"You owe me big time pal."
The Armorhide has now taken to gamboling around Godzilla's island as if it were his own, leaving dirty tracks on the beach as he paced back and forth purposelessly. The afternoon sun looked almost pitifully at his situation, Godzilla letting the titan have his fun due to his wounds: and the small fact that Anguirus had saved him from drowning in his own blood.
But mostly because his wounds.
"And I do have interest- so your repayment better come soon."
"I could have helped myself, Armorhide."
"Well you looked half dead when I found you."
"I was catching my breath."
"By pretending to be a corpse?"
"Anguirus," Mothra chastises, "I understand your attempts at humor are good hearted deep down, but can you perhaps- stay silent for a moment while I do my work?"
Godzilla smirks as Anguirus finally leaves for the other side of the island, grumbling obnoxiously about how "fat" he was all the way. But his satisfaction is replaced by ire as Mothra's forelimb pokes at one of his wounds. Surprisingly, it hurts. He feels a band of silk wrap tightly around his scales, covering up his many scars and blisters.
Despite his vehement refusal, Mothra had insisted on doing the "minimum" for his efforts at finding the other Lightbringer: and she was hard to say no to when he was busy bleeding out from a myriad of injuries. Her smaller stature, while not difficult to bear, is still rather burdensome: Godzilla had been hunched over for so long it was a wonder his back did not break from the strain.
"And there- all I need to do now is recite the prayer, and your wounds will be healed."
"The what?"
The winged titan clasps her forelimbs together, wings draping over the Starback in what he assumes is their version of a hug. A cooling sensation flows down his shoulders as the heir begins to pray, a chant consisting of low hums and a chorus of indistinct voices.
Despite their initial skepticism, the two titans are left speechless as Gozilla's wounds begin to shine beneath his silk bandages - the white fibers seeming to fuse into his body with an ethereal flair. Immediately, the Starback's strength returns: his atomic heart reigniting with a renewed vigor. Flexing his unbroken neck, the titan cannot help but be impressed.
"How is this even possible?"
"There are many things, Godzilla, that you find impossible- but us Lightbringers find to be commonplace."
Mothra sounded proud, though her emotions were hard to read due to her lack of face. In the time he and Anguirus had been in the depths of the sea, she had managed to cultivate an entire garden atop a single peak: flowers of all colors draping the stone face like a living river. Although Godzilla wanted Mothra and Anguirus off the island, the Starback does appreciate the new flora. He can pick out a few especially colorful types that he had only seen on the mainland, though ever since he left they all looked similar in his eyes.
Godzilla looks down at his body, the last of Mothra's silk falling off uselessly. His regeneration had failed, his atomic fire had not been enough to stop the scourge threatening his new home. Godzilla scowls thinking of the Red Devil, remembering how he had been seconds away from losing his life. The Starback's plates crackle as he remembers his "last" moments, had Anguirus not been there he would have joined the countless skeletons on the abyss floor. The thought only makes him even angrier.
Never again.
"Do not worry Godzilla. The battle is over."
"Sorry? I didn't say anything."
"Oh." The Lightbringer taps one of his scales. "Was I not supposed to hear that?"
"..."
" I - perhaps - should have made it clear that I could hear all of your thoughts, via our connection." She explains calmly. "A small quirk of our species, we don't communicate using words and gestures: but with our inner voice."
"Cool. Breaching my privacy without me knowing. What else can you do? Rip out my soul?"
His words are harsher than he intends, and Godzilla sees the Lightbringer flinch before recomposing herself. Considering she had just saved his life, the titan does feel a smattering of guilt.
"Nevermind." He faces the growing cloud cover than the Lightbringer. "Forget about it."
"As you wish, Godzilla. But if it makes you feel any better- I shall try not to read your more private thoughts."
Her genuine kindness makes the Starback feel odd.
Godzilla's kind were solitary after a certain point in life, so this odd feeling of attachment was one that he had not found in years. Mothra obviously had an intense attachment to her missing brother if she was willing to leave the safety of her hive to find him.
And yet, she would throw aside all of that just to help a stranger. Sure, the Lightbringer was probably guilty. She was partially responsible for his wounds after all: but Godzilla knew that the blame was still on him. Had he been stronger, the Red Devil would never have been able to injure him to the extent it did.
"Do you have any idea where he is?"
The Lightbringer looks at him funny, her compound alien eyes betraying no emotions. She takes off from his back, landing on the mountain that she had claimed as her perch with a skitter of her legs.
"After I was ejected from your mind, whatever mental signature there was of my brother seems to have disappeared with your attacker."
"Is that - normal?"
"No, far from it. The way our powers work is that we tap into the Mana found in all of the Earth's Children. It is her love and grace that give our planet life, and it is the duty of us as Lightbringers to protect her and all life."
Mothra speaks with an air of reverence, a reminder that Lightbringers were all religious fanatics.
"It is impossible for any other titan to copy the way that our minds function: considering the uniqueness of our individual minds. But if my brother were to pass, I would have picked up his energies returning to the Mother."
"..."
"In short, Godzilla, the creature you killed possessed a hint of my brother's voice, but it could not have been him."
The gears grind in his head.
"Worrying indeed." She nods solemnly. "But why would it do that? What use does it have to mimic the voice of another titan? And why a Lightbringer?"
"Have you ever heard of an anglerfish?"
"Pardon?"
"Angler. Like a fisher. They lure their prey in with light from a little horn on their head- and when they get close enough all the fish needs to do is-"
He bites in the air.
"Are you suggesting that this 'Red Devil' is perhaps intelligent?"
Godzilla looks uneasily to the water, as if he left a part of himself back in the abyss. He had an intuition for these kinds of things, and for once the Starback wanted nothing more than to be proven wrong.
DRIP.
He registers a familiar burning sensation. Rising to his feet, the titan shrugs off the pinpricks of pain, rushing towards the ocean. The froth of the tide abruptly retreats, and Godzilla recoils when the water returns a dark shade of crimson. Cursing under his breath, the Starback retreats as the tide encroaches forward: far, far above the coastline. It was more like a living being, screaming when his atomic flames gouged the sand in their path. Godzilla hoped that would slow them down, but he knew it would not be enough.
DRIP.
DRIP.
Plants wilt in mere seconds as a malefic thunder rings across the island, the boom shaking the earth harder than any titan. Mothra's colorful wings were fully outstretched, the Lightbringer heir scrambling to protect her new garden even as her exoskeleton sizzled in the drizzle.
"We have to go!"
"What?!" Mothra is more panicked than he is, miniscule holes growing in her scales as she shifts to and fro atop her perch. "The island-"
"Would you rather you die or the Island die?"
The Lightbringer has the gall to look like she preferred the former.
Ignoring his eye roll, she stands her ground: until Godzilla grabs her by the thorax and lifts her up with ease. Despite her screech of protest and flailing limbs, Mothra's wings reach around the duo; shielding the Starback as they run over the forests below. More raindrops descend the heavens, crimson red streaks that sizzle and smoke where they reach the ground. The Starback grits his teeth as his old wounds begin to sting.
"WATCH OUT!"
In a rare moment of breaking her composure, Mothra lurches out of his grasp, and Godzilla registers a red blur flying towards him. His atomic breath charges, but it's slower than the yellow ball that slams into the enemy's side. Crushing the beast's body against the ground, Anguirus swiftly unfurls: his spiked tail snapping the Red Devil's neck. Before the titans can get a good lock, the beast sizzles- dissolving into a red puddle of bubbling goo.
"Well?" Anguirus shouts through the drizzle of the storm. "Come on losers!"
The Armorhide rolls off, with the other two titans following suit. Their large strides take them to a messidly dug sinkhole, seemingly extending deep underground. Godzilla bemoans the damage done to his island, but considering their circumstances- the sacrifice was worth.
"Wait, before we go-" Mothra gulps. "I have to make a confession, as a Lightbringer I am a little bit claustrophobia-"
SMACK.
Godzilla's tail has just enough force behind it to make the arthropod lose her grip, Mothra disappearing into the maw of the tunnel with a decidedly undignified scream. The Starback turns to Anguirus, who is somehow still smiling.
"What? Are you not going to go in Anguirus?"
"Just waiting for the ladies to go first," The Armorhide mock stretches, cracking his spines. "You know, as the gentleman I am."
Godzilla snorts.
"You know- you could really use a sense of humor."
"And you could use a common sense."
"Whatever, see you on the other side Tubs."
THUD!
"Ok, whoever that is sitting on my tail you have three seconds to get off."
"I'm moving, I'm moving, by the Stars, for an Armorhide you're so-"
"So what- ouch! Who did that?!"
"I'll kill you-"
"As if you could reach my neck-"
"I literally cannot hear you buddy there are wings flapping right in my face."
"Oh that must be me, sorry!"
With a brilliant flash: the titans find their sight returned. Both Godzilla and Mothra are aglow, one with atomic flame and the other with her divine energies. Blues and greens and oranges mix on the cavern wall as the trio works to extricate themselves from the pile, only occasionally feeling the sting of the red rain from above the ground.
"Let's go."
The blue giant rises to his feet, before walking onwards into the darkness. Godzilla hates narrow spaces, especially tunnels. He was a titan of the open sea, not some burrowing worm like Anguirus. Based on how Mothra's color began to pale as they went deeper, she felt the same.
"So you dug this from the Mainland?"
"Yup." The Armorhide's chainmail of spines and spikes rattles with every step he takes, producing a hollow drumming noise as he walks forward. "I wanted to find myself a new home, so I just dug and dug till I found the Island."
"Don't you mean My Island?"
"Let us focus on solving territorial disputes another time, yes?" Mothra pipes in. "First and foremost, we must get as far as we can from our enemy's forces."
"Is anyone going to tell me what the hell that was by the way?" Angurius digs his claws into the ground, tail flicking upward to gesture at the yellow blood splattered all over his golden carapace. "Or are you two just going to keep it to yourselves?"
"For lack of a better word Anguirus, what we are facing is a race of Devils."
Anguirus' jaw drops. For once, the usually talkative kaiju has gone silent.
"Its mind is chaos, an ocean of primordial screams and agony. When I peered into the dying creature's mind I saw nothing- simply black skies and red seas. That is no creature born of Mother Earth."
"And how about your brother?"
"Was bait." Godzilla answers. "He was never here in the first place."
"Correct." The Lightbringer eyes the holes that they had come from, caved in due to their bulk. "I should have known that Battora would never desert our Hive without reason. Regardless, the point is the creature knew what he was- it is intelligent and very dangerous. We must stop it."
A moment of silence. It's obvious that now both titans have some doubts about this battle. While he couldn't speak for the Armorhide, Godzilla knew that whatever holy crusade Mothra was going on was not his problem. Yup. As soon as he could, the Starback would go into the water and never resurface.
The smirking malicious face of the Red Devil appears in his mind.
Riding atop his back, Mothra idly taps on his neck with her scythe-like forelimbs. She was not heavy, but Godzilla made sure to lower the energy emitted from his plates to not burn her delicate scales. Anguirus leads the other two kaiju, occasionally pausing to rustle and shake his tail. Godzilla noticed him stop to bend his head to the ground- listening.
"You hear that right? It's not just me?"
"Hear what?"
Surprisingly, Mothra is the one who shushes him. Godzilla grumbles as the three of them freeze.
"There's something burrowing towards us. Like something big."
"Another Titan?"
"No. It sounds wrong- like a hundred little things screaming if that makes sense."
Godzilla inhales sharply, calming his jittering heart. If either one of the other Titans saw his moment of weakness, they did not make it known.
"We're going." He pushes past Anguirus, Mothra clinging on tighter with a chirp. "Now."
Immediately behind them something bursts out of the side of the wall. A strobing wave of scarlet is a clear sign that Mothra is indeed panicking, her flustered chirping drowned out by the roar of a river of blood. Blue and red lights draw their shadows on the wall, as Anguirus manages to wiggle ahead of the Starback. The faster kaiju runs a short distance ahead, and his tail begins to crash into the tunnel wall. Godzilla's eyes widen like dubloons, each painful step more of a labor than the last.
The bastard! He was going to trap them both to save himself!
"SKREEEOOONK!"
Gritting his teeth, Godzilla drops onto all fours and violently charges ahead. His passenger is nearly bucks off by his velocity, but somehow both manage to get past Anguirus. The Armorhide's tail is wedged into the rock, and the Starback manages one last look at the red flood - filled with motes of amber light and hate - before it is blocked off by a wall of dirt and rubble.
"You-" Godzilla huffs, clutching at the wall. "You tried to-"
"Buy us time? Damn right I did."
"Don't lie." He hisses. "I saw what treachery you-"
Angurius' tail slams into the wall- and Godzilla notices the way that the titan bristles at the accusation. Anguirus turns away, eyes forlorn and surprisingly offended by his words. "Save your trust issues for later Tubs, this trick won't hold the Devils back for long."
The Armorhide rushes forward as well, leaving Godzilla to catch his breath- gills flaring out uselessly.
"Easy there." Whispers a pallid Mothra. "Do you need me to heal you?"
"No." He grunts. "No I don't."
Pushing off his fatigue, Godzilla's knees nearly buckle from exertion. He trudges forward, though at a notably rushed pace when he hears the telltale drizzle of the dirt from Angurius' makeshift plug. His scales are suddenly washed with warmth, as Mothra's wings glow a summer's shade of yellow. His strength returns to him as her magic runs its course, though the titan still aches in the places where the Red Devil had attacked him.
"Thanks."
"Please, it is the least I could do after you have carried me this far."
"..."
The rest of the walk is done in silence and darkness.