Despite having just arrived on the island a few nights prior, Godzilla felt confident in his ability to navigate the numerous tunnels and caverns embedded into the stone walls. He swam calmly and with the air of a natural, using large strokes of his tail to direct his gargantuan body without using too much energy. The abyss was his domain, and none could challenge him when he was beneath the waves.

Anguirus swam like the frantic dog he was.

While he could certainly hold his breath for a long time, the titan was a foreigner to the depths of the sea. It was because of him that Godzilla's veins and plates were glowing, using his bioluminescence to illuminate the darkness for his 'partner'.

"Can you stop doing that?"

"Well unlike your slow ass, I actually want to find the Lightbringer before sunset."

"Tch."

The Starback swings his tail, pushing Anguirus back with several screeches of protest. He ignores the roiling talking ball, smelling the waters with his gills. Outside of himself and the Armorhide, there was nothing else of note here: just copious amounts of dead sea creatures, reduced to nothing but skeletons. The titan could not remember if there were this many before, but it was still a tad unnerving to see some whale skeletons still had bits of meat on them. He turns to see Anguirus eyeing a particularly large cavern: filled with odd bones and hints of dried blood.

"Find anything?"

"What does it look like to you Tubs?"

"Tch, useless oaf…"

A pause. More time passes as the two titans swim about the abyss, though Godzilla noted that the seafloor was more bone than sand. The "air" grew tighter, his gills going into overtime just to funnel oxygen into his gargantuan body.

"Ah to hell with it. Let's just leave," the Armorhide harps, "Not like the lady up there is going to notice."

"Anguirus, do you perhaps prefer bearing the aftermath of my wrath firsthand?" Both wince as the Lightbringer's voice suddenly enters directly into their skulls. "We have a mental connection, remember?"

"You think we can take her if we work together?"

Anguirus…

"Fine, fine- I'll play nice." the Armorhide speaks louder than necessary, wasting more of his precious air. "But you two better get off my island when I get back."

Ignoring Anguirus' attempts to provoke him, Godzilla takes these precious few seconds to look around: not finding a single clue that could lead him to his quarry. He was an expert hunter, yes, but there was no Lightbringer. It was impossible, a wild goose chase. Growing bored, the Armorhide wanders off; chatting out loud to the voice of Mothra in his head. The noise alone annoyed him.

Godzilla inhales sharply, trying to push down the growing rage in his heart.

Violence was not a way out- especially against a Lightbringer. And as much as he resented her, Mothra could have done so much worse. The titan ignores the smell of decay from the nearby skeletons: imagining himself napping on the warm sands under the light of a cloudy afternoon sky.

But what he cannot ignore is the shrill screech grinding at his eardrums, the Armorhide's spines grinding on one another like some twisted alarm.

"Did you hear that?"

Godzilla is about to choke the shorter titan to death when Anguirus swings to the side, cautiously watching one of the sea caves.

"There's a buzzing, or chittering or whatever it is those bugs do. Think Mothra, but less like ocean green and more like puke green. Something like those dragonfly looking things, Meganulon - you do know what those are right?"

"The larvae don't dive that deep." The Starback replies. " Besides, they don't roam far from the mainland or the Under."

The current shifts as the two titans go still: only the occasional stream of bubbles from their mouths and gills. The rattling of his scales gradually slows, and the ocean's currents vanish as if halted by an invisible force. A twisted chorus of demented laughter and primordial screeches is barely audible in the distance. Godzilla's pupils shrink into silts, adrenaline pumping through his veins.

"Go."

"And leave you alone to get all the glory? No way, I ain't some kind of coward-"

"You'll just hold me back."

While his words were harsh, the reality was that the Starback knew that Anguirus was out of his element- literally. His acute knack for burrowing and sensitivity to sound were useless in a medium where everything was slightly slower, and the Armorhide's underside was an easy weak spot to exploit. Yet he dawdles uselessly; ready to fight an enemy Anguirus would stand no chance against.

"I'm not leaving."

A streak of atomic breath bursts through the water, barely missing Anguirus' head.

"And I was not asking."

With more than a little reluctance, the Armorhide ascends: kicking up one last obnoxious cloud of silt as he does. Godzilla can hear his complaints gradually grow quieter as the Armorhide retreats to the surface.

"Mothra, you there?"

Of course. Though, I will admit that I turned off my shared connection with the other one for- reasons.

Had it not been that an enemy was coming straight at him, Godzilla would have laughed out loud. Even a Lightbringer's patience had its limits when it came to dealing with that oaf and his idiocy.

"Do you sense your lost titan anywhere here?"

It's faint, but I do sense that he should be in the tunnel to your direct west. Hold on a minute, I sense him swimming along the eastern-

Silence. Godzilla ignores how nervous he had gotten from the lull in Mothra's updates.

This isn't possible.

"What isn't?"

The connection, it's gone-

Suddenly, he feels a sharp pain on his gill.

The titan roars in fury as he tears as his new assailant, the creature relentlessly biting down even as Godzilla's claw wraps around its armored body. With one crack, the Starbacks rips something from his attacker: the limb dissolving into red dust before he can see it. Burning with rage, Godzilla fires his atomic breath in a wide arc: a red tail disappearing into one of the caverns. The wound from its bite stings with uncharacteristic persistence. He uses one hand to mitigate the blood loss, wincing from the sharp juts of bones sticking out.

How had such a small creature caused that painful of a wound?

His attacker screeches as it returns for a second round, only to be caught by the titan's deadly jaws. The smaller titan is thrown against the abyss walls, writhing in agony as Godzilla's tail (and the entirety of his weight) pushes against its brittle exoskeleton. It writhes and screams, limbs thrashing uselessly as Godzilla fires a stream of blue fire. But before he can fully concentrate this interloper, it fires a purple beam directly onto his chest.

The Starback screams until his vocal chords nearly rupture, clawing at the burning chunk of his own flesh. That same burning pain erupts across his entire body, sending him into shock for the first time in his life. Godzilla's instincts kick in as he grabs onto the creature's midsection, ignoring the destruction of his abdomen to pry it off. Despite its multitude of legs, the attacker is no match for Godzilla's strength: and with a mighty heave he rips it clean in half. But even then, the damage was done - its poison having torn apart his flesh far too easily. The right thing to do for a Starback like him is to find a thermal vent to rest and heal, but that option is swiftly discarded as he considers the threat of more of those creatures.

Godzilla kicks off from the sea floor: gills throbbing as if he was no longer allowed to breathe. He needed to get to the surface, and quick. As he moved his aching body, the pain only grew worse. It was as if the titan had been immersed into an active volcano, flesh and blood slowly being eroded down into bone. A distant light blinks up above, water brightening as Godzilla grew closer and closer to the surface. His breathing slows as the titan feels the last of his strength leaving his body, blood mixing with the ocean's salty water. The Starback laughs, coughing up what little air he had left. His life flashes slolwy before his eyes, but the titan does not desire to linger on the ghosts of his past - ignoring the images of his siblings and Alpha as they travelled.

At least that moron could stop nagging about his island, seeing as Godzilla wasn't around to fight for it.

Something shifts the current behind him. What he thinks is the Red Devil grabs onto his back, and with great effort: begins to pull him upwards.

The white spot above glows brighter and brighter, now Godzilla can see that it's the outline of a familiar Lightbringer.