into my boyfriend?”

She jerked a thumb at Godzilla, who was looking at the former alicorn. As Celestia looked to him in turn, she noticed something on his face just as she was beginning to muster her courage and drive to try and use magic. His eyes were widened and he was rushing forward, yelling something.

Something else had taken notice of their arrival, and was fixated on the shrunken alicorn too.

A strong gale force of wind, one coming from an Eastern direction, suddenly exploded from several of the darkest portals. Shooting across the schoolyard, it blasted the group. Godzilla called out, as did Adagio and Aria, but the fourth member of their party couldn’t hear them. Not as the cold chill coming from the blast of dark magic laden wind sunk into her bones and mind.

The former alicorn froze in place, detecting an overpowering, massive presence bearing down on her. In the dark void of the portals, a howling force echoed out and swam through the darkness. It tried to pull Celestia’s mind apart. Tried to confront her with failure after failure. The failures to save her precious ponies, the failures to stop the villains and require others to risk themselves. The failures to save her sister…

Something else however, instantly pushed back.

The flash of memories which had been trying to display a cavalcade of failures flickered something else too. The recollections ranging from losing Luna to Nightmare Moon or not stopping Chrysalis before she culled a whole city, were pushed aside to show a fateful day near the School for Gifted Unicorns during entrance exam day. A recently restored-to-his-proper-size baby dragon sucking on his tail as a bouncing filly hadn’t even noticed her marked destiny had arrived.

The empty slots for Celestia’s Elements, especially that of Magic, glowed brighter to counter the influence of Eurus. The positive recollections forced the horrid ones back.

Her smiling, beaming even, as the first Wonderbolt flight team took to the sky. Attending the first grand opening of the pegasi’s new capital of Cloudsdale. Holding the newborn great-great-granddaughter of Platinum, a dear friend departed by time. The quiet joy she felt watching a pleasant day go by in a marketplace while disguised. Presiding over the 984th Summer Sun celebration nor for her benefit, but for the giddy cheering of a random colt in the audience.

Godzilla’s roaring, be it he was actually calling out in indignation to what was trying to mentally attack her, or just some psychic recollection of the day they helped save Canterlot together from the gyaos; helped to further pull her back to her full wits. These abominations of strife and misery, they could be fought. He and others had done it before, and if they were to hype her up so much.. Well… who was she to let them down?

She took a step forward into the eastern gales to rebuke them.

The cold influencing and trying to tunnel into her mind was fought back with fiery abandon and given no quarter. She was Celestia Alexandria Alicor, admired by many and friend to numerous uncountable across centuries. Both the faces in places bygone, and those still with her. The sun always rose for 1,000 years because she rose to the occasion, in spite of her errors, and forged on for others. Her mistake was not her damnation, no matter how the opposing winds howled. That much was proven when Luna, mind clear of her darker thoughts, ran to the only family she’d known and her sister hesitated not to embrace her.

Inside Harmony’s realm, the watching goddess who'd been weighing options, froze. Something she’d been keeping safe shifted. The glimmering star of magic, the torn-free magic that Bagan had separated from Celestia while she was in transition between Equestria and the human realm, had budged from its holdings. Even as she witnessed it, it nudged forward again under its own power; some of the magical bindings leftover by Bagan’s attack dissipating by the moment. There were dozens of holes torn between realms and space, many of them leading to Equestria. And like two opposite poles of magnets drawn to each other, the huge well of alicorn magic began to slowly work its way towards the human realm.

The magical bindings, what was left of Bagan’s influence and Harmony’s own actions to keep the other god from taking the magic when she thought they were going to steal it, were fraying. The glittering mass composing a rainbow of hues in a sphere resembling a sun yearned to be free. One of the bindings snapped and dissipated, giving the distinct impression that the magic would free itself and reunite with its bearer all on its own.

========

Just as Celestia felt a presence from a bygone time focusing upon her, Harmony was united with the demigoddess in that feeling. Somewhere, unseen, Bagan was aware of her as well. Either directly watching her or knowing this moment would come, the God of Extinction knew she’d be in this situation. She was made aware of the strands of vision, those pieces of her realm that could show at least one potential future. Harmony had never gazed into them for many reasons, but her fellow deity had no such hesitations. They’d grabbed onto it to glimpse what may be ahead once, and then they seemingly attacked Celestia sometime later to result in this situation.

And now, she too felt compelled. Harmony contemplated, a rare moment of uncertainty putting knots in her gut. Not for hesitation to help the heroes, no; but for how she’d gotten in this situation. She’d intervened more in the last twenty years than she had in the past thousands, despite having once sworn off doing it once. She’d done it once when Wysteria met her fate. She did it again when the kaiju appeared. And since Bagan’s forces had appeared, she’d found herself doing it time after time.

Was this a set-up? Some long term plan? A glimpsed future or a guess at prediction? She.. felt a hollowness, a void within.

The goddess didn’t know…

The eastern gales howled once more, and Celestia stood against them; now pushing forward to block Godzilla from the blasting winds in an act of selfless heroism that once made her more than worthy of several Elements. She paid no heed to the ice forming across her, Celestia refused to yield again or wallow in despair. Sparks of light started to appear across her eyes and bits of the ice started melting even as more formed.

Harmony watched, swallowed her apprehension, and quickly acted. The last binding to hold the magic safely was blasted free; and her lot was cast into the winds of fate.

========

A burst of light flew free from one of the portals, flying across the schoolyard. Even in the midst of his battle with Battra, Boreas noticed the nature of the power and was enraged when he recognized it for its nature. The power of their greatest enemy, multiple types of magic and multiple Elements at once. Seeing the small sun flying free and tracking its trajectory to the rooftop, he shook the sky with a terrifying wail of a roar whilst instantly firing upon Celestia and company’s location. Wind and falling snow was blown backwards as an eastern wind spilling out from the opened portals wrapped around him, causing the onslaught to suddenly burst outwards with bolstered power that doubled the diameter of the beams.

Godzilla saw the incoming blast and set to brace, desperately looking for Celestia as a means to shield her with her sturdier frame as Aria likewise grabbed Adagio and shot into the air. Only he was promptly surprised when a mass like a blinding, miniature sun, instead grabbed onto him and tackled him off the edge of the building.

He felt his right hand become clasped with a left one in a handshake of trust; as a flood of power shot into his body. For a brief instant, coaxed on by the windigo's ambient magic, a jolt of uncertainty and fear gripped at his heart in light of where he was. Just like his fear at the pier, and all that time ago when he had Luna literally throw him out of a city's limits to be sure. That dread which had long lingered in his mind ever since the day it was finalized he would be a walking mountain in comparison to the tiny specks of humans he knew as sapient and was raised with. In spite of his fear, dread was pushed away by the presence of another. Somehow through the blinding light, he could see a confident, simple smile with tears running down its sides; and bore witness to the white light split into three different colors for a trifecta of Elements.

With a torrent of death-dealing energy flying at them and his greatest fear of crushing someone omnipresent, the soft voice, giggling was welcome reassurance. Carrying the kindness of compassion, the courage that laughter brought against danger, and the magic representing the bonds of understanding. A brief flash of being back at Canterlot Castle, back when Celestia first spoke to him as a peer when it came to the duties of royalty, responsibility, and guardianship, came to them both.

“Don’t be afraid, I trust you.”

And just like that, he was not afraid. Not of crushing a friend nor of failure.

A fantastic explosion sounded off on impact, and a thick gout of smoke covered several city blocks. As the large mass of blackness started to clear out due to the churning winds. When it cleared, the point of impact that should have hit the building was revealed instead to be a mass of brilliant light that extended into the stormy skies. A brilliantly glimmering fist that caught and deflected the graviton flares away, letting them careen off into the sky.

As the light faded somewhat to solidify into overlapping, armored plates for scales, the Monster King made himself known. Godzilla's towering form erupted from the smoke, trails clinging to and leaving contrails following the movement of his head and dorsal spines. Drawing in breath, Godzilla promptly blew away the smokescreen with a heavens and earth quaking roar. The reptilian titan brought up his other hand he hadn’t blocked the blast with and uncurled his clawed digits, revealing a glimmering form shining between his fingers. Radiation power came from the light and into Godzilla, who absorbed it as he had the nourishing sun of his world. The seemingly contradictory char and icy growths that were across the arm that caught the graviton blast healed and melted respectively, white sparks of magic crisscrossing the regenerating tissue.

This wasn’t normal radiation, but it was certainly empowering.

The light in his palm dimmed, but didn’t go out. Wings composed of magic uncurled and flexed outwards, similar to but even larger than the sets Twilight, Rainbow Dash, and Fluttershy sported. The Princess Celestia who revealed herself was no longer a short twelve year old, but had grown back to her proper scale and age; with her attire similarly shifting to match. The baggy hoodie and pants were removed, replaced by the same sort of regal white robes she had entered this world with; with the extra bonus of her regalia having extended into a set of sunbeam-hued, practical bronze armor. Her hair had similarly changed as well. Away from the nostalgic, gold and pink of yester-millennia. The rainbow hues, once admired by so many but privately seen as a mark of a mistake by her for so long, was proudly waving in the winds. Celestia reached up and removed her fake glasses, throwing them aside as she smirked at the clearly irate Boreas.

Her eyes briefly looked aside to the numerous portals and flickered with a trifecta of colors. From her perspective, the numerous gateways to other spaces or worlds were filtered until a telling few started to become illuminated with multiple hues of Element magic.

“I found the girls, can you start your plan without us for a moment?” She said calmly as she hovered next to the reptilian kaiju.

Unable to speak now, a dipped head and snort of blue mists from his nostrils was affirmation enough from Godzilla. He strode forward into the storm, calling out to both Battra and Boreas as affirmation to the former that help had arrived and confrontation to the latter that he had a new opponent.

Godzilla withstood a salvo of dark magic laden graviton flares bursting and exploding against his chest that tore free scales and froze parts of his hide. The Monster King returned fire with a quick-charged lashing of blue plasma aimed directly at Boreas’ face, timed between the emissions of the graviton flares so as not to crash into them.

He couldn’t risk a beam-lock, those tended to end explosively for himself and Monster X due to the specifics of their attacks. If they had a detonation in the middle of this town, let alone the schoolyard, it would be disastrous. Thankfully his aim was true, charring Boreas’ face just enough to force him to stop firing and try to clear the damage. Whilst Monster X’s body was briefly blinded as it was regenerating, Godzilla pitched his head skyward as a large shape smashed into Boreas from behind to knock him over, before the attacker of his foe chirped and flew over to him.

At first his muscles and body tensed, not recognizing the sight before him swooping down. But the sight of her eyes and sound of her voice soon spurred recollections. She’d changed drastically in some ways, but by her manner and the subtle nuances of her body like the curve of the wings; whom could he recognize of anyone but his best friend. Still, seeing her as what she had become was more than a little head-tilting.

Boreas’ shriek drew both of their attention back to the battle, the most powerful creature and mightiest sorceress of Terra forming up to fight their common foe together. Knowing the dangers of speaking plans aloud from fighting Zephyrus, and not wanting to take any chances whilst exploiting the fact someone who knew him so well was fighting with him; Godzilla remained silent. She caught a brief glance in his eye, something Junior knew but Boreas couldn’t detect because of her compound eyes.

Godzilla made a seemingly savage, wild display. Stomping his feet and roaring whilst swiping at the air like an angered beast. To Boreas, it looked like a maddened, feral creature had come to do battle and he grinned wildly through lipless jaws rimmed with black teeth. Through the out of character display however, Lea knowingly caught something. Junior had taken one of his claws and tapped at his shoulder whilst blinking an eye. The Battra looked at their foe and understood. Lea responded by silently drawing out her scythes, before both made ready to engage their mutual foe.

They had a plan.

Spying the airborne Kaizer Aria, who was still holding her cousin, Celestia extended her wings and flew up to them. Adagio whistled in a moment of casual nonchalance to keep her nerves from fraying.

“Gotta say, this is more of what I expected when finding out you were here,” The siren said as she looked the now grown woman over to visually confirm Celestia was just about double the height she had been not even two minutes ago.

“I can’t detect much magic coming from here that seems like you lot,” Aria said as she glanced at the school and strained her ability to detect just to be sure. She could pick up traces of magic starkly different from the windigos’, but not an active source to pinpoint it, “They were here though.”

“I think that is our answer,” Celestia replied as she pointed to one of the many portals scattered across the school and nearby landscape.

The tear in space she indicated and flew towards with Aria in quick pursuit was one of the darkest of voids any had either seen. Both sirens, privy through detection to the types of magics emanating from certain sources, sensed something terrible within. Cold blight gouging through the veins, brought about by a sudden geyser of frigid eastern gales. A powerful, and yet somehow unharming heat blocked the wind blasts. Both sirens’ eyes wide in momentary shock, looked down to see Celestia’s hands before both of their gemstones. A trio of magical laden lights showed from her outstretched arms and flowed into the siren hearts, with both Aria and Adagio feeling a tremendous rush of warmth and power that shunted out what effects the windigo magic might have on them.

“They better not have fallen into there!” Adagio yelled over the storm as she squinted due to the blast still hurting her eyes even with Celestia dampening most of the blast, “Not if what I think is in there is!”

“Whatever you or I can think of, there’s just one guarantee,” Kaizer Aria griped as she grit her teeth, shielding her face with a forearm. Could feel, practically taste the sheer force within the void. It was like a tether similar to, but distinct from the one she could feel connecting her to her fellow sirens and hated sire. And if it was a tie of relation, that meant only one possibility, "It’s worse.”

“The fourth windigo, sealed away in a bygone era,” Celestia grimly noted as she continued her advance to the portal in spite of the wind blasts trying to knock her over, even with her latent magic dampening the blows significantly as unprotected cars were sent flying and walls crumbled, “Gigan was right, Zephyrus is trying to summon them.”

“Great, another one!” Kaizer Aria snapped before firing a graviton burst at the portal with a shout. The golden beams flew into the portal and seemed to just keep constantly going, spiraling into an infinite beyond. She knew that likely wouldn’t do anything, but being denied even a venting of her frustration was grating to the nerves.

Adagio swore in a tongue not even Celestia understood, “I was right next to Zephyrus before. This? This is worse. So why are we standing right in front of it?!”

“Because I’m going to change the destination of this portal,” Celestia said before leaping into action to close the distance.

Celestia quickly advanced on the portal and shoved her hands forward into it, her palms grasping the edge of the tear like she was holding open a window or doorway. She poured more of what magic she could muster into it. Without her true body, trying to get used to this new human form having magic again on the fly, and lacking the physical talisman to enhance her spellwork like the Rainbooms did; she was not at the same strength she normally was. But in the end she was still Princess Celestia, and she had a great amount of experience to draw from that equaled any sheer force.

“What can we do to help?” Adagio piped up as she ran up beside the princess, heedless to the danger and sheer force still lingering in the dark void beyond this tear in space.

Energy from the portal conducted into Celestia’s body, shocking her and causing the projections of magic forming her horn, hooves, and wings to flicker on and off. She redoubled her efforts, pushing back into the portal when a force from within tried to throw her off.

“Twilight told me your magic is adept at copying other types of magic and other types of energy! Is this t-true?!” Celestia shouted as she pushed back against the shocks and tried to keep a hold of the edges of the portal.

“Y-Yes! Yes, that’s how I first got like this!” Kaizer Aria shouted as she ran up to take point on Celestia’s other side across from Adagio.

“Then do it to me!” Celestia yelled out as she was nearly thrown back from the portal, necessitating the two sirens to catch and help hold her by the shoulders, “I lack my full power without any Elements with me! I can sense the bearers and Twilight through these portals, they really had to have fallen through them at some point!”

An eastern gale force came billowing out of the portal, freezing the ground solid everywhere except directly where the group was standing on account of Celestia; her presence shielding her compatriots.

“They’re elsewhere, and I can feel the connection through the Elements of Harmony!” Celestia called out as she tried to force the tear further open, against the shifting which seemed to be threatening to close it. Her hands glowed with a golden aura sparking with other hues as she took hold of the portal’s seam more tightly.

Another wind blast nearly floored all of them had they not braced.

“I have a lot of experience with portal magic, I swore off ever using it for centuries, but Starswirl and I did a lot of exploring once; even here!” Celestia hollered over the storm as they gathered their wits.

The last time she had been in this world, her age really was that of a very young teenager. A world seemingly without magic was what she and Starswirl knew this one as. A sound hypothesis at the time, a place you could put something magical, and it would no longer be a threat to others or themselves. At the time it seemed to be so true, and a passing thought in her mind affirmed that was probably why her mentor and father figure sent the sirens here. When she came through the portal during the attempted rescue mission and came out as a magic-less teenager, it seemed to confirm what she had suspected. Equestria had dumped its magic here and it was causing threats to a world not meant to have any magic.

Only to have that hypothesis soundly disproven soon after. The sirens still had their magic, normal humans were developing magical abilities, a ‘Tree Angel’ with Gloriosa’s mother decades ago, and the presence of another set of Elements of Harmony only confirmed that this world really did have native magic after all. It wasn’t just something brought over by Equestria, rather the influx of magic users or latent enchantments had just awakened was already there but largely dormant.

She considered and shelved the curiosity of what had happened to her power to begin with. They could fret over that sort of detail when they survived this.

Celestia pushed against the seemingly overwhelming force trying to push her away and either loosen her grip on the portal or slam it shut. She was forced to adjust her hold, shoving one hand each in opposite directions against the edges of the portal that was trying to collapse. It was like holding apart two elevator doors trying their best to smash shut regardless of who was in the way.

“I can try to change the portal destination with the spell I know. Redirect it to where the Bearers are and try to avert whatever is coming here, but I don’t have enough strength on my own!”

Adagio and Aria looked at one another and nodded. The cousins clasped hands whilst holding onto Celestia’s shoulders with the other.

“You’re about to get a bunch of thoughts pushed into your head-“ Aria started as her necklace warmed up with light.

“Let them come and focus on the joyful ones! Sing if you can!” Adagio finished as the red magic also shone in her eyes.

Celestia nodded and closed her eyes, trying to tune out the blasting winds and frigid cold as she continued to struggle and hold the portal open with her bare hands. The glowing mass around her neck, where the slots for three different elements lay empty but connected, flickered in a specific pattern. Two siren hearts, one golden from the influx of energy from Kaizer Ghidorah, one red from the outpouring of love-based magic she’d been exposed to lately; synchronized with the flickering. They weren’t Elements of Harmony; they weren’t even really all that familiar with each other and lacked a strong bond. But the benevolence and potential therein was palpable to the Solar Diarch.

She’d remembered the sirens only as a sour footnote in history. They weren’t active for all that long and having come directly between the calamities that were Nightmare Moon’s rise and Chrysalis’ final rampage before her fall, during a time when Celestia was not mentally well and grieving; she scarcely remembered the occasion they were contemporary to her. History mostly just recalled them as obscure problems, lost in the notation between tragedies. Most of what Celestia had known of them personally came from Starswirl, and for some reason he never liked talking about them; like the subject made him very uncomfortable.

If there was a secret there, he took it to his grave.

But feeling their magic now as the melody of a song taught to them by a banished Princess of Mako, and knowing why they were doing it, Princess Celestia couldn’t have felt more appreciative. The blighted winds of the void had forced her to see all of her failings. She’d stood up to them with her own successes, and in the warped perception of time the sirens’ magic was reacquainting her with all of that and more. She had achieved a lot in over 1,000 years.

-And to think, it was a once reclusive bookworm who helped get you to this point. Your mothers would be proud of you two…-

The vision of a gawking, smiling purple filly filled her heart with the song; alongside many others cherished such as friends, departed and living; and her beloved sister. She could even feel recollections not her own, many were quite recent and yet also involved Twilight. Ones of training to be a siren stand-in, affirmations of her intent to aid them in restoring their harmed family, promises to see through the end of the demons that had plagued their family for centuries, and a brokered offer to return to Equestria under her endorsement. So many things three troublesome but wronged souls had actively wanted, delivered by someone they once saw kidnapped.

Princess Celestia let benevolent pride flow from her.

-Well done my faithful student, well done.-

She let the melody flow from her chest as she joined in on the song.

The winds spewing from the portal started to die down as the magic coming from Celestia started to conduct into the two sirens. They were not Element Bearers and couldn’t replicate the same effect, but they were helping to copy and bolster what spellwork the princess could manage. The dark void started to flicker away, returning to the light of Celestia’s own sun in a way she immediately recognized it. Celestia beamed with her expression, her shouting exhale of magic laden song forcing the portal to fully snap away from the grim void it was once a gateway to.

Now the visage showed what looked like a mountainside in the rurals of Equestria, a passing, very confused yak merchant confirming it.

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

Boreas pivoted on his foot to throw all of his weight behind a haymaker aimed squarely at his newest foe’s jaw. The blow did connect, but instead of directly taking the full force, Godzilla turned aside and moved with the punch whilst shrugging off the impact force that did land. Snapping his jaws open, the nuclear dragon countered by snapping them down onto what typically was Monster X’s hand. Teeth and fangs punctured skin and managed to crack the bony exterior to the armor atop the back of the palms.

Boreas felt no pain, but did register the impediment when he jerked his arm back and forth to try and dislodge the saurian. He did manage to jerk Godzilla about, forcing his foe to lock a clawed hand into the ground to avoid being shoved into a building; but the saurian stubbornly remained clamped on. A backhand was thrown with his free arm, only for Godzilla to grab it mid-swing with his own arm and keep the limb locked against the other one. Godzilla for his part let loose a loud roar into the gap between his jaws and Boreas’ hand, before chomping down harder and managing to splinter both several of his fangs and X’s bony armor. A dark shadow swooped over the struggling titans as the only warning before Battra Lea pounced onto the windigo kaiju’s back.

Physically Monster X and Godzilla were roughly even in terms of strength, with any difference present on account of Boreas fueling his possessed body with manic strength free of the typical restraints the mind imposed. After her form change however, Lea had physical might to spare on her own accord and more than covered any gap.

Boreas’ eyes and shoulder spots began to flicker with cold, dead, white light; but his foes’ plans were put into motion. Though they had promised Irys to not cripple or kill her teammate unless absolutely necessary, both leaders of the Defender faction had fought the Xilian’s trump card before. They knew about how well he could heal, and Godzilla’s prior roar had been the signal to do a plan spoken of in body language earlier.

With Godzilla holding Boreas still, Battra dive bombed and pounced into the possessed kaiju’s back. Beating her wings to stir up lift that threw Boreas completely off his footing, making his attempts to kick Godzilla off of him ineffective with no anchoring get leverage from. Her mantis-like arms arced over Boreas’ shoulders and Lea made a promise to try and heal him if Monster X still sported any lasting damage once they cured him. Her sharpened claws gouged into the jewel-like eyespots on Monster X’s shoulders that would become his actual eyes in Kaizer Ghidorah form. The jewel-like pieces were remarkably resistant, but a combination of her swinging down as hard as she could and Godzilla yanking Boreas forward into the blow was enough to burst them.

Boreas shrieked and thrashed, his face still smoking from the short burst of atomic breath Godzilla had loosed into him. Lea’s lower body swung back and she extended her stinger, managing to gouge it into Boreas’ thigh and inject a load of venom. Godzilla had his plan on how to expel the windigo from X’s body, and he could adapt it regardless of if they managed to overpower him or not. That the trio hadn’t knocked him over and pinned Boreas earlier was more a matter of Zephyrus interfering, and these pesky energy blasts.

This took care of at least one of those as Boreas thrashed and tried to free himself from Godzilla’s grapple and dislodge the stinger jabbed into him, his eyes igniting with white, frigid energy. The graviton bursts that typically came from his eyes did launch at first, but the bursts meant to be vented from the eyespots suffered a backfire. Sparks flew and chaotic, uncontrolled energy shot free at random angles. Some did score glancing hits on Godzilla and Lea, but both were tough enough to shrug them off. Lea grabbed hold of Boreas’ head to force it skyward, keeping the optic blasts which did launch free uselessly eviscerating lingering blizzard clouds above.

The two Defenders still struggled to keep him restrained, manic strength being a potent force even as Boreas continued to risk the backfire seriously damaging his body. Finally wise to the likelihood he’d cripple or otherwise impede himself for all the harm that would do, Boreas stopped trying to fire his strongest attack and thrashed like a wild animal. He kicked, smacked with his tails, and even tried to bite Godzilla only for his legs to get pinned down by the saurian and the moth to crane his head away from her compatriot. The two dragged the windigo to the ground and managed to hold him down under their combined weight and force.

A desperate swinging fist by the possessed kaiju was noticed and swatted down, Godzilla having noticed the clawed hand that got free of his grip and smashing his tail down on top of it.

Boreas was down, shrieking and thrashing, but not out.

The numerous tears in the fabric of space and time bore many locations, and the one to the darkest of abysses had taken notice. Lea was the first to sense it, her compound eyes locking onto the portals that led into a dark void of a bygone era. Through the seeming hole in space, a blackness that was not a color as much as it was an emptiness; something stirred. Celestia had changed the destination of one portal successfully, but as long as a few lingered out of her physical and magical reach, this battle had a most dangerous of spectators.

An unliving enormity swam through the void, an irritating, nerve spiking buzz starting to build up as it moved across the few peepholes it had into reality. An enormous, empty eye snapped open across seemingly every single portal at the same time and then multiplied, taking up the entire space across the portals to a magnitude that rivaled or exceeded the kaiju in span. It was the only warning before a gargantuan gale of frigid wind, which whipped into the east, came blasting through; accompanied by the sound of the more horrific scream imaginable. The wail of a bygone time came blasting out of multiple portals at once, a desperation move after failing to fend off Celestia and the sirens.

When it washed over the kaiju pile, Battra and Godzilla both barked in pain as the winds howled. They bore through it, not being damaged necessarily but feeling the raw energy within that force. It flew right by them and into Boreas. A northeastern gale force suddenly came exploding into being, joining the storm above. In an instant Boreas’ constant shrieking was magnified in volume a dozen fold and his eyes and ruined eyespots reignited. A white light erupted from under Junior and Lea, right before they were violently thrown off.

What had been the track field was now one part a massive crater and another part an enormous pillar of ice, stretching hundreds of meters into the air like a frozen geyser. The ice fractured and groaned, briefly illuminating Monster X’s outline trapped within, mere moments before he came bursting out of the frost amidst a shower of shards. His shoulder pads that bore the eyespots were utterly destroyed, blasted off near the base. Boreas reached up to the ruined pieces of armor and wrenched them off, tossing them to the ground. Ice built up across his body, growing at the spots that had been badly damaged or lost to replace them. The reinvigorated Boreas loosed a roar several magnitude louder than his prior efforts.

By desperation of adrenaline and the aid of one they intended to see the full return of, he’d just been put into overdrive on a super charge. One X’s body likely couldn’t handle any better than Twilight’s could Zephyrus’ possession. It didn’t matter if it gave out soon, just that his enemies did sooner.

Still roaring through black fangs, Boreas punched and shattered what was left of the frozen geyser; more frost constantly forming across his body and where he stood as the northeastern winds billowed.

And what the eastern gales could do in tandem with Boreas, they had an equally potent if not stronger effect on their natural counterpart with the north also present in Boreas. North, East, and Western gales all started to spiral together; not reaching their maximum potential but all increasing each other’s potency in the circulation of movement. Power flowed out of the portals and into Boreas, then combined in the outflow of Boreas and into the prone form staggered on the ground in near catatonia.

Zephyrus’ eyes snapped open and the scream they let out was audible across the school.

The two sirens and an alicorn heard it well and knew what was coming. Kaizer Aria looked to her compatriots knowingly as Celestia focused on trying to use a scrying spell to find the Element Bearers.

“Aria are you sure? I know that look on your face,” Adagio said as she nodded her head backwards to the source of the racket.

As if to punctuate her words, sections of shattered concrete across the schoolyard started to levitate up into the air under the power of Frostbite. The dark empowered form of Twilight spread their wings and soon locked their gaze upon them with wrathful intent.

Kaizer Aria kept her glare affixed to their foe, “You told me what they can do, and I’m not their daughter so they’ll have a harder time trying to get my necklace off.”

Her red eyes shifted briefly to her cousin’s before a smirk came over her lips, “Help Celestia. I may not be able to beat them, but nobody will unless we get those girls back.”

She released her hold on Celestia's shoulder, cutting off the feed of magic that had been tethering between them. Before she could completely turn away however, her own hand was snatched at by the solar diarch.

"I don't know if this will do anything, but it couldn't hurt," Celestia beamed warmly at the siren, as some of her magic flowed into and copied itself into Aria's, "If there was any doubt before this day, there isn't anymore. You will be more than welcome back in Equestria, if you so choose to go."

Aria Blaze paused briefly, her necklace glowing as it absorbed the magic offered and took it to bolster herself. A thin aura built itself across her body and she balled a fist with her free hand. She bowed slightly to one she had once seen as a potential enemy.

"At your leave, Your Majesty."

Celestia let go of her and rejoined her efforts with Adagio, helping the other siren steel her courage as her cousin went off to battle.

Another scream of something unliving came from the remaining dark portals leading to that cursed void, Eastern gales ripped across the schoolyard to carry the shriek. It was both cast from outrage at the still-living existence of the alicorn they could detect as a meddler, and to further bolster the two windigo present. Boreas, who was still on the backfoot despite his prior boost, managed to resummon the strength to throw Battra off him after being felled. Unable to reliably use his ranged attack thanks to Godzilla’s ploy, the possessed form of Monster X rabidly tried to scramble across the ground on all fours, hand over foot like a charging beast.

A tail bash across his face by Godzilla sent the empowered windigo sprawling backwards. Boreas thrashed and scrambled, turning about to right himself and pouncing on his foe to rejoin their battle. But for every blow he landed on or defended against Godzilla and the recovered Battra, was another he was kept at bay from Adagio and Celestia.

Zephyrus had paused behind a cover of levitated concrete to absorb the gift being supplied. The West Wind had just begun to feel the bolstering of power when another kind of scream, one full of emotion but also life, cried out at Zephyrus. It was the only forewarning the windigo got before the waves of gravitons burst through their defenses and sent them careening into the school clock with enough force to bash down the wall.

Frostbite Sparkle’s partially frozen wings snapped outwards and dug into the concrete like a pair of enormous, taloned hands, pulling the windigo free of the shattered clock. The momentum of being thrown back so violently still left them skating backwards across the breaking floors, before reorienting themselves. Another flood of golden energy got their attention and forced taloned hands outwards with a white and purple aura about them that spread to their eyes. Telekinetic energy wrapping around their body to form a shield that deflected the onslaught which further shattered the clock tower.

The screaming blast cut off as the top fourth of the tower crumbled away from the shockwaves, the pointed roof collapsing backwards to spread into the top of the school building. Aria would worry about the bill later as she tried to make ready for another assault. The dust cleared away suddenly and thoughts of what structural damage she’d inflicted were soon put aside. The entire tower exploded outwards in a barrage of shrapnel and shattered fragments, pushed out by a massive wave of telekinesis.

Frostbite Sparkle’s wings had snapped outwards as the magical barrier shield they’d thrown up dissipated, the debris that had been caught inside the bubble of telekinesis dropping to the ground now that they were no longer suspended.

Their eyes narrowed as the cause of their annoyance and pain flew closer, opposite them in also hovering above the school. Zephyrus’ eyes narrowed at Aria’s glowing necklace, “Boreas’ daughter returns. I’ll have a harder time getting that piece of your mother off you.”

“He’s not my father, and we are not family,” Aria said bluntly.

Frostbite Sparkle groaned and rolled her eyes, giving Aria the visage of a warped version of Twilight Sparkle doing so. Had this been some time ago, she’d gladly had taken that as a point of outrage as this world’s Twilight had much to answer for. But after having realized what had to have happened to her, by Zephyrus’ treachery; and spending much of that time with the first alicorn princess she felt she could get along with, it instead spurred a different kind of anger. Indignation at the marring of image. This world’s Twilight was not forgiven, but for now she was consciously able to direct her anger at the mastermind behind it all.

“So dramatic,” Zephyrus mocked, “Getting deja vu of how beating Twilight to a bloody pulp is what got you into this situation?”

Aria flinched for the briefest moment, enough for Frostbite Sparkle to sucker-punch her with a swing of their arm, unleashing a surge of telekinesis that sent the siren spiraling across and digging into the roofing tiles of the auditorium. The moment she recovered from her tumble, Frostbite had already sprung and pounced on top of her. Pinning the empowered siren down with their magic, Zephyrus lunged for her necklace; only to feel their hand being repulsed. Glimmers of Kaizer Ghidorah’s energy and Celestia’s magic were beginning to grow even as they tried to inch their fingers closer.

“I’m aware mermares seek powerful mates for their progeny, and here you are; potentially the most powerful in history. All without me even thinking your mother was worth it over her sister. I made you into this,” Zephyrus said as they struggled against the repulsion force of their niece.

Zephyrus was confused by the trouble they were having. Even without her being his progeny, their relation should have been enough for him to at least get closer with all the force he was putting into it. Sparks of magic not dissimilar from an Element of Harmony conducted and shocked Zephyrus, like they were burning away the ice that had grown over his host’s hand. The entrapped Element of Magic began to light up, detecting traces of magic from a Bearer for it. Frostbite Sparkle was almost thrown back, only for Kaizer Aria to catch them by the arm in a crushing grip.

“You raped my aunt and left my mother to your lackey because you wanted to use us for this scheme of yours,” Aria Blaze snarled before yanking the possessed off their feet, bashing Frostbite repeatedly into the roofing before tossing them skyward. She threw her jaws open and loosed another quick-fire graviton scream that closed the distance too fast for Zephyrus to dodge at such close range.

They were forced to grab the debris around them with telekinesis and form it into a barrier shield. It tanked the blast but Frostbite Sparkle was unable to get out of the way before a very irate Kaizer Aria came flying through the debris field to tackle her into the side of the school building. The fact she even made an impact was noticeable to her given what powers Zephyrus had Adagio had warned her of.

-They’re not doing that time stop anymore to dodge…? Perhaps…-

-”They are trying to goad you because something has changed about their powers,”- Kaizer Ghidorah warned her, -”They have relied on treachery and us being unfamiliar or lacking their weaknesses. He is not certain he can defeat you.”-

-”That confident in me?”-

-”X and I are one in the same. We could not have given you this power if the love wasn’t strong and you weren’t exceptional.”-

Aria smirked lightly, well privy to her flaws but nonetheless welcoming of praise.

-”I see all your flirting skills went to you, X had two left feet courting me. And I if we’re that focused on their powers, then…”-

She needed to test it. Aria lunged forward and shoved into the possessed, grabbing her throat with a clawed hand. Frostbite Sparkle grabbed at Aria’s arm and forced it off her neck with a lot of effort, their two arms to Aria’s one. The siren meanwhile looked upon the windigo possessed with more than enraged eyes, taking notice of a few things. Emotional states and experiences were as perceptible to her kind as smoke or mist laden air. And while there was plenty whipping about and a feed of it coming from the portals to the dark beyond into Zephyrus and Boreas; there was nothing coming from her hateful heart into either.

Despite Zephyrus’ best attempts to inspire her spite as a partially bloodied, fanged grin came over Twilight’s face, “Did you think your mothers were the first attempt? Or do you think I targeted them for a specific reason? The bolder sister had spirit and so I broke it. There’s a reason I left your meek mother to Borea-”

Zephyrus didn’t breathe, he didn’t draw air, he didn’t even live by many definitions of the term. But having a body did mean he had to do so, if only to leave such functions to the subconscious and instinctive controls Twilight’s remnants still had given how different the body was from his. And all the air in their lungs was voided when Aria smashed her knee into their gut with enough force that even with Frostbite’s durability, the wall behind her cracked from the powerful blow.

“-GRK!”

-My mother raised us till her last day, and my aunt gave her life to let Sonata have hers. You never broke them; you boastful, rapacious bastard.-

Aria had seen the ploys for what they were, and did not feel the need to waste breath arguing with an unrepentant monster like this. She preferred to spend the time expediting their demise.

“Do me a favor. Shut the fuck up and fight,” Kaizer Aria scoffed plainly, before letting go of Frostbite’s neck, grabbing her by the hair and swinging her about to toss her down at the pavement blow.

The windigo possessed turned about quickly, as unfazed by the damage as they could be. Spotting Kaizer Aria diving down after them in a dropkick, they loosed a massive wave of telekinesis and wind blasts into their foe. Aria’s descent was slowed, but not stopped. Through the blasts of wind and magic, laden with dark magic, Zephyrus could detect two consciousness bearing down on him.

And yet despite the dark magic born of certain emotions and thoughts, there was a reason beyond Aria not being fueled by blind rage and spite that made a difference.

-”This is different than before, they are not drawing power from our emotions any longer like the other windigo could.”-

Aria smirked at Kaizer Ghidorah’s observation even as she missed her dropkick and impacted the sidewalk foot-first. Frostbite Sparkle flew back up into the air, noticeably keeping a distance as they too seemed to notice the literal change in the air with their wings.

“You have two minds within you,” Frostbite said spitefully, seeing the cold gales blow past the fuming Aria without offering any yield of absorbed strife to bolster themselves with, no wrath to feed off of. And true as they may, they couldn’t sink the claws of strife into either mind in a way to throw them off balance or desynchronize them.

“Truth is, we’ve both got a score to settle with you old bastards,” Aria said with Kaizer Ghidorah speaking the same within her mind.

“Makes no difference,” Zephyrus huffed as they flew upwards and began to levitate up hunks of debris under their growing telekinesis, “You lack the magic to actually harm me. Even if you kill Twilight’s body, I can control it as I do her magic. This cursed body won’t stop.”

“And you’ve lost most of your powers,” Aria said over the storm mockingly, “Howling wind, all bluster.”

Aside from using his windigo-based abilities to synchronize with the others, Zephyrus had lost almost all of their unique mastery of magic or skills. An exaggerated version of what magic Twilight knew was all he had left. Zephyrus, on some level, had to know this after their stunt with the Element. He’d broken himself throwing just one Element into its cage.

And as long as Aria could keep him distracted, he’d have a lot more Elements to deal with shortly.

Frostbite Sparkle leered as the debris were crushed, metal twisting to points and concrete shattered into a flechette storm of sharp fragments.

“I was unsure if it would work, so I never attempted it. But with Boreas here, you are not needed if this fails.”

“And what might that be?” Kaizer Aria’s eyes flashed red as she veiled the action of drawing in a big breath to counter what she knew was coming.

Frostbite Sparkle’s hand clenched into a fist and the sharp projectiles snapped about to face the siren, “Seeing if killing you will let me claw the windigo spirit from your mermare-made shell without taking that necklace off first.”

“Good luck with that,” Aria snipped before she was fired upon, dodging to fly into the air and avoid the first salvo before turning about with her jaws parted.

Adagio Dazzle briefly turned away after repeating her song ballad to Celestia for the second time, spurred on by the sharp, shrill shriek of what she recognized as Aria’s Kaizer Ghidorah-boosted scream attack.

Concern and worry nearly pulled her away, but the sound of rumbling earth from the clashing giants and howling wings turned her focus back to her prior effort. Especially when Celestia joyfully cried out.

“I-I think we’re close!” She beamed, gripping the portal and gathering magic as the aura composing her horn, hooves, and wings flared up, “We just need a bit more!”

Adagio refocused and held onto her and the portal, putting her passion into the song as even while she lacked a strong bond with Celestia herself; she was trying to push every bit of gratitude into her thoughts to copy what magic the former alicorn had and then project something similar back at her. It had created an effect on her, with a dim flicker of her magic creating fin-like wings much in the same way she had once used during the large concert against the Rainbooms.

A power, a connection, was there; but it wasn’t strong enough on its own. Adagio was trying her best to copy and push out as much magic as possible to make up for Celestia’s deficit, but the connections weren’t there. She thought the Bearers seemed nice enough, having no hard feelings over the stage battle of the bands, but of the group she only had really gotten to know Twilight as a friend. A good friend, one she looked forward to working with if she ever came to rule in Equestria; but it wasn’t enough to fully bridge the gap.

They felt just slightly too short, Celestia needing just one last assisted push to lock down the portal location. Adagio’s eyes looked through the portal, back to some far-flung region of Equestria she didn’t even recognize; but felt all the same. A being used to scanning for and sampling ambient traces of magic, she could detect everyone nearby. She tried to concentrate, focusing more on the traces of the Element Bearers and who they were.

The trail did go towards and into the portal, which had confirmed to her beyond any doubt Celestia was right in where they’d wound up. But checking again there was…

The siren puzzled at the trace magic she felt.

-Who.. Who is this?-

In a moment of apprehension lost, she let one hand go of Celestia as she kept what magic flow she could muster. Fingers uncurling with her courage, she put her hand through the portal. The tips of her extremity that reached through were engulfed in the magical aura of an incomplete transformation. For the first time in what she felt like had been years, but was in fact over a millennia, Adagio was looking at her flipper again.

And she could feel the magic of those who had passed through the portal. All six of them-

Adagio froze as she detected the magic and sampled it. There were Seven Elements in this human world, but she was feeling less congruity in the group. Five strong, similar magical traces that gave her brief glimpses of the various Bearers when she felt them; Sunset Shimmer being the one she recognized best. Twilight, Eventide, was also present but.. something was wrong. It was like she had her magic altered much like Celestia’s was.

And the last, while bearing magic like the Elements as if it was cut from the same kelp, was... familiar. And potent enough that Adagio was frankly shocked and didn’t recognize it at first. But the pound in her chest helped bring back the familiarity all the same.

-Gloriosa…!!!-

The siren grabbed onto Celestia and, throwing caution to the wind and hoping the princess’ radiating magic would act as a buffer to keep her from turning too fast. It worked last time she needed to give something a jump start for the benefit of someone close to her. Before Celestia could ask questions, Adagio took her necklace off and put it on her neck as she called out.

“Sing with me!”

Celestia was never particularly good at singing, much as rumors of her angelic voice had circulated over the centuries as some looked up to her more and more. That was always more Luna’s forte. But she could keep a melody and follow a lead, and the sudden surge of power she got from a siren heart substituting what it could for an Element was a potent thing. The surreal part was the visions she got whilst singing, Adagio’s magic leaking into her own aura as the siren heart pulsed in tune with the song of both the venerated Equestrian princess and exiled Mako princess.

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

Godzilla blocked a half-blind haymaker aimed at him, having to brace his tail against the ground and roll with the blow lest he be potentially toppled. That could prove disastrous when fighting inside an urban area, evacuation or not. Acting fast, he snapped back and grabbed onto the offending fist and wrist.

That Monster X’s body had taken so much punishment and was still going was testament to how manic and unfeeling the windigo piloting it was. Crisis strength was often reserved for life or death situations, and even in a battle it wasn’t unheard of for it to never be tapped into for the whole of the confrontation. Using it too much broke your body as fast as it might an opponent’s, muscle strength exceeding what the bones could take if repeated too much. But with Boreas at the controls and all of Monster X, or rather Praetorian Guard 094, being relegated to subconscious motor function, the windigo could swing away with impunity and not care if they tore apart the body doing so.

-When we fought on Terra, X and I were roughly on par with each other physically. This feels like fighting two of him!-

Thankfully, there were now almost two of him physically as well. Wings beat the air and Boreas’ face, still burnt from the blowback of misfiring his energy blasts from his shoulders earlier, was wrenched away from Godzilla by a pair of mantis-like scythes. Battra Lea braced her largest legs onto Boreas’ back and kicked hard whilst she jerked back and Godzilla shoved forward. Between the two, Boreas lost his grounding with his feet kicking out in front of him. Lea quickly shot backwards through the air as Boreas began to careen backwards, yanking the windigo along for the ride and picking him up into the air.

She could have picked him up to try dropping him from a great height, having the strength to do so and Boreas lacking some of the fine-tuned gravity control Monster X might employ to break his fall. But instead, the guardian moth hauled him up only a few dozen meters whilst moving backwards. Dragging him away from the schoolyard and tossing him away, Lea sent Boreas flying through to the pier. What remained of the wooden structure exploded into a million fragments when Monster X’s body was sent crashing through it. Water and woody shards flew skywards in a geyser of an eruption, some of the latter freezing in place due to the sheer cold of contacting the possessed kaiju.

Boreas, in mild vertigo and having to reorient himself whilst half-submerged in water, was wide open for retaliation. Lea could have easily lanced his body with prism beams from multiple angles and, without the immediate risk of the frost demon firing back to cause a potentially disastrous beam-lock explosion, Godzilla had ample time to charge up his own ranged option for some hefty damage. In plenty of spots, Monster X’s bony armor had been broken off and a well placed shot or two from one of both Defender Leaders could be crippling at worst and disabling at the least.

Which was why neither took the shot. Even if that meant by the time Godzilla had caught up to Boreas, he had to block a kick to the chest that still managed to crack a rib and hold his ground to deadlock the both of them. Tanking a headbutt to his brow and returning back in kind, Godzilla snarled as he focused on blocking and stalling over actually dealing damage; with Lea opting for divebombs to knock Boreas over instead of going for critical stabs or a second round of venom.

There was a plan at play to beat what couldn’t typically be defeated in their current circumstances. Junior could shatter a mountain with ease, but he couldn’t burn or flatten what was effectively a ghost. Lea could bind beings potentially stronger than even this windigo with her spellwork, but such abilities were on the fritz with her transformation. And Boreas meanwhile, for all of his winds howling and the dark magic laden therein that tried to seep into their core, couldn’t mentally attack them and control Monster X’s body at the same time.

This was a deadlock, both by circumstance and design. And Godzilla had a plan on how to get X, or perhaps 094, to help them break the lock.

========

"We have them! We have them, it's working!" Celestia cried out joyfully as her and Adagio's magic combined was able to drag the focus of Zephyrus' portal to their will and redirect it to the Element Bearers and company.

An assortment of forms jumped through the portal, first Rainbow Dash getting aloft, then Fluttershy, Applejack, and Rarity on tow. All back in human form and sporting their empowered auras forming wings, hooves, and horns.

"Are you girls alright?!" The now much larger Peachy Keen said to her magic pupils with a wide smile. Being closer to them was having a benign effect on her own magic. The aura forming her own combination of hind hooves, wings, and horn seemed to increase in strength, growing more opaque as a result.

"Ye', just ticked off an' ready for round tw-woah!” Applejack, the tallest of the lot, now had to look upwards by a head and a half, “Someone's hit a growth spurt!"

“Marvelous design! You’re looking splendid, Principal- I mean Princess,” Rarity piped upon returning from the portal and two feet, letting her eyes perk at Celestia’s gilded armor and dress before returning focus to the important issue at hand.

Celestia still humored her a smirk before eying the portal, “Where is Twilight Sparkle? Was she not with you?”

“She’s staying on the other side. The Bearers tried to purge the windigo out of X's body back at the camp and she had been mulling over why it was so difficult," Gaea Everfree stated as she also emerged from the portal, her footsteps causing plants to sprout from the ground on entry.

Celestia perked her brow slightly at the sight before her, not quite understanding this power nor expecting it to be able to work without the Elements anymore, having only seen the partial transformation previously. But she was wise enough to just accept it for the boon it was and look back through the portal. Her alicorn protege was waving back as she used magic to scrawl an enchantment spell on the ground surrounding her, several more portals to other locations around the school being relatively close by.

Sunset Shimmer landed beside Gaea and also chimed in, "I could detect X's spirit with my powers, or at least the fractured piece of it. Either way, the windigo was hiding inside of the soul like some kind of spiritual shield to resist the Elements. Not completely, but enough to weather it. The spirit Boreas was using was still a good person, but apparently whatever happened with that Memory Stone changed him so that he couldn't recognize Twilight. The connection was weaker because of it."

"And her remaining in Equestria helps this how…? Does she intend to grab the Equestrian Element of Magic from the Tree?" Celestia questioned.

Every one of the Bearers and Retainer shook their heads before Sunset continued, "These demons are so hard to put down because there's only a few things that can actually hurt them, and they are tough enough to require a lot of it to work. Zephyrus stole her Element Crystal and there’s not much magic in this world without it, but back in Equestria on the other hand- hoof…"

Gaea nodded along, "Part of the whole reason Zephyrus has been so wiley is he keeps a bunch of wild cards and alternate assets to exploit he can fall back on. Not to mention improvising. Twilight's plan is to adapt and give him a taste of his own medicine."

Visible through the portal, the purple alicorn was clearly gathering strength as the marking she’d made into the ground began to light up in tandem with her horn.

"Twilight came up with this in the span of a few minutes of falling through that portal after losing her Element?" Celestia said plainly without surprise before beaming proudly, "She really has improved on coming up with ideas while under stress. We have a plan of our own to do the same thing, so let's combine them-”

She was cut off by the thundering outcry from the battling giants. Godzilla barked in muted pain as he tumbled backwards from a powerful blow that managed to finally break his grounding. Collapsing over, it was only by a last-second bracing of his palm into the courtyard that he avoided completely crushing the school building he’d otherwise have landed on top of. Even so, the crash of his palm and subsequent burying it at least two stories into the pavement caused everyone’s heads to rattle.

A ways away, Battra had tackled Boreas before he could capitalize on the brief opening, trying to stay clung to his back as to avoid getting grabbed or pummeled by the larger kaiju’s manic strength. Beating her wings rapidly, she succeeded in yanking him backwards towards the ruined pier, lest they risk crushing their compatriots in the scuffle.

Another uproar of noise, distant as it was and muffled by the growing blizzard, called down from the highlands back towards the campgrounds. A booming, gong-like roar followed by a shrill shriek. Boreas’ reprieve was soon expiring because, slowed as they were by the storm, Anguirus and Irys were closing back in and not far away from rejoining the fray.

Godzilla’s eye caught the ground and he visibly nodded to Celestia and Adagio, before lifting himself back up and returning to battle. Elsewhere, the stray bolts of graviton fire soared over the school, a rapidly moving Frostbite Sparkle dodging the blasts Aria was shooting at her as they continued their aerial dogfight.

Celestia put her foot down as the group subconsciously rallied to her.

“Right, divide and conquer,” Celestia said as she eyed the various portals to Equestria, mostly random locations, floating about the clashing kaiju, “I’ll see what I can do about rearranging those, I’ll need the Element Bearers chiefly here to help me for when the time comes, along with the sirens for their spell work.”

Her eyes fell to Gaea Everfree, “Can you keep Zephyrus busy so they don’t interrupt?”

“Can do,” The Camp Director huffed as she cracked her wood-covered knuckles, only to stop mid stride when someone gripped her hand.

“Not alone you’re not,” Adagio Dazzle interjected, glancing up and down to survey Gloriosa’s new form and nodding, “Like the new look, gonna take a sec to get used to you being the taller one.”

Gaea Everfree, currently in the form of a mythic forest nymph, blushed sheepishly and lowered her neck as if to reduce the height difference incurred by growing almost a foot taller. She chewed her lip slightly and swallowed, trying to articulate but finding her chest tightened.

Adagio glanced towards Celestia with a firm, though not cold visage, “We’ll free up Aria, you’ll need her most for this and she’ll be more than enough alone… I’m not letting anyone fight that monster alone again…”

Celestia, privy to why more than most given she’d been there when they hauled in the heavily injured Gigan into the van for safe keeping alongside the unconscious Flash Sentry.

“And what are we? Chopped celery?” Rainbow Dash piped up as she hovered backwards alongside the departing Gaea and Adagio, flapping her aura wings.

“Feel free to tag in when you can,” Gaea replied, “But we’ll need all hands on deck for that spell to free X.”

“Princess Celestia and I might have something shortly!” The voice of Twilight Sparkle called out, apparently from a distance despite the volume. A brief pause to look at where it was coming from spurred the group to notice a grinning Celestia.

“Aaaaaw, she’s got her own Royal Canterlot voice now!” The Solar Diarch squealed despite them being in a near-doomsday scenario, as she continued working on the portal, trying to use it to remotely control some of the other portals and keep the connection strong lest they risk losing Twilight.

“Whatever you do, just be careful!” The younger princess pleaded.

“We’ll protect each other! Just don’t keep us waiting, Eventide!” Adagio Dazzle yelled back with a similarly magically enhanced booming voice, proud in another way of her cohort. All the while, she’d never let go of Gaea Everfree’s hand as the two walked towards the courtyard; the Rainbooms charging ahead.

As they advanced, quickly as they did, Gaea couldn’t help but notice the squeezing on her hand more. The corner of her eye caught tears on Adagio’s face. As much of a nervous and awkward wreck as she often was, the siren’s typical confidence was admired and times when it lapsed were always of great concern.

She knew how to read things then, and did now.

“Where’s Gigan?” Gaea whispered with flattened lips, privy to how the cyborg wasn’t with Adagio despite knowing well how unlikely he’d be to leave her side willingly. She’d read the room between them and knew how they’d felt for one another.

The brief chill of sadness at knowing how she’d stepped back to let them be happy was stifled by her honest concern, especially when Adagio squeezed her hands a bit tighter.

“... I let someone I care about go against my father alone once, I’m never doing it again.”

Adagio looked up towards the coming battle, again facing the demon of her nightmares for decades and scourge of her family. The tears still fell and yet she let her mind travel elsewhere for just a moment. She pulled Gloriosa’s hand up and put it to her necklace, letting the altered human touch and cradle it in her fingers, as the memories of the siren flew across Adagio’s mind and perhaps the emotions involved conducting into her company. Gloriosa could feel everything earnestly, from memories months prior right up until Adagio’s last interaction with the absent cyborg into the now.

The first time she’d seen the human before her, Gloriosa Daisy was a seemingly random nobody she met in passing. It was when Sonata applied for that part time job as a lifeguard at camp. Adagio had never been the trusting type, especially around outsiders and with good reason. But she’d never sensed any threat, sitting back and watching Sonata eagerly sign the paperwork. The place seemed safe enough.

She’d thought so well enough that it was the first, and possibly only, place to go after Sonata was attacked and they had to suddenly relocate. Now with a quartet of kaiju and one alicorn in tow.

A spark of intrigue when the seemingly normal human had some very abnormal items on her and the type of magical power on her own. Intrigue became appreciation when her initial positive vibe about Gloriosa was supported when the latter stepped up to help care for Sonata. Helping nurture what family remained after the loss of a parent was something they both had been put through.

When Gloriosa had come to her with obvious apprehension about embracing what magic or circumstances fate had given to her, the eldest siren had freely given, surprisingly to her herself, heartfelt advice. Embrace your circumstances and don’t lose sight of your goals, and you won’t lose who you are. At the time Adagio hadn't even been fully aware she was giving the same advice to herself too. Keep moving forward and don't be afraid of your circumstances…

A brief cold of pain came from her chest up on getting the shock of her life not long after. Finding out every single person you might have known, every place you had seen, and every old wound inflicted by those that had wronged her family was dead or changed immeasurably so. Being 1,000 years out of date was not something many had to go through and even fewer could do that without breaking under that realization.

Had she not the company she did, she wouldn’t have been some of the few. Gigan was amongst them for many of those moments, but he wasn’t alone. Call it a combination of her strange upbringing leaving her with different ideas, call it throwing caution into the wind because the heart wanted what the heart wanted. The cyborg and her were like two highly reactive elements, put them together and the sparks flew. Had she been experiencing that bolt-head alone, they might not have wound up where they’d wound up, because this journey had not been one trodden by just two. Gloriosa had been pulled from her quiet shell by them, embracing what life gave her. The siren heeded the same advice.

One thousand years ago, she’d wanted to be seated upon the glorious throne of her grandmother; a sight she’d never even seen with her own eyes. Who could say what her future exactly entailed, but right now, she just looked forward to the view of the lake from the edge of camp again. Optimally with a company of two.

With what had happened to Gigan, there was no way she was letting anyone go up against her father alone again.

“We protected each other,” Adagio whispered between the tears, “And I promised him to do the same for you-“

The kiss was initiated by Gaea taking the lunge to close the distance in a spur of the moment rush of emotions, but the lack of rejection was quickly noticeable in how it was returned. It only lasted a few moments, both subconsciously aware of the time crunch they were on, but it felt much longer. Gaea Everfree slipped back slightly, blushing up a storm and her eyes wide with shock at what she’d just done.

“I-um-eheh,” Gloriosa sheepishly muttered as she shivered in the midst of her fluster, “I think we have a lot to talk about and sort out once this is all over!”

The cold winds howled and Adagio, tears dried, smirked as she turned her head to face them. The warmth coming from within her, magic mingling and reacting to the one whose hand she was squeezing, helped to steel both of their resolves, “Then let’s go take that bastard down. Afterwards, we’ll have all the time in the world to hash out what this is, all three of us.”

This wouldn’t be about avenging what was lost in their mothers, but protecting what had been found in each other. She could only hope against dread that Gigan was as stubborn for live as she hoped he was, whilst facing down who hurt him so much. She wasn't keen to let something like that have to happen again before acting on what she felt.

Author's Note:

Proofed by LanceOmikron and Faith-Wolff

Next Chapter: 6/12/2023

Comments

[Titan Commander Sebaste]

*cracks knuckles*

Time to give these Wendigos some well earned payback....

Roll the fight music!

[Jam5022]

Welcome back

[redandready45]

Glad to see this story is back!

Despite the length of the chapter, the action, drama, and feels made it a, forgive me for the pun, breeze to read through.

Their eyes narrowed as the cause of their annoyance and pain flew closer, opposite them in also hovering above the school. Zephyrus’ eyes narrowed at Aria’s glowing necklace, “Boreas’ daughter returns. I’ll have a harder time getting that piece of your mother off you.”

“He’s not my father, and we are not family,” Aria said bluntly.

Frostbite Sparkle groaned and rolled her eyes, giving Aria the visage of a warped version of Twilight Sparkle doing so. Had this been some time ago, she’d gladly had taken that as a point of outrage as this world’s Twilight had much to answer for. But after having realized what had to have happened to her, by Zephyrus’ treachery; and spending much of that time with the first alicorn princess she felt she could get along with, it instead spurred a different kind of anger. Indignation at the marring of image. This world’s Twilight was not forgiven, but for now she was consciously able to direct her anger at the mastermind behind it all.

What makes Aria's character development so good is that it feels so genuine: while she's abandoned most of her howling rage and learned the value of love and patience, she hasn't become a goody-good who lets everything go. Aria understands that Sci-Twi may have been manipulated, but she still helped the Windigos and harmed her family, and she needs to work for Aria's forgiveness, let alone trust.

More importantly, she isn't letting Zephyrus get under her skin anymore or letting old wounds consume her since that would figuratively and literally feed him.

“We protected each other,” Adagio whispered between the tears, “And I promised him to do the same for you-“

The kiss was initiated by Gaea taking the lunge to close the distance in a spur of the moment rush of emotions, but the lack of rejection was quickly noticeable in how it was returned. It only lasted a few moments, both subconsciously aware of the time crunch they were on, but it felt much longer. Gaea Everfree slipped back slightly, blushing up a storm and her eyes wide with shock at what she’d just done.

“I-um-eheh,” Gloriosa sheepishly muttered as she shivered in the midst of her fluster, “I think we have a lot to talk about and sort out once this is all over!”

Adagio learning the value of love and compassion is also pretty sweet, since when she first appeared in the story, she struggled to extend that even to her own family. Now she has not only the love of her family but two potential loves in the form of Gigan and Gloriosa.

[Late_Night]

holy fuckballs are we almost done with this arc??????
i sure hope the next arc is something light and fluffy
because holy. fucking. chrrrRIST. has this arc been fucking grimderp as fuck
seriously, how many times are these hatesink bastard wendigoes gonna keep getting some 11th-hour jumper-cable boost so they can keep blighting this fucking story with their miserable presence??????
in this fucking chapter alone i counted at least three, but possibly as many as FIVE of such extensions to their malignant countenance
and i gotta fucking ask: W H Y
this isn't the whims of fate or something else ineffable, this is a conscious choice from the author!
so i ask again: W H Y are they still here?

[ZeroGs]

welcome back and thanks for the chapter

[3phantoms]

It's alive! Welcome back.

[CrystalMaster76]

More extended thoughts to come once all is said and done.

This chapter tries valiantly to make up for the last one, and can't really succeed. The geode of Magic theft was just such a BS ass pull and leaving the campsite was such an abrupt pacing killer.
The opening of this chapter suffers because it inevitably has to draw attention to what came before. No amount of Zephyrus doubling over makes up for the fact that it shouldn't have worked in the first place.
The bit about needing a connection for the elements to work is...odd. The main 6 had no connection to NMM and it worked fine there. I hate the Geode theft but just say Zephyrus interrupted the attack and that's why it failed. This is just convoluted.

Once the opening is over with, things pick up a bit. The action is solid but nothing special by Bridge standards, honestly the highlight is Kaiser Aria vs Frostbite just because she's not taking any of his shit. Celestia's part is also solid and thankfully we don't need to do another round of over explained Windigo induced angst, but at the same time the emotions are still way over explained in this part. Still, it's fun watching her hijack the portals.

The Chapter also just kind of ends. I know it's a 4-parter, but it still felt abrupt.
Three Windigos left and three parts to go counting this one, feels natural that one should go down for part. I'm still baffled that Boreus has survived this long. He's sadly lost his sadistic streak that made his fight in the campground fun. Boreus X is just...not interesting enough a fight to justify him being there.

It's fine, good in places, just held back by what came before.

[mjadino8823]

This was a roller coaster of a chapter. Never thought aria would drop an f bomb in this story.

[Temnizziv]

First impressions. Action was neat, I liked the teamwork between Junior & Lea. The Boreas fight had some neat visuals. I liked Tia's moment when she transformed Junior. The Aria fight was also epic, but I felt like the chatter between Zephyrus & Aria could've been cut down a bit. Favorite moment was the kiss between Adagio & Gloriosa at the end there.

Overall a solid chapter.

[Moongaze14]

This chapter was a very pleasant surprise, especially with the cliffhanger of a few months ago. The battle scenes between Boreas, Irys, Junior, and Battra Lea was epic, especially since all of them have gone Kaiju so the amount of damage they are causing is amazing. I love how even though Junior and Lea are unable to talk, they are capable of formulating tag team strategies through body language alone, which allows them to fight Boreas despite the latter’s strength.

The Equestria girls and Kaiser Aria’s battle against Zephyrus was also an interesting contrast. The EG girls fight Zephyrus with combination attacks and their enmity is impersonal compared with the Sirens, as they fight him due to being an evil spirit possessing an innocent girl. Meanwhile, Kaiser Aria is able to fight him by herself and she has nothing but vitriol towards him while casually deconstructing his arguments. Zephyrus despite his hatred for the girls knows they are just extensions of Harmony’s will, so he sees them as obstacles, whereas Kaiser Aria disrespecting him and no longer being afraid of him actually bothers him.

The biggest surprises came with Celestia recovering her adult self and joining the fight against the Windigos, even fighting back Eurus’ influence with the help of the Sirens. Twilight coming up with the winning strategy to defeat the Windigos next chapter is great as she is showing off strong leadership skills, especially when she unlocked the Royal Canterlot voice, which causes Celestia to be proud of her and influences the positive energy she needs to ward off the Windigos negativity. Lastly, the ending with Gloriosa and Adagio was adorable and makes me want to know how their interactions will change. Amazing chapter, Tarb. Well worth the wait.

[Swordfighter125]

Finally, our Big Boy is back at continuing the story😎

[The Voice in the Water]

Kick those icy bastards back to the void where they belong, Girls and Monsters.

[Seraphem]

WHOOOOOO! Let's ice these frigid britches!

And it took several minutes in itself to stop that uprising.

Okay,I have thoughts about this opening buuuut, let's shelve those for later and just leave this as a reminder for after the snarking and commentary...

his was a ley line, a place where the boundary lines between space and time that created dimension and sectioned off different dimensions was at its thinnest.

It's not QUITE building your high school over a Hellmouth, but it can't be that much better an idea.... (Especially when one of those has a certain geriatric wizard that likes to use your backyard as his trash heap.)

Boreas could not do the same, but he could contribute his presence as a fellow directional wind. Having more of their kind together always made them individually stronger

I do like this, each of the Fuckyouagoes having their own strengths and things they excel at over the others, but still resonating with and empowering each other. Much like we've already seen with the Sisters.

The sound of rending barriers in space was like hearing a living thing get eviscerated.

Yeeesh, okay drama queen.... a Twilight Sparkle ripping a hole in reality is nothing exactly knew for the Equestrian Multiverse... at least 60% of all dimensional mishaps are because of Purple Smart... but none of them have to make such a production about it.

The manner of beasts coming to confront them were outside of Zephyrus and Boreas’ known pool of references, though they were not in some ways astronomically different from various beasts of bygone eras or types familiar to them.

Yeeeeeah, you just go right on not getting just how completely out of your depths you ice-holes are. You really have no idea what is about to hit you.

The Element Bearers and their company were the real threat, no mistake there. But these living titans were their literal biggest enablers.

Turns out it's a lot easier to drop a pinpoint Orbital Friendship Cannon strike on a target after a kaiju stomps it a couple miles into the ground.

Lea showed just how much physical force she’d gained from losing most of her spells

Stupid.. freaking balance.... not letting a Magus be a Full Caster as well.....

perhaps Monster X could have with mastery of gravity control defined some means of stabilizing himself. But while the windigo was essentially a spirit and was immune to inhibitions of the body like pain, he was still controlling a physical body that had its limits. Try as he might to fire the graviton flares, the body’s systems were completely out of control due to sheer vertigo.

In other words "Get gud scrub"

Boreas was smashed into the ground down to bedrock,

.... Daaaamn... I was (mostly) joking about the bury them a few miles in the ground!

the energy beams launching through the terror in space to come flying out above and behind him.

Heh, fun timing for tricks like this given what just released last weekend.

whilst ripping a huge multi-hundred-ton chunk of bedrock out of the ground

HAX! Someone report this server!

having been the chauffeur for the elements on the correct assumption his two compatriots would better be able to defend themselves and draw fire on their approach.

Also, let's face it.... it's just plain cooler to ride the giant spiky dino boi!

Tiny flickers of some kind of distant recollection compelled the body into muscle memory and it also entered a readied stance against its sparring partner.

"Put em up! Put em up!" And then just tail whip him in the junk while his muscle memory is anticipating a 'clean' fight. I'm sure Aria will understand.

Gaea Everfree, the orchestrator of the attack, waved her hands back and forth like a conductor organizing a symphony orchestra;

Noting this line for later detail...

a few others to tangent worlds associated with that dimension.

Zeph better hope one of those isn't the Oversaturated EQG world.... as much fun as it would be for Bacon Horse Goddess to get involved.

flying through the air and hurling the orange blur into the cover Rarity and Fluttershy had made.

Oh right, Rarity.... for a moment, after mentioning an odd portal into Equestria, and then suddenly being attacked by Crystals, I half wondered if Xen was joining the fight. Also, yay fastball special!

Jack responded by grabbing the windigo by their antlered crown and headbutting Zephyrus square in the forehead with enough superstrength to cause a small shockwave.

The horticulturalist hit them so hard

Seriously story? This is a level over even Sanderson's love of Maladroit. (granted at this point he HAS to be including that just to troll people)

That said......

that Zephyrus was briefly seeing apple-shaped stars

The armored dinosaur was thrown aside beside the school just as Boreas took the split-second opening he had to kick forward.

1 "aside beside'? Really? 2. Just next to the school? Come on..make a lot of kids day and just crash right through that place!

That one second of clearance was enough for his foot to come crashing through the PE hall Rarity and Fluttershy had been in front of.

Whoops, NVM, please continue!

It was only thanks to the quick actions of a cyan blur being fast enough to rush in, grab them, and get the pair out of the way, did Rainbow Dash get them to safety as the onslaught continued.

I'm just picturing everything from her perspective being the Quicksilver scenes from X-Men.

and forced the kanji-possessing windigo to re-engage

Wait, when did he unlock the power to possess the Japanese ideographic writing system? Okay, on the plus side, we have like a month to defeat him and take those back before Oda will need them to get back to work using them for ALL the name puns.

Gaea Everfree, conductor of the saving catch

Okay I'll keep these brief and spread out but, just to illustrate the point I've said before about over explaining, Gaea is literally the only character in play here with plant based powers, you really don't need to remind us that she is the one behind these things, once maybe to account for time since last chapter, but this is twice we've had almost the exact same sort of comment like this.

“Zephyrus is trying something new.

Okay, now we need Link to dive bomb in, whip out a massive mecha construct covered in flame emitters and just roast the damn bastards! What.... let's try something new!

Granted, with their luck they'll get the chaos goblin Link that just makes giant wooden person with a flaming dong.

catching herself with her feet to avoid plowing into the ground and bounding down the city main street in a series of great leaps before kicking off to get airborne again.

Damn..... you go Irys!

“SUNSET?! What- Why are?!”

Shut up! In this situation when one of your friends says dive into a portal just DO IT! Okay... MAAAAAYBE question if it's Pinkie Pie saying to do it... but that's it!

or Equestria and didn’t get that answer until she crashed into an earth pony mare

YAY! Okay, try to get those bastards into this side of things where you all have even more options for Friendshipping them to death!

Applejack, ignoring her bemusement that somehow her hat of all things carried through the transition,

Some things are just multiversal constants.

The western wind was not so foolish as to think the biggest threat to the dead without cause however,

ummm..... huh?

commendably adjusting to their Equestrian bodies well for all of them who weren’t native.

For the best I guess.... not really a good time for an "ALL MY THINGS Are HORSE THINGS!" freakout

Their magical talons shredded the portal, breaking it apart and shattering it like glass.

Boooooooooo!

A recurved dagger of a stinger erupted from the end of her body and was swung downwards, the sharp tip oozing venom as it buried itself into a gap between Monster X’s armor near the abdomen.

Eheheheheehehehehehehe! Okay I should not be evilly chuckling at this as much as I am.

Boreas himself couldn’t feel it, but his body could.

This is giving me the feeling of the Oars fight in One Piece. Gaint, monstrous opponent who can't feel pain, so the only way to take them down is to slowly beat on them till the basic functionality of their body gives out.

The two Guardian Beasts reoriented back towards the portal they’d both been forced through and made to close the distance when the portal shrank away and snapped shut.

Having foes who can use portals intelligently is such a pain in the ass!

Anguirus curled into a ball. Within a few moments, he was rapidly spinning

And somewhere along the way, an aspiring game dev looks out and gets the idea for his new hit game.

Working through pain they didn’t feel but could register,

Okay, telling yourself you don't feel pain ain't working right now. It might not be 'pain' exactly, but this is messing you up and you know it, so stop faking.

bring forth the last and mightiest of them when that damn bearded unicorn interfered.

Hey, if there is one thing Starswirl was excellent at, it was making his existence the problem of everyone else around him.

Like rending open flash

Okay whoa, whoa... I'll admit I'm not the biggest fan of the guy but that's going a bit far.

“Hey, we’ll get him back to you. I promise. And I for one intend to keep to that!”

"And if we needs to beat him half to death first well.... you get to help nurse him back to health. So, look forward to that!"

Presiding over the 984th Summer Sun celebration nor for her benefit, but for the giddy cheering of a random colt in the audience.

D'aaaaaaaawwwwwwwwwwww

And thank you for not drawing out another Windigo induced angst-fest (I recently reread Well of Ascension and I am still full on pointless angst from Zane the Emossassin, thank you very much.) But this is Celestia and, yeah, for all she's had some really, really damn bad times...... in over a thousand years of looking over her little ponies? She's had far, far more heartwarming and uplifting ones, because that's just who Celestia is, she finds the wholesome joy in the everyday lives of he ponies everyday.

The glittering mass composing a rainbow of hues in a sphere resembling a sun yearned to be free. One of the bindings snapped and dissipated, giving the distinct impression that the magic would free itself and reunite with its bearer all on its own.

Was this a set-up? Some long term plan? A glimpsed future or a guess at prediction? She.. felt a hollowness, a void within.

Hmmmmmm...... Okay I really should not try to overthink this because... I'm also deep into Starlight Over Detrot..... and the villains in that one are the sort were EVERYTHING that happens (barring our Protags actions because no one can really predict what the crazy dummy will do) is part of some multi layer, decades long scheme that inevitably leads to their triumph. Even the stuff that seems to be directly working counter to other parts of the plan.

Here... well I doubt Bagan was working THAT large a scheme, but.... some of the later ones? He might be trying to force harmony to get more involved, to use her power more.....either as away to potentially leave her open for an attack once he gets the power to do so.... or... maybe just to try and see if he can persuade her of his way, that he's right, in at least some of what he's doing.

Okay in the vane of overly elaborate plans that somehow make perfect sense in the end and you wonder how you never saw them coming (Yes Starlight, but I'm also doing a Sanderson reread AND my other current hyper fixation is One Piece and DAMN are those a master class in that type of twist.) What if Bagan is trying to die? Like, he sees himself as "extinction" but, we know there is a lot going on in his head and it's not like he's gone full Ruin, he's not just some primal force whose entire being is about destroying life, it's something he choose to make himself, and Harmony brought up the idea that part of the issue was how long he spent alone as the god of Earth.... what if some part of him is actually hoping that when he unseals Grogar, Goat-Boi kills him....but he wants to make sure to push Harmony and her Champions to make sure they are ready to then deal with Grogar afterwards?

as a flood of power shot into his body

Awwwwww yeah! Time for the King to enter the fight!

And just like that, he was not afraid. Not of crushing a friend nor of failure.

Okay this bit.... did not work as well as it was meant to. It's... just recapping the same core issues he's been dealing with, and comes kind of out of nowhere in this section just as it's time to see him power up and kick ass.....

it's great on it's own, but in context it feels out of place since none of the chapter build up was focused on him, we go from something building for Celestia, to this. That and maybe just, the whole dealing with personal angst stuff is overdone as a whole this arc for obvious reasons.

A brilliantly glimmering fist that caught and deflected the graviton flares away, letting them careen off into the sky.

This wasn’t normal radiation, but it was certainly empowering.

with her attire similarly shifting to match.

Bet she's glad for that.

calling out to both Battra and Boreas as affirmation to the former that help had arrived and confrontation to the latter that he had a new opponent.

SKREEEEEEEEEOOOONNNKKKK!
Aw yeah...... it's go time baby!

, let alone the schoolyard, it would be disastrous.

I'm pretty sure this whole neighborhood is already a lost cause.

She caught a brief glance in his eye, something Junior knew but Boreas couldn’t detect because of her compound eyes.

Awww yeah, the difference between allies who put up with each other because they kind of half to, and true teammates! No need to talk, they know how to read each other and anticipate what's coming.

A trio of magical laden lights showed from her outstretched arms and flowed into the siren hearts,

Noooot sure I'm a fan of making all this try to relate to the Elements like it's trying to. Even in show the Elements weren't the be all, end all of weaponized friendship, and Celestia is already essentially the exact same thing as the Elements, a splinter of Harmony's power, (and damnit that instantly made me try to work out if she'd count as a Spren or not..... Granted if you ask anyone on Roshar the answer is 'of course' but that's because these are the same people that think every bird is a chicken.) so then adding on it being because of the Elements that she's having any real effect feels like it undermines Celestia herself to me while also kind of diluting the Elements by just, making everything involve them.

and lacking the physical talisman to enhance her spellwork like the Rainbooms did;

Like this.... why would she need it? They need it because it is the only thing actually giving them power because they are just humans. Big difference between them and Celestia. I mean, okay I can see maybe being awkward without some sort of channeling agent since she's doing this without her horn, but it's not really worded like that is the issue.

“I have a lot of experience with portal magic, I swore off ever using it for centuries, but Starswirl and I did a lot of exploring once; even here!”

.......
Nah.....

That said, while Twilight may account for the vast majority of the Equestrian Multivere's 'oopsies'... you have a good collection of them yourself! About the only other single pony that seems to crop up more then you is Starlight.... and in her case it's not really multiple issues, it's just the one issue that was so massive as to caused more problems then every other pony in the multiverse save Twiggles.

a place you could put something magical, and it would no longer be a threat to others or themselves.

.......... how'd that work out there Beardy?

I can try to change the portal destination with the spell I know.

So.....question! Why does it have to be one of the portals of frozen pain and angst that activly fights back? Wouldn't it be easier to repurpose one of the portals already leading to Equestria?

Most of what Celestia had known of them personally came from Starswirl, and for some reason he never liked talking about them;

Gee, you don't say...... I am shocked.... look at my shocked face...

The vision of a gawking, smiling purple filly filled her heart with the song;

DAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!

a passing, very confused yak merchant confirming it.

Hey there we go, can we just set a few Yaks loose on Zephy? I'm sure they'd love a chance to try and smash something technically without physical form to smash. and if any group could find a way, it's them!

Aaaand gotta stop here for the night, will do the rest tomorrow!

[ScourgeofLightning]

While I think a second go-through would be great to pick out them funky kanji typos as well as general structure and grammar in some of the earlier stuff, the chapter rapidly strengthens around the point of Godzilla and Lea's dual battle with Boreas. It's one of the best battles seen in a long time, and Celestia's comeback is pretty great to see as well. I am of the mind with Crystal that some parts of it feel overly exposition-y though, but overall, it's nice to have the story be back in my eyes again.

[Supersonic]

Top Gear style recap 54 Part 2 (from Goji's POV):

Tonight, Celestia has a bit of a growth spurt, Adagio turns over a new leaf, and I get involved in a massive Kaiju brawl.

[Jmunoz13]

At long last, a new chapter! And the next one is 3 days away as of writing this!!! It was definitely worth the wait! Keep it up 👍

[Seraphem]

Okay, part 2 let's finish this up!

Boreas pivoted on his foot to throw all of his weight behind a haymaker aimed squarely at his newest foe’s jaw.

Yeah, good luck with that one buddy!

Okay now, big guy.... catch it on your mouth, yank Boreas off his feet, whirl him around, before grabbing him and choke-slamming him back into the dirt!

the nuclear dragon countered by snapping them down onto what typically was Monster X’s hand.

Oh damn.. you actually did it!

Though they had promised Irys to not cripple or kill her teammate unless absolutely necessary, both leaders of the Defender faction had fought the Xilian’s trump card before.

They know just how much he can live through.

Which, is great a good way to get a fight where the good guys really do not want to actually cause permanent harm, but also don't have to hold back and handicap themselves either.

Lea made a promise to try and heal him if Monster X still sported any lasting damage once they cured him

D'aww that's nice.

The two dragged the windigo to the ground and managed to hold him down under their combined weight and force.

Okay, now I have the mental image of Godzilla just sitting on X as X thrashes like a petulant child.....

It was the only warning before a gargantuan gale of frigid wind, which whipped into the east, came blasting through;

Okay so..... how does this work? The wind would have to come from whatever direction the portal is facing to come out of the portal, so unless all of them are East of the fight, how is it doing both that and blowing East? Or is the wind coming right out and hooking off to whatever direction East is? But again.... if the portal's are aligned right with the fight that wouldn't matter...... yes I am overthinking it.... did you miss the "On a Sanderson binge" hints? Figuring something like this out would likely end up being a secret to some unbefore thought of layer of the magic system no one even realized had been right in our face the whole time!

But yeah, it is, kind of odd to parse what is meant here when you stop to think about it. Best I'm figuring is the gale comes barreling out, washes over the fight and eventually bends to start blowing off East.

His shoulder pads that bore the eyespots were utterly destroyed, blasted off near the base.

Owwwwwwww..... Do I even want to think about what would happen if he tried to go Ghidorah form with that damage?

It didn’t matter if it gave out soon, just that his enemies did sooner.

You REALLY do not grasp just how hard to stop these guys are....

“Help Celestia. I may not be able to beat them, but nobody will unless we get those girls back.”

Ohhhhhhhhhh.... Time for her to take out a little frustration.... I really doubt Twilight is dying, mostlikely once they finally get off an OFC strike she'll be healed from the physical damage... that said... Aria ain't gonna be holding back either and..... okay I kind of feel sorry for her but at the same time...... okay I feel more sympathy for her then I do for Venli at least so I'll give her that!

the possessed form of Monster X rabidly tried to scramble across the ground on all fours, hand over foot like a charging beast.

Dude..... this is just getting pathetic (in a good, the character is just such an idiot but I love seeing him pay for it way,) You have zero idea what you are doing with that body, while Junior is the freaking King of the Monsters for a reason.

A tail bash across his face by Godzilla sent the empowered windigo sprawling backwards

Case in point.

Aria would worry about the bill later as she tried to make ready for another assault.

Not you paying this bill. If anything, guessing the school will get an officially anonymous donation for the rebuilding effort in the form of several very large, very valuable gemstones.

I made you into this,” Zephyrus said

Oh shut UP!

The entrapped Element of Magic began to light up, detecting traces of magic from a Bearer for it.

Again this.... I can't say it doesn't work, I can just accept it's some kind of Connection/Identity/Spirtual Realm mumbo jumbo at work, but again I just, don't really like focusing so much on Celestia as a former bearer to the extent the story is doing so. In this case it makes sense but just... IDK something feels off about it to me.

”They have relied on treachery and us being unfamiliar or lacking their weaknesses. He is not certain he can defeat you.”-

Yup, Zehpy boi is falling apart, and dealing with this kind of brute force attack is about all he can really reliably handle right now.... a satisfying as punching him could be...

Borea-”

Zephyrus didn’t breathe, he didn’t draw air, he didn’t even live by many definitions of the term. But having a body did mean he had to do so, if only to leave such functions to the subconscious and instinctive controls Twilight’s remnants still had given how different the body was from his. And all the air in their lungs was voided when Aria smashed her knee into their gut with enough force that even with Frostbite’s durability, the wall behind her cracked from the powerful blow.

“-GRK!”

Okay another example of the over explaninging things, this should be a lot more 'oh hell yeah' then it comes off, that long pause for a lesson on biology and physics before the 'grk' really kills the pacing of things. It might work afterwards, but even then, could convey the same idea in like a sentence.

“Do me a favor. Shut the fuck up and fight,”

Now this? Oh hells yeah!

The windigo possessed

Okay another oddity, this is the second time in fairly short succession the story uses just 'The possesed" and leaves off a noun to finish that phrasing.

had to know this after their stunt with the Element. He’d broken himself throwing just one Element into its cage.

And yeah..... I do like the way this went, I can buy he is able to tap into at least some of the raw power of the Geode by using Twilight's body as a sort of fusebox/power adapter, and it very clearly is still messing him up pretty hard. Not sure I like the way the story seems to be reversing course on the implications of the ending of last time that this was something that was going to be, for sure fatal to him for doing and he was just trying to take as much with him as he goes. But we'll see were this goes.

And she could feel the magic of those who had passed through the portal. All six of them-

Okay so, she had to use this because it was the one they went through? I...can kind of see the logic, but it looked more like Zephy had just ripped apart the portal they went through. And if they are just trying to pick up on the girls general vibes to track them, why would it need to be that specific portal given how much trouble she's having with it? Really, wouldn't it be fairly easy for Celestia to hop back over to Equestria, cast a spell to locate the group, then hope back over and pilot a portal to there?

Before Celestia could ask questions, Adagio took her necklace off and put it on her neck as she called out.

I'm assuming that second 'her' is Celestia. So, okay.... use the siren tracking skills to boost Celestia's portal skimming, neat.

Celestia was never particularly good at singing, much as rumors of her angelic voice had circulated over the centuries as some looked up to her more and more. That was always more Luna’s forte.

I mean.....Best Princess is Best Princess for many reasons...

-When we fought on Terra, X and I were roughly on par with each other physically. This feels like fighting two of him!-

Yeah... but the guy is a punk ass noob.

And Godzilla had a plan on how to get X, or perhaps 094, to help them break the lock.

“She’s staying on the other side. The Bearers tried to purge the windigo out of X's body back at the camp and she had been mulling over why it was so difficult,"

Twilight has a plan? We should be scared.

"And her remaining in Equestria helps this how…? Does she intend to grab the Equestrian Element of Magic from the Tree?" Celestia questioned.

That is one option.... or she just needs time to build the "Windigo Annihilator 8000!" since she didn't have it stored in Auto-build.

Boreas’ reprieve was soon expiring because, slowed as they were by the storm, Anguirus and Irys were closing back in

The voice of Twilight Sparkle called out, apparently from a distance despite the volume.

Hey, We have a Royal Ponyville Voice!

“Aaaaaw, she’s got her own Royal Canterlot voice now!” The Solar Diarch squealed

I'm with Cake-Flank on this one! D'awwwwwwww

As they advanced, quickly as they did, Gaea couldn’t help but notice the squeezing on her hand more.

Ohhhh.... let's hope Gigan doesn't mind sharing!

“I-um-eheh,” Gloriosa sheepishly muttered as she shivered in the midst of her fluster, “I think we have a lot to talk about and sort out once this is all over!”

Juuuust a little.....

“Then let’s go take that bastard down. Afterwards, we’ll have all the time in the world to hash out what this is, all three of us.”

Oh hell yeah. Go kick ass, then try to deal with Gigan's lingering tentacle trauma.

Okay... Loved it! Action is great, things are in motion, the Windigos are putting up a fight, but clearly on the defensive and mostly in "Try to wreck as much as we can before we go" mode. The heroes are united, organized, and not taking anymoreof the wind-holes BS. Some nice character moments... few bits that I can't say I love the idea of but, nothing major, and yeah, only real issue is the oft mentioned over expostiting and not letting the actions just speak for themselves.

But still, great chapter and eager to see these plans come into play and the gassy assholes get 1.21 gigawats of Friendship through their bodies. Maybe with a concentrated dose of thermonuclear breath as well.

[Charedfirescale]

I thought Gigan would have ended up in a threesome with Adiago and Princess Twilight. Not Adiago and Gloriosa.

[FluffyPanzer]

Damn go Gigan

[SuperSaiyanGodzilla]

The kiss was initiated by Gaea taking the lunge to close the distance in a spur of the moment rush of emotions, but the lack of rejection was quickly noticeable in how it was returned. It only lasted a few moments, both subconsciously aware of the time crunch they were on, but it felt much longer. Gaea Everfree slipped back slightly, blushing up a storm and her eyes wide with shock at what she’d just done.

The cold winds howled and Adagio, tears dried, smirked as she turned her head to face them. The warmth coming from within her, magic mingling and reacting to the one whose hand she was squeezing, helped to steel both of their resolves, “Then let’s go take that bastard down. Afterwards, we’ll have all the time in the world to hash out what this is, all three of us.”

THREESOME!

[Tarbtano]

All righty! Beginning the 1st round of responses since you folks were so wonderful as to leave these.

11604754
Fantastic music choice my fellow ;)

11604774
Feels very good to be back

11604781
Development for the sirens has been probably one of my favorite things to write considering I was able to wind up going very off the beaten track. I've seen it done well many times and I was intentionally trying to change up the formula here. Here we see that development weaponized, as an older version of Aria and Adagio probably would have been a lot more vulnerable.

11604812
11604821
Alive, refreshed, and rearing to go for more!

11604857
Henceforth, the shall always be known as the chapter where Aria says fuck

11604850
Always appreciated to see your perspective on these sort of things. You put a lot of effort into it and as a fellow creator you have some interesting insight.

Perspective on pacing is absolutely valid. I think one thing I'm going to try and do more so in the future if I wind up with a larger scale conflict action sequence is follow one battle through and through more often than jumping in intercutting between two complex. Save the latter for instances when the two conflicts are genuinely directly influencing each other.

I think character progression is a important facet on display here and it was important to bring up in context to Celestia and Aria both resisting spiraling under the bad influence. Having the former reconnect with her old student, have a chance at being a teacher again, and realizing she never was as unworthy as she thought she was made all the difference.

In an earlier version I did have that mental spiral, but it just got progressively chopped down more and more until I realized it didn't even need to be there. For Aria, humorously enough, I put it in because I just found it I'm using to think she is so driven and determined to get her boy toy back that she is just not going to tolerate any interruptions

11604895
Even with all the jumping around I am relieved to see that the action was still landing for the most part. That finale kiss was very different circumstances than the one between Gigan and Adagio, but that was by design and was meant to be a nice summary of why a calming influence was needed for two otherwise highly reactive elements. Thanks buddy!

[Evowizard25]

Finally started to really sit down and read this last arc. As always, it's quite big but the chapter itself was worth it. However, I can't say much about this chapter. Oh it's good, don't get me wrong. The action is well described and fun to read as always. I do love the character interactions and how everyone is still fighting the Windigos. It's all really good, especially with Aria just not taking it at all with Zeph. The only weakness I can see is, well, it definitely feels like an intermediate section. Nothing concrete happens. It's more of an 'in between' the major points since everyone still has more then enough spunk to keep going and no serious conclusion has been made in either direction. It's still a good chapter, just not a lot to conclude with.

Good writing as always, Tarbo.

[Thebobkiller]

“Alright, who’s not dead?” Applejack, ignoring her bemusement that somehow her hat of all things carried through the transition, grumbled out as she hefted her entire group onto her back, “Sound off!”

Oh hey! I loved Atlantis! Been waiting for a reference.

[FallenAngel2012]

Honestly all can say for this cha-well actually Part is that Celestia and Aria having Girl Boss moments was awesome and the Adagio and Gloriosa having that kiss was cute.
(I’m just hoping it’s not the threesome route in end)