A/N: Greetings, and welcome to my new Monsterverse fanfiction. :) I wasn't sure whether to release this particular work now or later with all the hype surrounding Godzilla vs. Kong before I decided now might be good. :) Honestly, I'm really enjoying writing Monsterverse stuff (particularly KOTM stuff) and especially writing King Ghidorah ever since a certain fanfic by a certain author got me into the Monsterverse for the first time since Godzilla 2014. ;)

The early idea that led to this one-shot was basically a brief story about Madison and San during the events of KOTM – because I'm really interested by the idea of San as kind of like the innocent corrupted child born into a slasher-murder family compared to his brothers, and the idea of San as a tragic villain who has no say of his own in what Ichi wants the three of them to do; and because Madison being Godzilla and Mothra's kid is already popular in fandom, but I hunger for more dark fics about Ghidorah and Madison's relationship with Ghidorah as the devil who torments her worst nightmares.

Anyway, the story idea basically evolved into this, because looking up Word of God and Word of Saint Paul about Ghidorah (namely the mo-cap actors' expansion on Ichi, Ni and San's personalities), it freaked me out and interested me when I noticed a bit of fridge brilliance concerning Ghidorah and the surviving Russells… ;)

So, now that's the author's commentary done, without further ado, I give you all…

"No matter how an individual views Satan, whether they believe that he is a real character or that he is just the product of literary scholars and imaginations, no one can deny that each one of us has an aspect of the devil within us. By studying the character and nature of Satan, we learn about ourselves; and the more we know about ourselves, the better we can fight our own personal demons – metaphorical or otherwise – in order to create a better tomorrow" – Nwaocha Ogechukwu

The Devil's Mirror

Madison and her mother were standing no more than two feet in front of the glacier's rough wall, the artificial light reflected off the ice casting a dim-blue light which felt almost sickly (or perhaps that was just the lingering sickness in Madison's stomach which had gone stale since they'd left China). Her mother was reaching out, putting a gloved hand upon the glacier, almost gripping it. Madison thought back uncomfortably on the few times her mother and Dr. Graham (Vivienne) had spoken of Outpost 32 – Vivienne had said Monster Zero could have an effect on people. Madison had felt a cold inside her that seemingly had nothing to do with the frigid climate since she'd first seen the glacial wall. And even now, so near the massive Titan that had been frozen on the bottom of the world for ages past, she thought she could feel a dull sort of ringing in the back of her skull: numb yet persistent like someone was drilling into her grey matter. The funny thing about the brain: it was the major source of consciousness, yet it had no pain sensors to alert a person when it was physically disrupted.

"Any survivors?" Jonah asked, Madison's ears constantly sharp to everything the aged guerrilla said.

"No," replied his right hand. "They tried to launch an emergency beacon, but we cut them off in time."

"They'll figure it out," Jonah replied in his deadpan. "Fire up the drills." The right-hand whistled to others for aid, and Jonah addressed Madison's mom next. Jonah's mercs promptly got to work, using the outpost's electrical drills – Madison guessed they were normally used for extracting samples – to bore holes in the glacier with a rattling noise. Her mom was no longer by her side, and Madison didn't feel unsettled by the lack of her presence. Things hadn't been the same with them since her brother had died five years ago, no-one needed to spell that out. Madison was alone in front of the glacier with her thoughts, staring through the ice to the obscured animal inside.

She extended a hand, touching the glacier. After Andrew's death, her dad had started drinking, he'd been angry ever since, while her mom had told her that Dad didn't know as much as he thought he did. Her mom was smart and a leader, or at least that was the general impression she gave, but Madison would be lying if she said she wasn't a bit anxious. Changing the world, even if her mom had assured her it was for the better… it was all a bit too overwhelming. And there was what Jonah and his thuggish mercs had done to Dr. Mancini and the others at Mothra's temple.

That brain that couldn't feel a physical attack or caress directly? It was like something was tugging on it, like Madison could reach out to the source of that maybe-real-maybe-imaginary signal. She was vaguely reminded of when she'd been near Mothra and something about the giant grub had made Madison feel like she was safe, like she and the grub were attuned. But in front of the multi-headed beast's icy cage, there was no sense of belonging – just a dangerous kind of curiosity, a cold command from a slumbering god to reach out to it. And reach out Madison did, as the explosives' electronic lights lit up along the glacier.

###

֊֊Whispers.֊֊

΅΅΅Through the ice.΅΅΅

‾‾Awakening.‾‾

΅΅΅Small Ones.΅΅΅

‾‾Hate. Kill.‾‾

֊֊Small Ones. With toys. Funny.֊֊

΅΅΅We awaken.΅΅΅

‾‾Yes. Hate. Kill.‾‾

΅΅΅They will die.΅΅΅

֊֊Presence. Small and one.֊֊

΅΅΅Small and one. It will die with all the others.΅΅΅

֊֊Small. Reaching out.֊֊

‾‾Foolish. Proud. Kill it.‾‾

΅΅΅Make it pay for its hubris.΅΅΅

֊֊Feel its mind. Can touch it.֊֊

΅΅΅Kill them all…΅΅΅

֊֊It is open. She is open.֊֊

‾‾Hate. Kill. Awaken. Kill them all.‾‾

֊֊Like this one. She is… broken. Her song is broken.֊֊

‾‾Arrogant. Hate it. Kill it.‾‾

֊֊See her. Feel her. The broken song is three. Three like us.֊֊

‾‾Not like us. Never like us.‾‾

΅΅΅Nothing like us.΅΅΅

֊֊We are three. She is three.֊֊

Mark was anything but taking his time to get back to the Argo's bridge, with Coleman – Sam – following close behind him as the aircraft swerved and tilted viciously. Mark's head was going half-a-mile a minute, the image of the three-headed golden monster that Godzilla had just tackled into the ocean still freshly seared behind his eyeballs, his brain not yet ready to try shoving the worst of it down. Mark had seen the three house-sized heads up close for but a moment as they'd tried to attack the Argo, their fangs bared, lips twisted into savage, gleeful leers. But that couldn't be right! Could it? He didn't doubt for a moment that that horrific golden freak Emma had unleashed was a sadistic monster, he remembered the way it had murdered Vivienne right in front of him; gobbling a tiny human whom any sane animal of that size comparatively would've scarcely paid attention to. But even so, reptiles didn't smile the way humans and some primates did. So what the hell was Monster Zero? What had his ex-wife unleashed on the world?!

Mark had been equal parts crushed and bewildered when Emma had taken the detonator and freed Monster Zero back in Antarctica – he'd always known Emma could be stubborn and hard to move when she'd gotten it into her head that she was right about something, and he'd known that she admired the creatures greatly. But that had quickly turned to outrage when she'd video-called the Argo and explained herself. His first thought had been exactly what he'd said to her about her being out of her mind. Mark knew his own head wasn't entirely clear when it came to dealing with monsters like the one that had killed his son. Hell, after he'd had his outburst during the briefing on Jonah, Vivienne (it still hurt to think about her so soon after it had happened) had approached him outside the briefing room and given him a mouthful about how rich it was that he was scorning Emma putting things before her health or her family when he was no poster-boy for doing either of those things, and he'd known she was completely right. But Mark also knew that the man he'd been before he'd lost Andrew wouldn't have responded to what Emma was doing any differently if he'd been there on the bridge during that video call. Emma was playing with fire in the most dangerous way – she thought she could control nature, mould it the way she wanted it. And what infuriated him even more was that she'd dragged Maddie into this insanity!

"We're getting out of here," Dr. Stanton announced almost as soon as Mark and Sam were back on the spacious, techy bridge. "The military launched a weapon. It's gonna kill them both." Both Godzilla and Monster Zero, with one stone – if it worked, that is.

"That's not the worst idea," Mark said, though truthfully that was only what half of him was thinking, and not the calculating half of him. He tried to keep a level head sometimes, but thinking on his feet and following his emotions were more his way – hell, jumping on impulse would have gotten him his daughter and ex-wife back in Antarctica if it hadn't been for the bit where Emma was in on the mercs' plot the whole time. Half of Mark honestly did want these monsters dead, and even now a small part of him was whispering to him; if Monster Zero is for lack of a less subjective word evil, what does that mean about Godzilla and the other Titans. But the other half of Mark had started begrudgingly rooting for Godzilla since Antarctica, and it almost seemed like the big lizard had deliberately stopped Monster Zero taking the Argo out of the sky a minute ago; much as Mark knew it was stupid and naïve when people assumed a predator creating a happy accident meant it was in any way acting in the human's best interests. But Mark's impulse, his want to see these monsters killed, was in this moment stronger, unsure as he was that he liked it one bit.

###

Yellow lightning flashed out in forks amid the storm, and the King of the Skies' – former king's – throne of a fiery vent was belching ashes and gases which merged with and fed the storm, whilst the world's fiery life blood oozed out. The Devil with Three Heads flew upon the vent in the earth, their shared body's stocky legs alighting upon the spewing crater. The energy instantly began seeping into them, and the Middle Head screamed as their brother's lost head began to regrow from the aimless stump of a neck. The Right cursed the Middle's weakness in screaming so soon – he respected the alpha-of-alphas' authority, but still he hated that the Middle was so calm and not as strong, hated even more that the Middle was alpha when his place should instead be beta. The Middle tore the Left's membranous sac painfully early – the Middle liked punishing the Left when the Left failed the Three. A waste of energy on the Left, which the Right thought could be better spent killing, killing, planning how to kill. Killing.

Only as the Left's skull was forming together, flesh and horns soon to regrow, did the Right have to groan and writhe alongside the Middle as the pain's burn pushed the Right's tolerance threshold. As they suffered what was necessary to heal, the Right's thoughts turned to that Small One; the one he'd caught sight of in the Small Ones' hollowed beast-temple and had recognised from Her open mind just before the Water-Dweller had struck the Three down into the water. He cursed the Left for ever taking interest in that worthless, meaningless, arrogant thing that had approached the ice, but the Right had still momentarily observed the gnat's memories for anything remotely worth learning. The Small One the Right had seen, Her sire; not the sire which had tampered with the ice, the other sire that She scarcely saw. That gnat was nothing impressive, much as it seemed to think itself above the other Small Ones – it was prideful, filled with anger yet too sloppy to actually put it to good use even by the Small Ones' standards; critical of all its fellow colony-members and thinking it knew better than the 'Her' and Her other sire. Thought itself right in everything, yet it knew nearly nothing, couldn't keep its thoughts coherent to do anything competently. Pathetic.

The Three would show that gnat what true wrath is, the Right thought; the Right hoped it was alive now so it could watch. As the three heads arched their necks and wailed, their song mighty and terrible and unquestionable as the lightning of their multiplying storm flashed and cracked amid the smoke.

"Hello?" Madison lifted her hand off the oblong button, the scratchy, monotone hum of the radio coming through. Nothing. If she could contact someone, anyone, maybe they could do something about this, stop the hell that her mother had unleashed on Earth. Her mother – Madison still felt very bitter thinking about her, but she was just as bitter and pissed at herself for going along with everything her mother had said. She should've known better, should've done something sooner, she'd known her mother wasn't right just like her dad wasn't right five years after Andrew died. And then when she'd heard in the control room that Monster Zero had killed Vivienne…

Madison clicked the button again, silence once more.

"Is anyone there?" The hum resumed. She adjusted the dial delicately, inch by inch, she felt the hum adjust. Click. "I'm trying to reach Monarch." She could vaguely imagine the consequences If Jonah's mercs caught her wouldn't be at all pleasant, but she had to do something – for all her mother's claims that she was going to help people if they followed the plan, from what Madison had seen in the last hour, the Titans currently rampaging all over the world were only interested in regarding everyone the world over as food.

The hum continued. Then a slight unpleasant screech, a blip, then more as her eyes shifted and she looked about the radio console. Voices came through – and Madison wished they hadn't.

"…dead and we need help." Background screams intermingled with the voice. "Everything is burning!" She sank back in the chair. "Please, is anyone out there?" Horrible sounds like wails and tortured screaming. Curling into herself, Madison remembered Monster Zero's terrible high-pitched roar, that song of death which celebrated oblivion. Hell. That was what Monster Zero was unleashing on the Earth. And Madison had helped her mom do it. She'd gone along with it, done what her mom had told her to do like she were nothing more than an unthinking soldier or a tool. "Oh, God, they're coming!" More screaming. Madison's eyes were scrunched shut, as if she could block it out, block out the yellow light and the dark and the wailing, taunting evil giggle and the malice. "Is anybody out there?!"

"Stop, stop," she pleaded in a whisper, as if someone would hear her and would just please, please stop.

΅΅΅Kill!΅΅΅

The Middle unleashed their lightning first, and the Left and the Right both added theirs to the Small Ones' structure where She had been. Nothing and no-one but the hide of the golden oblivion-bringer would survive the fury of their storm. She had fled, they would've smelled and heard Her tearing apart if their lightning had struck Her, and the Left could vaguely feel the Right's fury and the Middle's desire to kill. The Left didn't want Her dead, at least not yet – she was a funny toy, and his interest in her had only amplified at the realisation that She had somehow made the call of an alpha that had brought them here. He wanted to find her, wanted to pick apart and find out how She had done it, She was so interesting and so funny! The Middle had conceded before that She could live long enough to watch everything else around Her turn to oblivion if She was smart enough to survive the early part of the storm and the Right had begrudgingly conceded, but now She had challenged them with an alpha's song and that meant She had to die.

The Left was firing his lightning first, turning all structure made by the Small Ones' colony around the Three to ash, but he didn't want to accidentally kill Her if he could find out more about her. So while his brothers summoned their own lightning and began razing the colony's structure, the Left fired his lightning somewhere more broad – his brothers said he was stupid and useless, that he could never keep up with them, maybe now he could use that to his advantage as he turned his lightning on another structure further away from them. Yes, it would look to his brothers like he was just being stupid and useless if he misaimed, it would alert Her so she could flee for the moment, but he had to turn his lightning back on the structure she was in when he felt his brothers' suspicion.

A brief sound, a Small One's cry of distress, caught the Three's attention, and they stopped their lightning.

‾‾It is rooted. Kill the alpha-mimic!‾‾

They found her, the Three turning their necks as one to gaze upon her, tiny on the ground. The Right regarded Her with hatred, wanted to kill Her for Her audacity, he'd always wanted to kill Her in anger. The Middle would be very, very happy to extinguish her, for the Middle always enjoyed hurting what issued a challenge or what could be killed. The Left watched her curiously, showing a little of his teeth on guard.

She was crouched amid the falling rain and the storm's wind. She threw something. The Left immediately leaned down to get a look – the Middle wanted to know what it was, how She was creating the song of an alpha even now, and the Left was happy to discover it. The thing she'd thrown, what was it? A shed shell like the Cold-Feeder? No, a tool. The song was coming from there. Ah, clever. The Devil with Three Heads crushed it underfoot, and the song ceased.

The Middle didn't need to speak, the Three all felt his hatred and intent burning in their shared chest and they knew his command. The Left wasn't looking forward to it – he wanted to learn more about Her, maybe even play with Her longer. But the Right wanted her dead fast and now while the Middle refused to stand for this, and the Middle's word as alpha-of-alphas was will. The Left couldn't disobey the Middle, the alpha-of-alphas' word was will. She was standing amid the rain now, She was looking up at the Three as their necks were arching, their lightning rippling. Still, the Left wailed to Her – she could make the song of an alpha, maybe she could answer his question before she died.

֊֊How did She do it?֊֊

As the Three sucked in air, She answered – the note wasn't a sound of fear, the Left barely recognised the single noise she made at them, it was a noise the Three had scarcely heard the Small Ones use in their presence. It was a sound of rage, of defiance. The Left would never know how She made the alpha-song – a pity.

Suddenly, blue fire blasted into the Three's chest.

Emma yelled with the effort as she pushed the collapsed section of wall, the neverending rain of Monster Zero's hellish storm beating down on them and the blasted waste, yellow-red light all around them under the black sky. She and Mark were working as one, something that hadn't happened in many years now – and despite his outrage at her in the Humvee minutes ago, she could've sworn she saw in his eyes and his body language now that he was somehow more at peace than he'd been in five years, like the anger he'd carried and fed since Andrew's death was no longer there.

The broken wall they were pushing lifted away from the bathtub – to reveal a limp form which sent a sick, horrible cold feeling rippling up and down through Emma, animal instinct taking hold of her. In the filthy, rubble-filled tub, Madison didn't twitch a muscle, didn't so much as shift a closed eyelid, prone and unresponsive like a doll almost. Emma's breath was close to hyperventilating. Mark got to work lifting their daughter's body out of the tub and carrying her to Emma.

"Oh, my baby." Emma's voice was wracked with sobs as she and Mark gently lowered the third Russell down. Not again. Please, not again. Emma was all over her daughter as soon as her back was on the waterlogged dirt, her hair and skin slicked with the downpour, while Mark was listening to her chest. Mother and daughter's last interactions were filtering through Emma's head – Madison's defiance, their argument, the broken tablet, the discovery that the daughter she'd thought she had an inseparable bond with and who would always be by her side had outsmarted Jonah's goons and had struck out with the ORCA on her own. "Oh, is she breathing?!"

Please, Emma begged, don't let this be my punishment for what I've done wrong. For what she'd unleashed on the world when she'd tried to make it better, for Vivienne and Mancini and everyone else who'd died. Please, anything but this. She couldn't live with losing another child.

###

A loud, ragged gasp as much-needed air flooded into her lungs, then immediate frantic coughing into the perpetual rainstorm. Madison wasn't in Mothra's temple anymore, the glowing grub she'd seen lighting up the darkness moments ago was gone. Now she was back in the hell that had once been Boston.

"Maddie…" Madison saw the two faces above her before one lifted out of sight as she was hugged to a shape that was damp with rain, yet familiar and so warm, her mother's slender arms promptly joining in.

"Mom…" she managed weakly, her throat still pained. "Dad!" They were here, together, with her. For now, the three of them were together as one, and they were no longer broken apart – there was no drink or anger from dad, no… insanity… from mom, in this moment they were a family again, however broken. "Mom." The woman hugged more close. Things would never be the same, not after everything her mother had done to murder the world; the logical part of Madison's mind knew that. Five years ago, Andrew's death had broken the harmony that the remaining three Russells had had, and things would never go back to the way they'd been before. But in this moment… she and her parents had found harmony again.

Godzilla's unmistakable, trumpeting roar drew the Russells' gazes to where the great, dark leviathan and the three-headed golden serpent were facing off amid the hellscape.

The Three blasted as one, and yellow lightning finally captured and threw the fleeing little box to the air – the Middle would've delighted in watching it spin, watching the Small Ones inside die in such humiliation on top of their fear and the pain from them snapping and breaking, were the Three not so concerned. The song of an alpha, the same one She had made with the tool, was wailing from the box and it needed to die. In their own individual ways, the Three were curious to know if She had done it again, even after they'd stepped on Her tool and silenced it. None of the Three were happy that the Life-Queen had intervened – they'd felt the Life-Queen cut them off from Her as the Queen had enveloped Her in her light, and it made the Middle wish the Life-Queen were alive now so they could kill her again but make her scream last longer.

The vast, golden wings of the Devil beat as it slinked forward, low above the ground, amid the Small Ones' broken burning colony, the alpha song having stopped. They needed to be sure. The Middle one wailed, a challenge to the alpha. The Three slammed their feet and folded wings down to earth, close enough that their gazes couldn't miss anything yet a practical distance away. Three necks with three heads slinked forward, but the Middle remained the furthest forward. The other two heads knew their alpha-of-alphas and kept their places – however begrudgingly in the Right's arrogant anger or however stupidly in the Left's small-mindedness.

֊֊Where is it. Must kill it. Kill the alpha.֊֊

Through the ground's smoke, they eyed the Small One beside the fleeing box, injured or possibly playing dead – the Left scented with his tongue, smelling drawn blood. The Three knew this Small One, it had been in Her memories. It had led Her who'd followed blindly to the ice – it had manipulated Her easily, but neither Her nor this Small One had counted on the other-sire, the emotional and uncontrollable one, intervening – for but a fleeting second, the Middle thought of the emotional Right and the weak-willed Left attached to him, wondered only fleetingly if perhaps him and this Small One had some vague common ground. But the Middle didn't dwell on it beyond that second, what really caught the Middle's attention was that this Small One had thought it could control the Three. The Middle was scornful and disgusted of such a thing, and immediately knew that for it thinking such a thing, he wanted to see this Small One expire more slowly; wanted to destroy it so thoroughly that not even ashes would be left of it. It thought having an alpha song meant it could be Alpha of All, that it a tiny one out of place could command a world it didn't understand?

΅΅΅You think you are Alpha?΅΅΅

‾‾You are worthless, insignificant.‾‾

Even if the Small One couldn't understand the Three, it still murmured something in its own tongue, the sound so tiny and pathetic the Middle barely knew it was talking. The Middle's lips were curled in a grin at her doom, at the doom the Three would give her.

‾‾You will die, we will kill.‾‾

While the Right spoke, the Middle's attention shifted, had to shift as something changed – a hum of dreadful power in the air that didn't sit well with the Middle as he looked around for the source, whilst the Left's panic surged.

The Water-Dweller's humming, the crackling lightning and the energy on him built, built, built rapidly. Then the energy-wave exploded loose, the Life-Queen's cry and her taste mixed into it. The Three's wings took the blast's force, and agony exploded and was given voice by one or two of them, wing membranes eaten alive – they moved the flayed, smouldering wing-bones, and they didn't notice themselves losing balance and falling backwards into the ruins of the Small Ones' colony.

‾‾KILL HIM!‾‾

΅΅΅DIE!΅΅΅

‾‾KILL YOU!‾‾

The Left said nothing. They belched their lightning into the Water-Dweller's chest. The hum. He was building again! No, he would die, he had to die! They had to kill him!

The Left's thoughts as they tried went back to Her, the Small One they'd felt as they'd stirred in the ice, and to Her sire which they'd just killed. The sire hadn't been afraid it would die, why hadn't it been afraid? What did it have that the Three didn't?! Where was She now – dead as She should've been according to the Middle's command, or elsewhere? How could the sire be so unafraid?! The Left needed to know, would beg to know, needed to know!

###

Madison watched Godzilla blast nuclear fire again – she thought she vaguely saw wings amid the wave of light and red-hot haze. Two of Monster Zero's heads broke apart like ashen confetti amid the fire, leaving the sole central head wailing at its rival. Godzilla roared back, the huge, volcanic-looking saurian encroaching on the fallen dragon – Monster Zero's last head actually seemed to move its neck frantically as Godzilla planted a foot atop the golden-scaled chest, and a ball of Monster Zero's lightning exploded and rapidly engulfed both Titans in blinding light.

A ball of red light and heat flowered and washed into the Osprey's open cabin, and Madison's gaze was immediately blotted into darkness as her dad protectively doubled over her. Heat seared them, blistering hot even at this distance, and Madison thought she faintly heard electrical sparks over the fireball's roar. The Osprey shuddered violently around them, and Madison felt vexed by the idea that they went through everything only to be felled by a power surge over Massachusetts Bay. But the Osprey stabilised, and the red searing through Madison's closed eyelids faded to black. She turned her head, still held tight in her father's embrace. The sight of the scorched ruins that had once been Boston under a burnished orange sky (now clear of the hellish storm) made Madison momentarily think of Sodom and Gomorrah. What skyscrapers were still intact were little more than skeletons, all of them bent away like a flower's petals from a wide crater of completely-flattened land. An ominous silence hung, a stark contrast to the raging thunder that had engulfed the city until now. Then Madison saw the rubble shifting – and she saw Monster Zero's devil-head, its last head, emerging.

No!

More rubble shifted behind it, Godzilla's dorsal-plated back and his head emerging. His mouth was holding the last head's neck. The head immediately began making deep moaning and grunting sounds, as Madison and her dad both watched Godzilla thrash and whip it about like a chew toy. Madison was transfixed – she wasn't filled with vindictiveness like her father had once been per se, but she felt she had to watch, had to see this dark chapter put to rest, brought to a close, like all the bad that had consumed her family in five years were somehow all there in that city ruin within that last piece of the dragon. Perhaps that was also what her father behind her was thinking right now. Madison saw the first traces of Godzilla's blue light, and it began seeping into and burning the moaning, wailing dragon-head from the inside. Madison heard the distant hum of Godzilla's atomic breath, light veining through his dorsal plates. Then he fired a beam to the sky, and the last trace of the golden dragon burst apart like a dandelion in the blue nuclear fire.

Monster Zero – that unholy nightmare that would still haunt Madison's nightmares for years to come yet, the living apocalypse that had been unleashed by one woman's madness born of one family's disharmony and division, the image of everything that mankind had to fear and strive against – was now nothing but ash. And Madison felt… at peace. Nothing would ever go back to the way it had been – her mom wasn't here anymore, but for now, she and her father were at peace and they could start to build a new harmony, a new song with each-other. There was hope for the future.

A/N: Comments and reviews both positive and negative are very much appreciated, as they do help me to flesh out my works' strengths and weaknesses and decide what I can try doing differently and what I can try again, but no flames please. :)