Chapter Text
Kong looked up, quickly bringing up his axe to block the oncoming hit. He was pushed back, but using the axe, he was able to stay standing. Immediately after, Ghidorah roared, rushing forward, and forcing him to jump to the side. He picked his axe back up, running to the side, but Ghidorah leaned down, whacking him onto the ground with one of his heads. He quickly turned around, crawling on his back.
Shimo ran up, attempting to push him to the side. It was once again almost entirely useless. Every time they tried to do anything to him, they just failed. Ghidorah turned, quickly swiping at her. She jumped back, charging up her already charged spines, and firing her ice beam at him. It froze part of him, but once again, it wasn't enough. He shook it off, before roaring at her.
Ghidorah ran forward, charging her and knocking her over to the side. Shimo tried to jump away, but didn't in time, and was pushed away. The best Kong could do was stand his ground and hope not to die. He did both, and knew that under these circumstances, dying was probably the most likely answer. He wasn't really that important in the terms of the world. He was the king of the hollow earth, but in terms of any forces that may want to protect him, he only really had his friends to help.
Once he was done with him, he would just move on to Godzilla, finishing him off if he wasn't already dead, which he alone doubted. When he really thought about how he felt about him dying, he felt different than he did before. The surface king has been awkward and around him to some degree that made him suspicious. When he felt about them both dying, he felt the reason why he felt the need to say those things, even though they made him stutter.
Life was really about choices that you had to make before something abruptly came and finished you off. When looking at his life in retrospect, he had done a lot of good, and had his own kingdom, but he hadn't lived the life he wanted. There were so many things he wanted and needed to do that were just not possible anymore. He was going to die soon, and he still had so much else he wanted to do before it happened. Shimo was basically gone, Godzilla was dead, Mothra and Anguirus were struggling heavily, and he didn't stand a chance.
The problem with their situation was that Ghidorah was strong. That would be fine, they were too. But that wasn't the case. He was stronger. Stronger than all of them together. If they were all together at full strength, which they most definitely were not. With who they had now, if it was just them against Ghidorah, they would still dramatically lose. It had gotten way too far out of control now. It was over for them, and he felt the need to start thinking of what he wanted to do in his final few moments.
Even when he took away all of his added strength and other factors, he had to accept the fact that Kong was really just not strong enough to fight Ghidorah, even if he was in his base form. He knew what he would have been like, and he knew that that kind of opponent wasn't one that he could fight. He fought smaller titans, around his size. He fought titans that didn't shoot electricity out of their three mouths, and flew at the same time. Godzilla somehow could.
Kong picked up his axe, facing towards Ghidorah. He would have to ignore it. In his final moments, he wanted to be thinking natural thoughts, but thoughts about the fact that he was going to die flooded him instead. He wanted to go out positively, to at least some degree. Even then, he found it hard to just ignore. What was standing in front of him, tossing around what he once thought as the most powerful creature in the world was just death. Pure death incarnate. You can't kill death. Death kills you, and you accept it.
Things weren't looking very good. Mothra charged forward, knocking Rodan slightly back. The longer this went on, the more and more she was sure it would just end poorly. Things were looking bleak for her. For them. She had barely managed to not break down into tears after seeing what happened to Shimo, and was only able to keep on going when she saw that she was okay. Their situation was getting worse by the second.
Every time Ghidorah breathed, every move that he made, she felt their progress in winning move closer and closer to the bar. The moment the first person here died was when that bar was reached. Since it was, it was basically fully over for them. The first death was the signal for the new world under Ghidorah’s rule. A world that nobody here wanted. Except for Rodan. She still felt like that didn't make sense. Why was he even still siding with him at this point?
Godzilla was dead. He was dead, and there was nothing she could do. It truly felt over. She tried to stab at him again, but he just pushed her to the side, knocking her over. She hardly made an attempt at getting back up. Once again, she felt a sudden surge of thought. I can't let this be the end. I have to keep fighting. She quickly popped up, swooping in, and striking him, but immediately feeling like she couldn't go in anymore. She knew what was happening. Her energy was depleted.
With her energy gone, she was basically done for. She slowly turned to Rodan, trying to attack again, but he opened his wings, flying up, and swooping down, going past her and striking the side of her body. She looked at herself, then to him. He had ripped off one of her smaller arms. She turned around, facing him, and trying to do something again. He dropped the arm into the floor, stomping on it, and spreading his wings out wide. Instead of looking up at him, and trying to be on guard, she just fell down to her knees, staring into the ground as if it had something to say.
Mothra's head began to expand. At least that's what it felt like. She started rapidly crying, and her vision went fuzzy and went in and out of being there at all. Her eyes were wide, and she felt like she couldn't shut them. She tried to breathe in, but she felt like there wasn't even enough air on the planet for her. She gasped and gagged, looking around as if there was supposed to be something there to help her. There wasn't. She felt like her body and chest were expanding past her body. She felt like her insides were going to be violently squeezed out as a liquid mixture of organs and blood. Her head felt like it was going to explode or pop off, her legs felt like they were trying to leave her, and her eyes just wouldn't fucking shut.
Although other stuff was there, the only thing she could see was the ground. Everything else felt like it was shrouded in either a dark haze, or her own tears. It was then when she realized the secret of life that so many had been looking for so long. Why did life happen? What did it lead to? Why? Just why? The answer is pain. She thought. Nothing in life is complete without an incomprehensible amount of pain. If you hadn't felt pain, you weren't living life. You were cheating. Pain wasn't the key or secret to life, it was life. Pain and life were the same thing.
Mothra tried not to, but just like the tears from her eyes, screams leaked out of her mouth. She couldn't stop them. She felt like she couldn't control anything her body was doing. The violent shaking, feeling of numb limbs that would vanish, the rapid and constant feeling of her brain expanding in her skull, making her feel like she was going to explode. They were all unstoppable. But they toned down when she stood back up, facing Rodan again. She could barely stand, and would be lying if she said she would be able to keep her composure.
Rodan stared at her. He looked hesitant, like he was having second thoughts. Maybe he was. She didn't know what she had just gone through looked like to him, but it might have been a bit strange. He approached her, shaking away the look on his face. He would have to be ready if he wanted to kill her. She had no doubt that he would, but even through all of this, she still found it in herself to be disappointed in him.
There was something visceral about seeing his old friend in so much pain. Back in the day, he would fight as hard as he could to stop something like this from happening.
Slowly and cautiously, Rodan walked towards her. If he was being honest, he felt a little weak right now. He didn’t want to attack again. As Mothra cried into the ground, breathing heavily and choking on air, he felt like it was genuine. He couldn’t stop this. She was actually having a breakdown right now. He should have been able to guess from all of the things that had been done to them in the past, but for some reason he had just ignored it all.
Is that it? He suddenly asked himself. Was it? Was the reason that they were doing those things just because of what had been done to them when he was gone? Had he just forgotten to take that into account? He felt stupid. Maybe—no, obviously he was in the wrong. This whole time, had he been misreading things? He felt memories of understanding what Godzilla had done, but later doing the same things, and not understanding them. Had he decided after being exiled that he would just stop understanding him? Just so that he couldn’t feel sympathy? He was a monster.
Although partially understanding, he didn’t have full knowledge of why Mothra had gone like that in the first place. She had been staring out to a specific spot, and he hadn’t even looked. Maybe that was even more of a sign of his ignorance. He looked over to where she had been staring, far to the left of Ghidorah. His eyes went wide, and seemed to zoom themselves in on what he was looking at. He looked closely, not breaking his eye contact. What he saw was Godzilla. He was dead. Gone. He had just watched Mothra have a mental breakdown after the king of the monsters had just outright died.
Was it too late for him? He still loved Ghidorah, but every possible force in his body was telling him that this wasn’t him. With how things were going, with their main fighter having a crushed lower body, their second being dead, Mothra having a mental breakdown, and not being able to keep her composure, and the other two struggling to the point that they would collapse at any moment, he thought that they were doomed. He finally realized as they won their battle, that he had chosen the wrong side to be fighting for. All this time.
But that didn’t matter anymore. He didn’t have a choice, so he just had to do what he had to do for Ghidorah to trust him. He walked over slowly and hesitantly. He would have to hand him over. He didn’t want to kill her himself. But he was hesitant to do that too. He had become weak. He no longer even wanted to kill them. If he could go back in time right now, he would go and do things differently, but he couldn't. It was far too late for him. He was trapped here.
Rodan opened his wings slowly again. He didn't want to do this, but he had to. As Mothra looked up at him, actively trembling, he approached her, looking to the air a bit, before looking back at her, and flying in the air. Instead of fighting back, this time, she just let him pick her up, with no effort to save herself. She knew it was over. He dropped down, grabbing her shoulders in his claws, and taking her up.
The Queen struggled a bit, trying to get free, but she soon gave up. Just that was enough to make his heart go dark. He so badly wanted to just take her, and escape while they still had a chance, but eventually, they would be found, and he realized too late that the world Ghidorah wanted to make was bad enough that he didn't even want to witness it be made. It was too late. They couldn't win, and she wouldn't budge on her opinion. He would live a bad life, but she would die before everything truly went to hell. Even though she could come back, the state of the world was in a certain way that he doubted her eggs would be intact after just a couple days.
It felt wrong. He wanted to fly down and set her on the ground. If he couldn't save her, he at least wanted to give his apologies and goodbyes. It was here that he realized that his mask had taken over. He tried to fly down, but it kept going. For the first time, he felt like he wanted to directly break away from the mask, but he couldn't. It didn't matter anyway; Ghidorah would see, and at this point, he was far too strong to disagree with.
As much as he wanted Mothra to survive, he knew that she couldn't. For that reason, he was glad that the mask was taking over again. He wouldn't even fully have to make the decision to fly her there. He didn't want to, but he had to, and if anyone was going to make the choice and do it, he didn't want it to actually be him. Technically the mask was him, but he didn't really control the way it moved and it made some rash decisions for him. Like this one. Although if he was being genuinely technical, the mask was just a way for him to disconnect himself from his actions.
As he kept on flying, he thought about things. Did he really want to be leaving this impact? The impact that he would have on everyone was inherently negative. He wouldn't blame anyone for hating him. That would come back to him in some way. He was leaving a bad impact. His effect on the world would leave the people knowing that he was a bad Kaiju. By the end, nobody would care about or even remotely like him.
Rodan flew forward, picking her up by her shoulders. Instead of daring to fight back, Mothra just let it happen. There wasn't really much she could do anymore. She tried to stab at him, but she was too weak, and her body told her to rest. There wasn't any more rest to be had, sadly. This truly was it, wasn't it? She tried to pulse with her energy, and though he budged a bit, he just kept on flying. He didn't even look like he wanted to be doing this. His mask creeped over again, and he had a stern look on his face, as he flew forward.
Not only was she gone, but at this point, all semblance of Rodan was gone too. He tried to fight against it, but Ghidorah and the mask controlled him. They made him do things that he probably didn't even want to do. She couldn't stop him from doing those things, she could barely even talk. But she had to try. “Rodi, please,” his mask instantly dissolved, as he stumbled in the air, and looked down at her with sorrow, “please, don't do this.”
For a few extra seconds, he just kept on staring at her. He looked to Ghidorah, then back at her. He sighed deeply, trembling. “I'm sorry, Mosu. I was too late.” She looked up at him, and she noticed that the tears never really stopped. Even then, they were getting stronger. “I was too late, and I made the wrong decision. I can't claim that your fate will be better off than mine, but I don't want you to fall down the same path that I did.” She looked down at the dragon. He was right. She would never comply with rules made by someone like that. “I caused this. All of it. Trust me when I say that if I ever get anywhere close to death, his own will be the cost of it.”
It was hard to tell what he was saying, since he was barely saying anything, but she saw him mouth to her: Goodbye, sister. That was right. After she had lost Battra, she went back crying to the rest of them. Obviously Godzilla was still okay at comforting at that point, but when she first got back, Rodan was the only one there. He comforted her. By the end, he made her a promise. She remembered it word for word. Until the day that the world crumbles, or I have to make a decision, I will be your brother. I will be there. He dropped her over to Ghidorah, who had just noticed them. She guessed he had made a decision.
Although she had clearly hit the ground hard, she honestly couldn't tell. She could barely hear or feel anything at this point. Her body had gone almost completely numb. Rodan flew down, standing next to her, and quickly putting his mask back on to hide his emotions. Ghidorah looked to him, before leaning down and picking her up. “The Queen… such a nuisance.” She scowled at him. She was glad that she had been able to at least annoy him with her general presence. “It's time for you to be executed. You will go right there, on top of the King. Once everyone else is gone, I will wake him up using your power, and make him watch what I do to you.”
There was a slight silence. “If I had the chance, you wouldn't even be recognizable anymore. I don't care if you go out there and search for each one of my eggs, I will destroy you. And for the record, I can't heal him anymore. He's gone.” Ghidorah looked back at her. Somehow she could tell that something in his demeanor had changed. She felt like he was a tripolar entity, trying to seem like one. He was not. He looked down at her, and charged up red lightning that climbed up her.
Ghidorah held her in place with his wings like he had done with Godzilla. “A shame; he could have felt so much more pain. Oh well, I guess I don't have any reason to keep you alive either.” He quickly lunged forward, ripping her wings straight off, and pulling her arms until they fell off onto the ground. She screeched. As she looked up, trying to see what was happening, all she could see was light, as Rodan silently cried to the side.
There were flashes in her mind of what happened next, but she seemed to skip through time, and soon hit Godzilla’s corpse on the ground. She raised her head, trying to see anything, but soon collapsed, and felt the warmth creep out from her body. She was dying too. She felt bad being away from Godzilla, but soon she would be back with him. It was over for her. She collapsed, and felt her own heart stop, as she stopped breathing.
There was silence in the air. Perhaps she just couldn’t hear the noises that the others were supposed to be hearing. Although she knew that she was supposed to be dead, she could feel things. Glimpses at the world, and a light comprehension of what was going on. As things went on like this for a bit, she eventually felt herself floating. It was weird. She opened her eyes and it was dark. She felt like she was in some kind of suspended state. She felt like Ghidorah was keeping him here on purpose.
But before she could overthink those thoughts, she felt a rush of energy, along with a flowing chain of yellow light piercing the darkness. There was a noise. Perhaps a noise of quietness. It was serene. Like an angel reaching out to a helpless human. She heard the voices and the prayer, and she knew what it was. It could only be the humans. They were reaching out to her, trying to help. She felt them. She opened her eyes, and felt her senses come back to her. They were coming from all over the world. She felt them. Everyone on earth was praying. Praying for her to get back up and help. Despite being previously dead, she suddenly felt life.
Godzilla felt something. It wasn't really something, but it felt like something was there. Maybe it was himself. But he couldn't. He couldn't feel. He looked around, and saw a field of battle. The same one that he had been fighting on. He looked down, and saw himself, laying dead on the ground. He couldn't feel. What was this, then?
There was an air of silence, but also loudness, like he was supposed to be hearing things. Crashing rocks, smoldering flames, and most of all the constant deep growl that Ghidorah made. He could feel it, but not actually hear it. Part of him felt like he was somewhat spectating himself from above. How would he get out of this state? What was he even doing here? He wanted answers, but in his state, he couldn't get them. Theorization was his best option.
There was a thought on his mind as he stared down at Ghidorah. Maybe it was him? Perhaps he had done this to him. Made him spectate himself after he had died. He had no way of being sure, but the only thing that he could remotely feel was his strong presence impeding on his soul and mind. There was a chance that this was something that he could do, but he really didn't know the extent to his powers. It could be, and it could not be. Perhaps he was to be kept here as some form of torture or damnation.
If that were the case he was stuck. There wasn't really a way out of this situation unless he was miraculously brought back. It had happened before. Not to him, but to other titans. There were certain kinds of energy that could help him come back, but most of them were inaccessible. It was a little stupid to rely on something like that to just come to him. Someone would have to bring it, or provide it, it wouldn't just come to him naturally. And the way things were going, he didn't know if anyone could do that.
But against what he thought, he felt something. There was a warm glow for a second, before he felt instantly teleported away. He felt where he was. He was back in his own body. It was not alive yet, but preparing to be. Energy slowly entered his body, making him start to feel something. But that wouldn't work. There was no way that it would. He thought about it again for a second, and denied the possibility. No energy source could just come to him and fully bring him back.
Godzilla looked behind him as best as he could in his non alive non dead state, and saw the energy. Somehow it felt so familiar. He couldn't tell if the familiarity was of bad or good memories, but he felt like he had experienced it not that long ago. Not only did it feel recent, but also distant, like he had also felt it a long time ago. An image of Junior jumped into his head. He would have gasped, but he didn't even know if he physically could right then.
There was a connection there. He knew that he had the memories of what the connection was, but it wasn't coming to him. He knew that it was there, so he searched. He went deep through his memories and recollections, not just the mental ones, but the physical ones too. He remembered how it felt for this energy to be flooding his body, and overwhelming him, what it felt like for it to be controlling him, or fighting against him. He could tell that the energy should have felt malicious to him, but he felt like it deserved a place in good. But he couldn't make out exactly what it was.
An image passed by his mind that made him abruptly stop and go back to it. He looked at it hard in his mind, and felt what it felt like on his body just from his physical memories. It was perfect. The exact same feeling. Extreme power, evil, but also utility and good. He knew what it was now. The image that had appeared on his mind was one of his flying supercharged state. The one that he used hollow earth energy to access. He felt through again, embracing the energy. That was what it was. Could he go back to that state? Could he regain not just his life, but the power needed to defeat him?