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Deep underground, in the hollow space at the Earth's core, a massive cavern stretched through the dark.
Hundreds of giant apes filled the interconnected caves. Scorching magma flowed between the rock formations, casting everything in a molten orange glow. Then, from deep inside , from the magma waterfall at the far end , something stirred.
"Woo-AOOW!!"
The warning roar rolled out from the falls. Every ape hauling rocks stopped dead, heads turning toward the sound.
None of them knew what had happened.
One gray ape did. It stepped out of its cave at the sound, eyes moving from the magma waterfall to the hundreds of apes below, something calculating in its gaze.
"Shimo has sensed something." Its voice was low, almost to itself. "It seems... King Ghidorah has awakened."
It pinched its chin and thought.
"Ordinary Titans can't match King Ghidorah — Shimo included. But..." A pause. "Mothra will sacrifice herself to push Godzilla into the Burning form. And Burning Godzilla will destroy him."
It turned the thought over slowly.
"The Burning form can't last. After King Ghidorah falls, there will be a window — the surface world's defenses at their absolute weakest."
It looked out at the magma, jaw set.
"Time to prepare."
The gray ape had made up its mind.
---
"CHIRP-AOOW!!"
Across the open sea, Mothra flew faster by the minute. The closer she got, the more clearly she felt it , that pressure rolling off King Ghidorah, heavy and unmistakable, like a storm front that had never stopped building.
He'd been frozen for so long. And it hadn't changed him at all.
Letting Godzilla face that alone was too dangerous.
"HISS-AOOW!!"
Godzilla's furious roar reached her across the water. She pushed harder.
For him to sound like that, King Ghidorah had to be hitting differently.
"Chirp-aow?"
The Antarctic glacial continent came into view. She swept her gaze across the storm-churned night sky and found King Ghidorah's silhouette , but there was something else up there. Another shape, moving through the lightning and wind beside him.
"ROAR-AOOW!!" King Ghidorah's voice shook the sky.
Then ,
CRACK.
Something shot out of the storm. It was moving so fast it had already punched through the sound barrier, dropping hard from above, trailing a shockwave as it arrowed toward her.
The wind pressure alone churned the sea as it passed over the surface. It hit the water and sank.
Mothra circled, looking down. She could see it now , a long spear, slick with King Ghidorah's blood and torn tissue.
She stared at it.
By any human definition, something that could pierce King Ghidorah's hide was a divine weapon. But she had never seen a divine weapon that looked like that.
Above her, the thunder in the storm intensified. King Ghidorah was charging up , that ancient beam, the one that had killed Titans by the dozens in ages past.
Then the night sky opened up with a different light entirely.
HUM.
A blue beam, brilliant and blinding, tore across the sky. It shredded the storm. It swept through King Ghidorah. And then it kept going , angling down, cutting across the sea below.
A wave of heat hit Mothra like a wall. Nothing in the Hollow Earth had ever felt like this. It was like a blade trying to split the ocean in half, and it struck the surface with a force that had no comparison.
SPLASH , SPLASH!!
The seawater detonated into steam. Where the beam passed, the ocean simply ceased to exist , a void opened in the water, and the sea rushing in to fill it vaporized on contact. From Mothra's vantage, the entire stretch of ocean had been cut open like a wound. At the shallower edges, she could see the seabed.
Boiling waves surged outward in every direction.
She didn't doubt it for a second: whoever had fired that beam could destroy a planet.
Something was happening on this battlefield that she could not begin to understand.
"Chirp-aow..."
She flew toward the glacier, toward the flashes of light still strobing through the dark.
She found the human sky carrier. She found two wrecked fighters, pilots already clear on parachutes. And she found Godzilla, standing on the ruined ice, roaring at the sky.
So. His anger wasn't about King Ghidorah being too strong to beat.
It was because he couldn't fly.
He couldn't get up there. Couldn't reach the fight in the storm. All he could do was fire his Atomic Breath from the glacier and hope for a hit , but the range was too great, and those two were moving too fast. Every shot missed.
He was down here. Sulking.
Mothra knew his temper better than anyone. This was real anger.
"Hiss-aow, " He saw her. His head came up and he roared at the sky, and between them the mental connection opened, quick and clear and wordless. He pushed the whole situation across to her in one go.
"Chirp-aow?"
She froze.
Two aliens were fighting each other?
An alien monster and an alien giant, going at it like they had a blood debt to settle , and here she was, an Earth native, completely lost.
This was how things had unfolded?
And Godzilla had actually gone out of his way to cooperate with someone. He'd said the giant seemed reliable, apparently.
But Mothra knew him. Her read: he'd picked a fight, couldn't close it, and the giant had given him a graceful exit.
She scratched her head with one slender claw, sorting through everything he'd sent her.
She'd taken one nap. One. And the world had become completely unrecognizable.
"Chirp-aow—"
She looked up at the storm. Two shapes moving through the lightning , the beast and the giant. And there, on the giant's chest: the crystal, blinking red.
Not a good sign.
King Ghidorah's power was never something to dismiss lightly. That red pulse almost certainly meant the giant's energy was running out.
She spread her wings, light drifting off every feather like dust, and launched herself into the dangerous sky. She was going to help him.
She was halfway there when something made her stop.
Whoosh whoosh whoosh.
The giant , crystal still flashing red , threw his arms wide. A storm of cross-shaped light blades erupted outward, slashing toward King Ghidorah in a wall of cutting force.
King Ghidorah had no choice but to break off and dodge, firing Gravity Beams as he went just to keep space between them.
The giant didn't stop. He moved like a machine, no hesitation between attacks. Following through on the Guillotine Slicers, he activated his bracelet and hurled it forward. A fan-shaped light wheel snapped into existence, and the energy inside it collapsed into a dense spray of needle-thin beams , a downpour of light that hammered toward King Ghidorah without pause.
No room to breathe. No gap to exploit.
Then, while the needle barrage had King Ghidorah pinned, the giant raised his right hand.
Light gathered in his palm, swirling, coiling. A ring formed. And as energy poured into it, controlled and precise and relentless, the ring expanded. Brighter. Larger. Brighter still.
HUM!!
The light wheel stretched a hundred meters across. The giant held it overhead, and it blazed like a second sun over the storm-ravaged sky. The surging energy tore apart what remained of King Ghidorah's manufactured storm. In its place, a new tempest rose , born from the wheel's sheer output, a column of wind screaming upward into the dark.
This was the judgment of an invader.
➤ Next: Ultra Eight Luminous Ring
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