The fireball rose high into the stormy sky. The billowing conflagration was visible all the way down to the ravaged Financial District, where a primeval battle for survival was playing out on a Brobdingnagian scale. The explosion caught the monsters’ attention, interrupting their elemental fight to the death.

The female started in shock, sensing the danger to her nest. Her limbs drew back spasmodically. Her red eyes rolled in their sockets. Instantly forgetting about Godzilla, she yanked her fangs from his neck and bounded away from him. Landing heavily on the razed street, she scurried away from the fight, heading back uphill toward Chinatown. A keening wail betrayed her distress… and fury.

Intent on her burning nest, she rushed right past the troops bearing the warhead, ignoring the minuscule soldiers as they hauled the bomb downhill through the Financial District toward the bay. A collective shudder went through the men as the nightmarish arthropod briefly crossed their path, but they did not question their good fortune when she left them alone. Leaving Chinatown behind, they hustled as quickly as they could with their ticking burden, making it another block before a gigantic clawed foot slammed down from the sky directly in front of them. They tilted their heads back in order to take in the awe-inspiring owner of the foot.

No longer outnumbered, Godzilla rose to his feet and roared ferociously at the sky. Blood poured from deep gashes on his throat, but he was free of the female’s biting jaws at last. He bared his fangs at the flying male, taunting him, and swung his tail back and forth. Scarred fins shed loose chunks of scale and bone. Godzilla raised his clawed fists and waited for his remaining foe.

The enraged male took the bait. It dived at its enemy, but this time Godzilla was ready for him. Unencumbered by a second foe, he lunged forward and caught the MUTO’s left wing in his jaws. He bit down hard, shredding its hard protective sheath and the veiny membrane beneath. His fangs punched through the scales covering the underside of the wing.

The male screeched and spat, flapping wildly in a frantic attempt to free his wing. His entire body bucked and twisted, but Godzilla just bit down harder, clenching his jaws to keep his prey from escaping. Broken scales, the size of roof tiles, fell from Godzilla’s jaws onto the rubble below. The wing crunched beneath his fangs. Ichor spurted into his mouth.

Godzilla tasted victory.

Desperate and dying, the male tore himself free, leaving a huge segment of wing behind. The shredded segment twitched between Godzilla’s jaws for a moment or two before going limp and lifeless. He spit the chewed-up wing parts onto the street and growled menacingly at the crippled parasite.

Who was winning now?