Causality [Worm Crack!SI]

[Rokoran]

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Arrival 1 (Alexandria)

Takes place before canon Worm starts. Alexandria may not have ever fought Lung, but I needed a high-power fight to drop into.

Next up is this from the SI's POV
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Alexandria let out an involuntary grunt as Lung's claw smashed into her yet again, sending her tumbling back through the air for a moment before she righted herself. The gang leader had been getting rather adventurous of late, and when the Protectorate had caught wind of his latest scheme involving the kidnapping of several dozen girls and then attempting to... break them so that they not only triggered, but were loyal to him, they decided that enough was enough, and the world's foremost Brute was sent to bring him in.

It was harder than she'd expected. Every time she hit him, he just healed up, and got bigger, stronger, tougher. His flames increased in potency, his senses in sharpness, his reflexes were accelerated and his stamina skyrocketed. Already, he was more than twelve feet tall, and quickly on his way to outstripping the Simurgh's fifteen. She herself was actually bruised - no mean feat - and her skin was red in several places from the fires that wreathed the man-beast she was trying to stop. Lung, on the other hand, regenerated almost before he was even hurt, and had shown not a single sign of stopping; instead, he barreled forward, claws swinging and mouth snapping. It appeared that, in the heat of the battle, he had lost all control, and was actually trying to kill her.

Taking the sudden gap between them as a chance to catch a breath, Alexandria blinked in shock when a man appeared between her and her foe. He was quite tall - perhaps six feet in height - with messy, short black hair, wearing nondescript, civilian clothes. Was this a new cape? Was he trying to make his debut-

With a claw-strike so fast it blurred, the man was sent tumbling sideways, bouncing several times off the street, arms and legs mangled, torso crushed, head lolling -

(The world blurred)

With a claw-strike so fast it blurred, Lung attacked. The man raised an arm, almost negligently, and stopped him cold.

Unfortunately, she was too busy gaping to dive in when Lung opened his mouth, and as a result, a jet of white-hot fire seared out into the night, engulfing the man who was screaming, screaming -

(The world blurred)

Unfortunately, she was too busy gaping to dive in when Lung opened his mouth, and as a result, a jet of white-hot fire seared out into the night, engulfing the man, who stood there calmly as the flame rolled off him like water from a duck's back. Then he hit Lung in the jaw with an uppercut. The dragon-man's teeth smashed together with a cringeworthy noise of shattering bone enamel as the twelve-foot monstrosity was propelled at least twice that distance backwards by someone half his size. Lung stayed down for all of two seconds, jaw knitting back together and new teeth springing from his gums in moments before he charged with a deafening roar.

The man almost dodged, but was pinned down by the almost unnatural, sinuous agility of the dragon, and teeth the size of a normal man's forearm bore down on him. His skin held for a few seconds, but the crushing pressure broke through without much trouble, utterly destroying his torso as blood spurted everywhere -

(The world blurred)

Unfortunately, she was too busy gaping to dive in when Lung opened his mouth, and as a result, a jet of white-hot fire seared out into the night, engulfing the man, who stood there calmly as the flame rolled off him like water from a duck's back. Then he hit Lung in the jaw with an uppercut. The dragon-man's teeth smashed together with a cringeworthy noise of shattering bone enamel as the twelve-foot monstrosity was propelled at least twice that distance backwards by someone half his size. Lung stayed down for all of two seconds, jaw knitting back together and new teeth springing from his gums in moments before he charged with a deafening roar.

Looking as if he could barely bring himself to care, the man floated deceptively gently up from the ground, leaving Lung's immediate reach in seconds. The gang lord tried a few bursts of fire, but, as before, they did nothing. A bellow of fury followed as the man performed some dazzling aerobatics, twisting and dodging between blasts of fire and strikes from claw, tooth and tail even as he unleashed punch after devastating punch. Within thirty seconds, Lung had added six feet of extra height and wings had burst from his back as he took to the sky. Now, his sinuous build took the advantage once more as he seemed almost liquid in the sky, mouth closing wholly around the man who had irked him so and swallowing, bearing the live prey down into the furnace of his stomach-

(The world blurred)

Looking as if he could barely bring himself to care, the man floated deceptively gently up from the ground, leaving Lung's immediate reach in seconds. Then he kept going, becoming little more than a speck in the sky. Alexandria frowned. Surely he wasn't running away? She lifted off, thinking to confront him.

Until, that was, a cold blue light burst into existence, bright enough that she involuntarily flinched, eyes closing slightly to protect them. A beam of azure lanced down from the source, punching through Lung's torso. Barely a second later, the light was gone, and so was most of the dragon-man's chest, along with a six-foot cylinder of ground beneath him, lining up perfectly with the hole.

Alexandria stared in shock. She could see the edges of the wound creeping closed, but with the magnitude of the damage it would take a while to heal. The fact that it had gone straight through, however... at his twelve-foot size, Lung was already a good Brute 7, and could take a great deal of punishment. This strange cape had just vapourised nearly half his body mass without breaking a sweat.

Speaking of the new cape, she floated over to him as he descended from the sky, a scowl on her face.

"Hey, you! What the hell was that?!"

He blinked, glancing towards her with eyes the same icy blue as the light he had projected.

"What was what?"

"That! The beam! You just vapourised half of his chest! That could have killed him!"

"But it didn't. His healing fac - er, regeneration - will take care of it soon enough. Shouldn't you be restraining him instead of berating me for helping?"

"Given that you used lethal force, he'll be out long enough for this. Now, what the hell were you thinking?! You're a new cape - I'd recognize that light if I'd seen it before - so you just decide to jump into a fight between two of the hardest-hitting capes on record? You could have died! And you aren't even masked up, either, your identity will be all over the place now!"

He blinked, suddenly looking like a rabbit in the headlights, before slowly lowering his face into a hand.

(The world blurred)

Alexandria blinked in shock when a man appeared between her and her foe. He was inhumanly tall - at least seven feet, probably seven and a half - and his body was perfectly sculpted, the toned musculature of a martial artist showing through the tight, pure-white white bodysuit he wore. It wasn't something she recognized, but she could see a tiny hexagonal design - was it tinkertech? A silver cape was attached at the shoulders, silver gloves on his hands, reaching halfway up the forearm, and silver boots completed the ensemble. Shockingly, he wore nothing on his face - was he so cocky that he didn't think he needed to hide his identity, or a Changer, or was he just that strong? His thick mane of golden hair tumbled down his back, but stayed completely out of his almost impossibly handsome face. Ice-blue eyes, square jaw, high cheekbones... definitely a Changer. Nobody looked like that naturally.

With a claw-strike so fast it blurred, Lung attacked. The man raised an arm, almost negligently, and stopped him cold.

Unfortunately, Alexandria was too busy gaping to dive in when Lung opened his mouth, and as a result, a jet of white-hot fire seared out into the night, engulfing the man, who stood there calmly as the flame rolled off him like water from a duck's back. Then he flicked his wrist, and with a horrible crunching, Lung's arm shattered, bits of bone and gore raining down in a radius of several meters. The gang boss opened his mouth to roar in pain and fury, but the strange cape simply raised his other hand, pointing his extended index and middle fingers at Lung's armoured chest. A four-pointed star of blue light formed at their tips, and then Alexandria couldn't look any more as it expanded and shrank and changed shape and rotated and stayed exactly the same all at the same time just before a beam of coruscating azure, maybe as wide as a pencil, punched straight through Lung's chest. A moment later, it turned around in midair and punched through him through him again. And again. And again...

Within moments, the dragon parahuman was impaled in upwards of fifty places by a stream of blue light that began and ended at the two outstretched fingers of the new cape. He roared, and started to struggle, only to immediately stop and roar louder as the flesh around the beam started to hiss and smoke. Alexandria shook off the headache that the impossible star had caused, before landing and stalking forwards.

"Hey, you! What the hell was-"

"Just a moment... now, let's see... ah, there it is. Annul."

Lung stopped being a dragon. There was no transition, no shrinking - instead, he was Lung, and then he was Kenta. The blue beam had disappeared as well, but above them, a hazy blue dragon made of smoke spiralled away into the sky.

"There. If you'll excuse me, Alexandria, I think you can take it from here? Oh, by the way, I'm Paragon."

He crouched slightly, and then the ground shattered as he took off faster than she could track, leaving a trail of blue light behind that went up vertically several kilometers and then abruptly angled ninety degrees to shoot away behind the horizon.

The world's foremost Brute looked at the depowered Lung, who was clenching his fists futilely, apparently trying to call up his transformation. She looked at the perfectly ordinary spot where the man - Paragon - had appeared. She looked at the crater where he had taken off so fast that he'd been over the horizon before she could even register it.

She looked back at Lung.

Lung, who Paragon had depowered with a word.

"...the fuck?"