Weapons were primed and aimed at the triumphant shout. Fingers almost twitched.
Then came the understanding of what the booming words actually were.
Cute.
Wards 101: A "spotlit Hero" couldn't attack first unless it was in clear defense of another. Words first, unless it was a Master, Thinker, or a clear threat to others. Always attempt to De-escalate.
That certainly would have qualified as "not heroic".
So, a Villain known basically for the sheer amount of direct potential destruction he could cause was now playing mind games. Wonderful.
Lung would, therefore, have to strike first, attempt to escape, or, refuse to surrender when the de-escalation attempts were tried.
Which meant...
"You've caught on," Rumbled the voice of his opponent. "Excellent."
He'd have to listen to what Lung had to say.
In front of witnesses.
---===---
My children, proud to be chosen and resplendent in their colors, were to a one surprised when instead of roaring and flinging flame, I struck a peculiar pose. I don't think any of them understood it, but they were young, and most weren't Japanese.
The start of the Roppō. The final movements of the Kabuki on the stage.
<What is that?>
When the actor leaves the stage, he cannot walk off as the Warrior or the Villain, he has to leave as the actor, or risk spoiling the performance by not ending it.
<Ah.>
And so in front of Armsmaster, I would end the role of Lung, albeit briefly. And while I doubt any present would understand the motions of Roppō, I was still a ten-foot tall scale covered dragon-man. I knew how to move with people staring at me.
I was being recorded. And thanks to Taylor, I knew who was watching.
---===---
Try as he might, Armsmaster could find no actual hostile motions he could justify to attack. The peculiar steps, the motions of the hands, the tilting of his head, they were odd, but not an attack.
His predictive software was even throwing up possible Master warnings due to how many of the motion weren't in the database of recorded motions of the Villain.
And then with a small hop, it was over, and the Villain stood within easy swinging distance of the man in the massive armor. Abruptly he relaxed, his hands falling loose by his sides. He didn't grow or shrink, there was no flame, and the scales did not change.
An impasse. No advantage given or taken.
"How quickly we turn into savages." Lung began without preamble. "As if the moment we trigger, the clock begins ticking, a countdown to... conflict."
"Will you surrender?" If he had to listen to a Villain's rant, he may as well get all the "Heroic" requirements out of the way. And legally recorded.
"Honestly, I might have." The casualness of the statement made not only Armsmaster but the Wards and ABB teens inhale in surprise. "Had it not been for your words. One Hundred Dash P."
Interesting, both of the acknowledgment and the fact he'd heard them. That meant...
"You heard me talking." When Lung nodded, Armsmaster added. "While frozen by ClockBlocker."
Said Ward's faint cry of 'Bullshit!' was drowned out easily. "Indeed, I was trapped in my own skin, and while I couldn't see, I certainly could hear."
Thankfully, the layers of armor made most of the physical motions of surprise unable to be read. "I see."
This made many of his actions, and the actions of others make sense.
How could a man accept an offer of surrender when he knew it leads to a quiet chopping block? It was why the Birdcage, nightmarish as it was, got held up as the penultimate punishment for parahumans. You at least had a chance in there, a slim one yes, but a chance.
"Splendid." Lung rumbled, scaled face looking pleased. Rather, the corners of his scaled maw turned upward. "I was correct in sparing you."
What?
"Without mercy, without shame. Willing to go as far as needed."
"What?" The mechanical timbre of the voice modulator did not conceal the uncertainty in that single word.
"I had hopes for H- for Miss Militia." He continued as if Armsmaster hadn't said a word. "She grew up in war, and she tasted the ashen fruits of hell it brings. But she is too compassionate, too ready to forgive. She will not do."
"Do? Do for what?" A leading question, even he knew it was, and the answer was a setup, but he couldn't strike yet.
"To Rule."
---===---
Armsmaster was silent at my response, and I gave him the time to process it gladly. It let me have a moment to reminisce. The Roppō always did that to me.
Oh, how I missed the stage, the drums, the flutes. All gone.
I remembered how I left that warehouse of corpses, cocaine and blood washing off my frame from the nightly rain. I knew what it meant, Japan had many parahumans in those troubled times, and now one more.
I staggered home, collapsed in my bed, and slept.
When I woke late in the afternoon I was larger, stronger, and there was a new fire burning inside me.
And my mother was cold in her hospital bed, her fire burnt out.
I didn't need to fight -I no longer needed the money- but I had so much anger to let out. And with the power vacuum created by the death of most of the gang I was a runner for, others gangs circled in. I welcomed them.
I fought, and in my newfound strength, I became the leader of the scraps of the gang in short order. I learned how little sleep I needed or wanted, how inexorable my stride had become, and how if I struck a drug den or a hideout that I'd grow and grow as more reinforcements came. That the fire went from wild to controllable the longer I went, as well as hotter.
I secured my territory from within and then pushed outward, taking over theirs. Some buildings burned, people died, and power changed hands. They called me many names as I did: Tatsu, Ryu, Naga, ドラゴン, but the Chinese 'Lung' came from the first man who died at my newly forged and burning hands. I kept it, if only for the utility of the fact I could say it far longer than any of the others when my face grew distorted.
Eleven days and nights passed before the prefecture was mine, Lung's, and with nothing else to fight I could finally stop, if only for a little while.
After sleeping again, I returned to the theater.
Naturally, I could no longer take the roles I had practiced so long for, I was bigger coarser, and my voice... well, I could no longer hit the right notes. In yarō-kabuki men play all roles, even the women, and I was good at them with my former slight and delicate frame. But, by this point, there were enough parahumans in Japan that my size and voice gave the troupe leader an idea.
And so I started from the beginning, again. Another two years of learning. Even a former veteran turned parahuman actor was not exempt from this, and I welcomed it as a chance to discover this new part of me.
New stories, and new roles within them. Mainly the villain, the ogre, the oni, the monster.
With practice I could generate flame safely, not tear the cloth they draped me in, and they could put makeup on me without it boiling away.
By day I was in the troupe, by night I ran my gang. I slept rarely.
The applause I had gathered from my size and the force of my enhanced frame in my new roles was just beginning to be tapped as a possible new form like the
Onna-Kabuki and
Wakashū Kabuki had been before the modern form. Parahuman theater.
Then the water began to rise...
And sadly, the culture had failed to flourish elsewhere. Not in Korea, China, America, or anywhere else the Japanese had scattered to.
Pity, but that left me my other occupation. A gang was little different than a theater troupe for the most part. Mostly bluster and posturing, with those few desperate minutes of violence intermixed with the quiet days.
And paperwork. Couldn't forget that.
---===---
Rule?
Armsmaster's mind was in a frightful whirl.
Thankfully, Lung was content to let him think, he dearly needed it.
Was this why the approval came so quickly? Why it happened at all?
He had typed it with his one remaining hand, waiting for Panacea to be brought in after being stabilized by the trauma team.
A petulant pipe dream at best, for without something as clearly threatening as an Endbringer or the S9 behind it he had been expecting it to take weeks for it to even be glanced at before being denied like so many of his requests for anything.
Yet the approval beat Panacea to his room, and on seeing the confirmation from not one but several Directors including the Chief-Director herself, for a moment he honestly thought that they had put something extra in his IV drip.
But there it was. His long-denied chance to prove himself.
No restrictions, only results. The authority to override Director Piggot if necessary, to not even involve her if expedient.
With it, he had begun preparations for a midnight ambush, only to have Lung march around in broad daylight for the first time in years. Carefully made plans thrown into disarray.
How smart was he? Was Lung countering a plan that been made before Armsmaster had even left the hospital, arm reattached? From even before when he took the arm off?
"Surprised Armsmaster? The enemy has to be killed in wars, whether conducted according to the rules of morality or against them. Isn't that why we're here, you in that vast machine?" Lung brought his hands up to encompass every Hero and Ward around them. "Isn't that why they are all here, instead of letting me leave quietly?"
No, it was too many late nights planning, too many preparations, too many hushed conversations where Director Piggot wasn't present. Velocity first, the former army man knew what could be required in the dreadful times, then Assault...
"That's why I spared you. I thought you understood." Lung's gaze was steady as he took a step forward, he was easily within reach of the larger arms of his opponent. "The slaughter of foes by deceitful measures is not detrimental to one's righteousness."
Preparation leading to quiet escalation.
Lung took another step. "Good and Evil can only be framed in a single way that makes sense during war; That the only path to peace is through victory."
What always happened when Parahumans survived a near-death experience.
Another step. "Always a king should slay his foes by unfair war."
No...
Another. "
This is the law you believe in."
This is wrong.
"This is what life is."
This isn't what a Hero was.
Lung was mere feet away now, not even bothering to look up at the cameras, content to stare at the barrel-like torso of the machine Armsmaster lay in.
"I will not surrender, nor will I back down, and I know you cannot either." He started to chuckle, harsh, rasping and metallic, the laughter of a dragon. Yet still human, proud, tired.
Ready.
"For we are but actors on a stage, no, not even actors, puppets, yes puppets dancing on strings."
Slowly he raised an arm, then gently -at least for a Brute- his scaled knuckles rapped the Endbringer armor, ringing like a bell, leaving a tiny dent in the outer metal.
"There." Lung said, satisfied. "I have struck you. You have all the justification you need."
And with that, he turned and walked back to where he started. As he did, the man started to change, not physically like he often did, but in all the subtle ways that set Armsmaster's prototype prediction software alight. The subtle difference in the way he set his shoulders, how he walked, how his hands flexed.
"Now play the part you were given Armsmaster. Be the Hero."
"The first blow is already mine. I await yours."
---===---
The immense armor took a single step forward. The teenagers in the gang colors jumped at the sound.
Lung did not move.
And then it knelt and began to open. Armsmaster, still in his larger power armor stepped out. He drew his halberds and magnetically stuck one to his back, flicking on the other with a mechanical whine.
"I will not be used," Armsmaster said quietly. "Not by them. Not by you." His, halberd remained pointed at Lung.
"Do you even know who they are?" Lung said, amused. "Or why they set you on this path?"
"No, but I will, soon enough." Armsmaster's voice was set. Certain. "I have no doubt that what will come will be bad, it might end my career or even my life, but it will be by my decision."
Lung nodded, satisfied. He turned his head slightly to look over at the limping Battery. She stared back, caught by his burning gaze. "As I said to you girl, 'You always have a choice, you simply choose not to accept them.' He," he pointed with a clawed finger at his opponent. "is strong enough. Remember this."
She nodded, tersely, then directed her gaze at her wounded partner. Another who understood.
"Your words were truth," Armsmaster said, voice tightly controlled, bound in iron. "All of them, except for one lie." His armor began to hum. "And for that lie, I will face you. And I'll use everything I have to win."
And then the time for words was over.
---===---
Armsmaster was renowned for his polearm, ever since an idle idea had spread to the focus group determining his fate and got approved, condemning him to it for as long as he was a Hero.
Over the years he had put in long hours, all while incorporating countermeasure after countermeasure.
Other Tinkers had jetpacks and rayguns, he had a long stick. He hated the limitations at first, but he made it work, and gradually he started making it look good.
The jousting knight on a motorcycle.
The Tinker with just the right tool for the problem. Any problem.
Every problem.
Halbeard.
Oh yes, he'd heard that one too, slung around by the Wards -the previous batch- under his wing, he saw how it spread to the office crew, the PRT personnel, the
internet. It was then that his quiet frustrations had truly taken root.
But it never was used by the Heroes he worked with. Velocity, Miss Militia, Assault, Battery, even Challenger when he was around. He lead them and was respected by those who counted on him, and for a while, that was enough, despite his frustrations.
Until Dauntless and the Christmas party two years ago. Still reeling from his divorce and drunk off his ass, he threw arm around Colin's shoulders, led him to the lady he was trying to impress, and introduced him with that goddamn
name.
That was when the tunnel vision really began.
Had they, whomever they were, spiked the punch? If they could arrange paperwork with the Chief-Director of the PRT, what couldn't they do?
Questions for later.
But he knew one thing, if they ever stuck him and Dauntless on a deserted island, classic Star Trek style, he'd maul that wannabe Gorn with a stick, no diamonds needed.
---===---
I was fast, but the bladed weapon was faster, always moving, never letting me grab a hold of it.
With this power armor, Armsmaster wasn't quite as strong as I was right now, but he had something far more dangerous than mere might behind him. He had experience.
This was no ambush, much of my new tricks he had seen, experienced and watched on the recordings before he ever arrived here.
And he prepared accordingly.
And he had two weapons, each to be wary of, particularly the vorpal one that wouldn't work with my flame, flame I wasn't using, still strapped to his back. Waiting.
The one he was using was interesting for completely different reasons.
Whatever the metal the blade had, it was hard, far harder than my scales right now. The welts and dents on my arm were healing, but the pain, the ache of my bones ringing, that made me leery of lunging for another grapple. From the vibration my ears could pick up, I think it was a solid core throughout. A parried snap kick followed by an elbow to the shaft confirmed it.
Solid all the way through. Likely resistant to immense heat as well. It was made to beat me after all.
But I was stronger, and I had fought against many staves, held by Brutes and Speedsters alike. They were surprisingly common, more publicly acceptable than swords or guns, and very useful against Strikers, people with auras, or people on fire like I often was.
But I, I had a counter. Take the hit, grab the shaft behind the blade, and either destroy it or at the very least wrench it out of their grasp. Force them to come in closer.
Four steps to victory.
It had worked many times, thus I was surprised when midway through the third step the staff abruptly became a three-section staff, ruining my balance and staggering me.
No, now it was a nine-section staff. And it wasn't a solid core, I could see it was hollow when he twisted the bottommost part of the handle to aim at my torso.
The somehow
flexible mass driver fired, and it's payload hit me in the torso and sent me flying over a car.
Fucking Tinkers.
---===---
Meanwhile, Taylor was in a battle of her own.
<Don't grow. Don't use fire.>
[WHY?] That certainly seemed like a bad idea.
<I know it seems counter-intuitive, but we need to do this.>
[WHY?] If there was a reason, it wasn't going to stop until it had it.
<We have allies, fire will hurt them!>
[INSUFFICIENT.] It had no allies, only it's Host, and the Key. Fire and Scales didn't work with many powers, and frankly, it hadn't bothered going down the synergistic route like the others had.
<We agreed to the terms before the battle. We made a deal!>
[INSUFFICIENT.] It had made no deal.
Desperate, she went over what little she knew it cared about. <The Endbringers, the Culling Units!>
She could feel that she had its total attention. The mountain, no, the continent with its many eyes, all focusing on her.
<He has a weapon on his back, it won't work on Behemoth -the first Culling Unit- because of the heat he generates, but it will work on the second. The one you faced.>
[AND?]
<If we can beat that weapon, a weapon that can harm the En-the Culling Units- it proves we are better than them.>
With her tethered connection to both Lung and it, she could feel something stirring.
In her mind, it smelled like old leather and felt like an old heavy sweater, worn soft with time.
Pride.
Buried under boredom and conflict and the endless battle against Paperwork.
[STUDY.]
---===---
Heroes, Villain, teenage gangsters, and a lone girl watching from around the corner of the gym building watched with ears ringing as Lung slowly get to his feet.
He was coughing -wheezing really- and with his rough booming voice, it sounded almost like an old truck trying to start.
But the hand that grabbed the car and hauled his metal body to his feet did not grow, did not burn.
He stood, and all saw the damage he had taken. His barrel-like torso was dented, pushed inwards nearly a foot, directly over his heart. As he leaned forward and tried to take another breath a flattened metal pellet fell out of the crater in his chest and hit the concrete, sounding like an overly large coin.
"T-tungsten?" he wheezed, "That isn't magnetic."
"A tungsten sabot surrounded with a High-Speed Steel-Jacket." Armsmaster corrected, holding one up between his fingers before loading it into the slot in the still flexible polearm. "Which contains 18.2% tungsten itself while remaining magnetic."
Even without his lower face visible, all heard the satisfaction in his voice. "My own recipe. The magnetic properties of my alloy are very sensitive to microstructure."
Nodding absently, Lung looked down at the damage he had taken. "Nicely done." He was already breathing easier.
"Not enough," Armsmaster noted calmly. "Not to worry though, with the tube straightened the impact should be two or three magnitudes greater easily." A subtle twitch of his fingers and his weapon started to straighten in a snake-like motion. "More, if I overload it."
It was a challenge to the Villain, everyone present knew that. Grow, use your flame,
escalate.
Instead, Lung put his hands together in a prayer-like gesture over his injury. Scales twitched and flexed and suddenly with harsh screech of metal his chest had unbuckled. The scales started to ripple and change.
"If you intend to use reactive scales, don't bother." Armsmaster proclaimed. "At these speeds, it won't..." and trailed off.
The scales were coming together, fusing, becoming almost like... panels.
Lung's body almost looked like armor a samurai might wear, stiff bands across his torso, his shoulders, his thighs, his shins.
And then he breathed. Panels moved and shifted, flexing and shifting.
His visor mapped the angles, watched how they mimicked the sloped armor that battle tanks used. No, like belt armor on a battleship.
Living belt armor. Possible internal modifications.
Marvelous.
Undeterred, Armsmaster looked for weaknesses and found them. Like most armor, the joints, the sides, the throat, he had to be able to move.
And his arms weren't armored save the shoulders. Why?
He watched the scales on Lung's arms darken in bands, each a different color.
---===---
I ran a finger across the bands and noted how each sounded different.
<It wants me to tell you to test your arms against the edge.>
It was working with me, so it seemed prudent to give it what it wanted.
Glancing down at the car, I took a step and shook my legs, feeling the new weight they bore. Then without a word, I deicided I would give Armsmaster a Brute-kiss.
[Glasgow!]
<A what?>
I threw the car at him.
Despite being bigger and thicker than our last battle, his armor was surprisingly mobile, and I watched him dive into a perfect roll, the car crashing and tumbling where he once was. Dragon intercepted it and caught it neatly as Armsmaster smoothly got to his feet, halberd screaming towards my neck.
I took a step and swung my arm in a curving backhand, intercepting the edge with a mighty clang of metal. It dug deeply into my arm and stopped when it hit bone.
[Not these...]
Even as I reached for it, tiny thrusters swiveled in a quick 180 and fired, freeing the weapon. Holding it at the end of the handle like a baseball bat -a metal, rocket-powered, razor-sharp bat, he spun and sent the second massive swing at nearly twice the speed as the first one.
I felt my other arm itch as scales shuffled and changed. The weapon didn't care and it bit even deeper into my other arm.
[Nor these...]
I could have dodged the wing or the next, but it was a matter of pride now, for both of us.
Which will fail first, the ultrahard metal of his edge, or my arms?
The fourth strike didn't bite in, a single band midway in my forearm had endured the impact.
[Ah, Harbenite, of course!]
His blade had a notch in it now.
---===---
God his arms ached.
Even if the rocket jets were doing most of the moving. Even if the vibration was being dampened by the armor and the impact gel.
It still felt like he was cutting down the mightiest tree in the forest with a herring.
And now Lung's skin, armor, scales, whatever was darkening. Wonderful.
This halberd, at least with its edge, was no longer enough. The mass driver should still be viable, but...
He leapt back, watching the gashes of Lungs arms slowly fill in.
That left his prototype, whose edge only could last in short six-second bursts before the heat became a problem. He had a dozen canisters of particles at the ready.
Would it be enough?
---===---
The crowd watched as the halberd in Armsmaster's hands began to collapse, blade clicking in and the shaft shortening. Then in a practiced motion, one weapon was deployed from his back as the other was placed.
This weapon was smaller, thinner, and unadorned. Plain stainless steel.
So why did Lung take a step back?
A quick tap and one end sported not an edge, but a gray blur, vaguely blade-shaped.
They watched as the leader of the ABB took a slow breath.
And charged.
---===---
It didn't hurt. I really thought it would.
My hand landed on the ground, twitching. From my wrist to mid-forearm there was only dust.
[Fascinating.]
Dust and slowly spurting blood.
Ah,
there was the pain.
---===---
This time, it was Lung that leaped back, clutching his stump. His teeth were grinding so hard together to hold in the scream that it sounded like old clock gears grinding in opposition.
The thorns collapsed, overheating and dumping the particles out in a cloud of steam, but Armsmaster was already loading the second cartridge of nanoparticles, carefully held in a magnetic field.
The cooling system still needed work, the Endbringers wouldn't sit there and wait ten seconds for things to cool.
No matter, even Lung feared this one.
And he took a step forward.
---===---
<Must we?>
[STUDY.] And it was, the scales on the cut were being sucked in, analyzed. A hand was being pushed from the wound, assembling and connecting to the nerves. It had limbs to spare.
<But it
hurts.> It had been a long time since she felt this much pain. Not since Bakuda.
[PROGRESS.] Progress was honed on necessary pain.
<What about this idea?>
It listened.
---===---
Lung had grown a foot before he regained his self-control. Metal finger bones began to jut from the stump, soon he would have a new hand.
Time Armsmaster wouldn't give him.
"It's a pity your name isn't George." Lung joked, weakly waving his stump in Armsmaster's direction. "Cutting into my scales like this. They'd make you a saint."
"And then I'd have to be worried about Dacian," Armsmaster replied, giving his weapon a quick once over as his visor tracked a percentile rapidly growing. "I think there's one in Luxembourg."
It was ready. So was it's wielder.
"Ready for another taste?"
With only one hand, Lung held it, palm up. "Just a moment."
Head cocked like he was listening to someone, he turned and marched over to one of the few remaining moderately intact cars. At his new size, one hand was more than enough to flip it on its side.
What was he doing?
---===---
What am I doing?
<Yank the, oh what's the word, axle? Yes, axle. Rip those out and try not to bend them.
It was a touch awkward with one hand, but I pulled one out, leaning it against the car as I went for the other.
Idly I noted that this was the Principal's car. She was the only one who could afford a new one every few years.
Done. Now what?
<Well...>
---===---
Behind his reinforced faceplate, Armsmaster wrinkled his nose as Lung tore off the tires from the axle with his teeth.
Another oddity. And he remembered the last time Lung stepped out of his routine. His whole arm itched.
Satisfied, Lung strode back clutching one stripped axle in his teeth, the other in his hand. Planting one in the cracked ground beside him, he spat the one in his mouth into his remaining hand.
A weapon? But an axle was terrible for a club. The axle housing alone would make it sag without the center frame bracing it...
He stared as Lung grasped it carefully in the center, scaled brows furrowed.
And then scales crept along the axle shaft like it was his own skin...
He could do that?
---===---
I can do that?
[Pearl!]
Neat.
---===---
"Escrima?" Armsmaster asked politely, noting the length and the way it was held.
Lung nodded.
"Been awhile since I've faced it." He'd studied it, for those extra small halberds, but they ended up being not viable for motorcycle use.
Still, as he watched Lung enter Serada, his wounded hand crossed behind the weapon, he wondered how many more surprises the villain had in him today.
---===---
I was Lung and only Lung.
It had been a long while since I'd practiced the forms, but it came back to me.
And I was a Brute.
Our respective weapons clashed and Armsmaster took off a foot of mine in a cloud of dust, I used one of the classic Brute tricks.
I stopped abruptly then reversed. Arresting all your momentum was a strain, but one I was well used to.
In contrast, Armsmaster's swing couldn't be stopped so quickly, and my weapon struck him in the ribs.
He flew back ten feet before skidding on the broken ground, coming to a stop a dozen more feet away.
"Cute." was all he said as he glanced down at the tiny dent I'd put in his armor.
He reloaded his nano-thorns and I let him, as it gave me time for my fingers to come back. Grip changing drills came back to me as I reached for the spare axle. With the longer one in my right hand and the shorter in my decently healed left, I watched new scales cover both.
Armsmaster hadn't been idly waiting either, he retrieved his other halberd, and it changed shape, bending at a right angle.
A tonfa? Ah,
Kali. A cousin to my own style, and to Lee's Silat.
Interesting.
---===---
[INTERESTING.] The scales were shorn cleanly. Too cleanly. No tearing, no residue.
And no damage to the Host.
Sticks were useful.
Memories of the Key were studied, it watched the memories of the battle with the Culling Unit a dozen times.
And then it understood when the blade was deflected, just a tiny bit while removing a limb from the second Culling Unit.
Atomic shearing.
But that wouldn't work against a Culling Unit, at least not past the 72% threshold, when the physics began to break down en mass.
It was why it ceased to escalate against it from before, anything it could learn from the Culling Unit it could not replicate. A pointless battle save for survival of the Host.
But then it remembered the bearer of Garden, a fierce rival. A sub-host, improper, yet it generated red burrs when it regrew its limbs. it adapted to this...
If the Garden could do it, so would it.
[PRIDE.]
---===---
The battle became almost a duel.
Lung would retreat, weapon growing shorter and shorter with each swing, dust being all that remained, and then the grey blur would fade.
Then Armsmaster would retreat, reloading as he did, waiting the ten seconds it took to cool. Armor being swatted and dented with blows that would pulverize a man.
Back and forth.
Back and forth.
Playing the roles they were manipulated into.
They were almost... happy.
And thus it couldn't last.
---===---
Armsmaster blinked. He had cut through Lung's lone remaining weapon once more, leaving it more of a short cudgel barely half it's remaining length.
But he felt it. The cut. There was resistance.
The next swing took a quarter second to cut through.
The next, half a second.
Then it didn't cut through at all. They both... stopped, grey blur of his halberd's edge pressing against a nearly identical blur coming from the rapidly spasming and twitching scales.
Lung himself certainly understood, and for one final time, he jumped back, examining his stick. The scales receded into his hands and the battered axle hit the ground with a clang.
While he examined his new claws, Armsmaster made a discreet phone call.
---===---
My fingertips, my claws, they were a blur now.
Not from speed, but from sharpness.
I saw the mist, not steam, but mist drip from the tiny gaps in my scales, and frost began to creep up my palm.
Was I no longer a dragon of heaven?
I glanced up at my enemy, no, he wasn't an enemy.
Was he the enemy of my enemy? Was that a friend?
No, the enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy.
But one worthy of respect.
We circled, him wary of my hands, me wary of his next surprise. He always had another.
So focused on him, I didn't even notice where he'd placed me with our fight.
The war frame he had stepped out of pounced from behind, slamming me to the ground. Only my head and a single hand of mine were free.
He stabbed at my throat, pressing with both hands every bit of power his suit could provide.
I pushed back, my nano-thorns locked with his, desperately trying to hold out.
I only needed six seconds...
---===---
It wasn't enough, and as his next-to-last cannister of nanoparticles was depleted, Armsmaster had to step back, out of the reach of those terrible claws his opponent now possessed.
It made short work of the war frame's arms, reinforced metals exploding into dust like everything else.
With a triumphant bellow, Lung exploded out of the dust, towards his opponent. Only at the last moment, his hand turned, and his knuckles struck the Hero instead of his claws.
Armsmaster went flying into Dragon, nearly knocking her off her feet. Before she could catch him he crumpled to the ground and lay still.
---===---
It was almost over.
I had beaten their champion. Would they honor the deal?
I stood, ten feet tall, tail twitching like mad, claws at the ready.
No one moved. No one breathed.
"Go." Dragon said coldly, not looking up from her examinations of her fallen friend.
Wary, I kept the scales and the claws out and primed.
Slowly I strode over towards my children, those who hadn't fainted, their colors proudly resplendent.
Most shied away from me, but I was used to that.
I'd grow my hair out later, once I had some clothes and a decent mirror to my name.
Hmm, I wonder if I could make my scales into a mirror?
I was so focused on the thought as I approached my van that I didn't notice my tail had ceased twitching and had frozen.
[Sterilizer!]
---===---
[FOOLISHNESS.]
It had been tricked.
There was a reason it used the same form for the Host, always those specific scales, the flame, the growing.
It was the patterns statistically determined to maximize Host survival.
While playing this... game, it had pulled all its heat inwards, making it cold enough to stabilize the nano-thorns. And it had worked.
But the game was over, and it was dangerously overspecialized.
And then with its lone sense aside of examining the damaged scales it pulled in, the one it had bartered for with the Host and the Key, the thing they called a "tail", registered a presence.
Sterilizer. Directly above them.
Sterilizer, with its cruel and wicked light.
Sterilizer, whom it could theoretically endure,
had it the right scales out.
Desperate, it pulled in the scales within the Hosts skull, all to protect the one irreplaceable part.
Not the Host, it had plenty of backups of that, but the
Key.
All attempts at duplication of that part had failed. All attempts at creating a Pearl without the Key had also failed.
Was it too late?
---===---
The members of the gang cheered weakly at their leader's victory. Not too loudly, they didn't want his attention.
As he reached for the door to the back of the van, he saw the first tiny firefly-like mote of white light, falling like a snowflake.
His tail pointed to the sky and then retracted as a double-helix shape beam of light surged down at him.
The van exploded.
Lung exploded.
And the ground around Lung fared little better as an unending white beam seared down, it's force pushing the very explosion from the van down into the ground.
Then as quickly as it appeared, it suddenly it stopped.
There was no more van, no explosion, only a molten hole where it was.
And Lung.
When he twitched, the beam came down again.
And again.
---===---
Up in the sky, far out of sight, a white outline slowly faded. Hair slowly turned back to mousy brown.
A phone buzzed. The woman dug it out of a pocket and glanced at the message.
That is enough. Thank you for your cooperation, Ms. Anders.
And then she was gone, a fading white trail the only proof she was ever here at all.
---===---
I felt like I was on fire. How long had it been since I'd ever felt like that?
I always felt the burning within, never without...
Also, I was me again, not... whatever I-we- became. Just Kenta.
Wait... what about my rental?
Slowly I opened a molten eye, blearily I saw the hole where the van used to be.
Damnit.
Wait, where was Taylor?
I was losing everything today it seems.
Normally, I didn't have to come up with lines as I lost, and the ones in plays didn't work in English. What would Taylor say?
---===---
No one was cheering now. Everyone was silent.
Slowly, the semi-molten, vaguely humanoid mass lifted its head.
"Nice..." He slurred. "Gotta 'nother one in ya?"
He didn't have any skin, so he didn't feel the barrel of the very large gun get pressed against his head.
He didn't have ears, so he didn't hear the anti-tank rifle go off.
And then he was still.
Nearby, a man collapsed into ash.
---===---
Armsmaster lay still, propped up against Dragon, watching while Miss Militia got the Wards and the PRT squad in motion.
It was over.
With his face completely covered, no one could see him speak, nor hear him unless he set the outward facing speakers to broadcast. Especially on an encrypted connection, on a cable discretely connecting from Dragon to a port on the back of his neck's armor.
Quiet time.
"Was this really necessary?"
Almost quiet time. Always something.
"Best I could do Dragon," He replied absently, before wincing at the image that took over the view in his visor. "Sorry, 'Panlong'." She was really going to keep that name. Why?
"I can't believe you kept something like that," She didn't gesture with her claws, she didn't move at all, but he knew she was gesturing, somehow. "From me."
"Need to know." He grunted, "Only the Chief-Director, Director Piggot, myself and the special forces leader Calvert who was assisting in gathering the information knew about it."
"It's wrong." She said sadly. "Project Mockingbird is-"
"Necessary." He finished for her. "Much like how the friend I've been working together with for years never told me she was thirteen-years-old. Need to know and necessary."
"And Lung?" She changed the topic. His visor's camera briefly switched to Dragon's eye's, watching Miss Militia give orders, all while keeping a wary eye on the cooling mass of metal. "Was giving him nano-thorn's also necessary?"
"It was the only thing I could think of and had on me that would save his life if I managed to win." He didn't shrug, but he wanted to. "Plus it set him up for Purity."
"And warning her, and by extension, the Empire 88, was that also necessary?"
"If Lung can use the data we gathered, however the hell he got it, then so can I." He couldn't cross his arms, so he settled for setting his jaw stubbornly. "It was pure luck that her info popped up as an email from Calvert while we were talking." Dangerous thing, getting an email in the war frame before he stepped out. Still, he hadn't stepped on anything, and he resolved to refine his email-prioritizer to not bother him in future battles.
"And the Empire? How will they react?" She was probing his logic, she did that when she was upset with him. He used to think it was flirting, back before he knew how old she was. Now it was like having a Tinker-Vista trying to crawl into his lap. She was definitely in the 'friends only' zone until he was damn sure she was in the age of majority.
And he saw her face to face.
And got a blood sample, you can tell age with a telomere's length, right?
An X-ray of her bones perhaps? Growth rings?
"Colin!" It wasn't a shout, but it was sharp and broke his train of thought. "The Empire?"
"Yes well, since she got the email anonymously and it was targeting the ABB Leader, she has no real evidence that it was me. And if she tells Kaiser that someone contacted her with her civilian identity he'll pull back and try to find out the extent of the leak and what damage control needs to be done." It's what he'd do, after all. "Might even splinter the group."
"They grow quiet, buying you and Lung time. Or they break apart." Dragon mused. "And the nano-thorns? It couldn't be the only way to defend him."
"He was already immensely dangerous, with his powers and his evident Thinker rating. Couple that with what he knew, and what I almost got tricked into doing, it was almost a perfect closed case."
"Go on..." She could tell he was hiding something.
Should he tell her about his fears? No, best not get her involved. Association might put her in the cross-hairs along with him and Lung.
"Now, they can't keep him without me. He doesn't need to breathe, and you saw how even with his heart out of his torso thanks to Battery, he didn't stop. No attack on his internals will work as long as he's awake."
He could feel her glare, even through his armor and hers.
"Look, he clearly had a second trigger, you agree with me on that?" At her image's sullen nod he continued. "It shored up his one real weakness, intelligence, and adaptability. Thinker/Trump. How else could he adapt to armor-piercing darts in the seconds it took me to fire them? How did he beat Clockblocker's stasis?"
And yet they didn't destroy him then and there. Could they? Could only he do it? Was that why he was set on this bizarre path?
"I agree it is currently the highest probability. And?"
"Why was I given permission to the 100-P?"
"Ah." She fell silent. "I see."
"Don't dig too much into it." He warned her before continuing. "Anyways, drugs won't work without a beating heart. Freeze him and now he has nano-thorns. To stop those means flame, which is a really bad thing to try against him."
"And if he turns on you?" Ever the optimist Dragon was. Probably because she was Canadian.
"He only has linear control. He tries it against me, and I'll simply turn the thorns inward with a strong magnetic pulse. He'll shred himself into dust in seconds. Also, Velocity proved that he's vulnerable to baleful teleportation."
"And the fact that he showed you a stable working temperature, shaving weeks off of your own nano-thorn project. That was merely a coincidence?" Her voice was slightly teasing.
He carefully didn't answer that. He didn't need to. Instead, they watched Aegis fly slowly towards them.
"Drat, you'll have to get up soon." She groused. "We'll have to continue this later. Anything else before I prop you up?"
"Yeah. Have you seen Lung's hand? The one I cut off?"
"Dare I ask?" Her tone was venturing due south towards sarcasm.
"Even with that all being necessary, he still hacked off my Arms-Frame's hands." He finally did cross his arms. "I want a trophy."
---===---
It was like being a spider.
A five-legged spider with no eyes, but not completely unfamiliar.
Taylor was concerned, annoyed, and confused. She was also stuck in a large severed hand. The hows and the whys of this currently eluded her. Later she would worry about it. Later, when she wasn't stuck in a goddamn hand.
She remembered the fight, the merging of herself and Kenta into that... thing again.
She remembered the claws.
The victory.
The explosion.
And then she was like this.
Proprioception, that was the word!
noun - the ability to sense the position and location and orientation and movement of the body and its parts.
Also, 72 points in Scrabble.
Mom had beamed in pride. Dad had yelled 'bullshit'. Hah, showed him.
With it, she knew where she was and where he was laying, and despite being a hand without any scales, as they had fallen off, she knew she was under a vehicle, the last vehicle in the parking lot.
She felt the shade, the texture of a tire, the vibrations of heavy boots nearby.
She was ten feet away.
Her fingers felt something, metal, not the texture of a tire, standing still.
---===---
[ANNOYED.]
With the 'tail' back out and staying still with the rest of the body, the smugness of Sterilizer was literally palpable. Even from halfway across the city.
Even worse, during the retrieval, the Key had fallen loose.
This would not do.
It could feel it, distantly, but not exactly where... a fragment. And it needed Key or Pearl to use fragment control.
And so it waited.
[PRIDE.]
And it seethed.
---===---
Once again, many things happened at once.
Kid Win found that puberty wasn't quite finished with him. As when he looked down at the odd sensation ascending his armor, and he saw a disembodied hand climbing up towards his face, he
shrieked and hit a note even Vista couldn't reach anymore.
Miss Militia, veteran Cape, one who had seen a good cross-section of every bizarre thing the world had to offer, froze at the sight of Kid Win and the hand leaping from his faceplate towards Lung.
PRT Agents, a seasoned crew all, also froze at the bizarre tableau.
[KEY!]
They all watched as the hand landed on Lung. No one saw his tail twitch.
<God Damnit! I just got back, give me a minute!>
Dragon watched the spectacle from a distance and was also the only one who saw Miss Militia flinch like something had stung her. Then her eyes rolled up and she started to collapse.
[KEY!]
{OKAY...?}
[GIMME.]
That would be the second last thing this Dragon, Panlong, saw.
And a world away and yet nearby, a shard was drowning in possibility.
---===---
[PRIDE!] Even being overloaded in choices hadn't dampened it's pride.
[LESSON!] Several lessons. To its Host, to the Key, to all the other shards nearby snickering at it's fallen host. To Sterilizer, that smug prick.
The first problem, the host was unconscious, it's mind retracted for safekeeping.
The second problem, the power Key had connected to could build nearly anything from that world, but it had to be something seen. And the shard had no eyes in that world, even now.
First Solution, the Host's memories. It didn't need to be conscious, and, examining Key these past few days had taught it how to see the memories properly. Like it was supposed to from the beginning.
Second Solution, what to build? Easy. The best defense was a good offense. The best offense was a lot of offense.
Digging back it sifted through the memories of its host. Of Kenta. What did he fear and respect?
A Culling Unit? No, it couldn't create that. But wait, a memory!
Just after the battle with the Culling Unit...
---===---
Lung, shrinking, battered, weary.
Beaten.
He had faced a storm and the storm didn't care.
His homeland was gone.
And he was so tired.
He didn't remember the parahuman who had spotted him floating in the water, naked and alone.
He didn't remember the chains being looped under his armpits. The crane pulling his steaming frame up into the air.
He didn't remember the name of the ship that rescued him, already packed to the brim with weeping Japanese refugees.
He did remember one thing, blearily, when he opened his eyes and felt a tiny niggle of fear burrow into his spine as he stared down a spiraling barrel.
That was a really big gun...
---===---
A 16"/50 caliber Mark 7 battleship gun?
[MAKE.]
That'll do nicely.
---===---
As Miss Militia collapsed in a boneless heap on top of Lung, the green and black blur of energy that was her iconic ability formed large plates around them both. Well, around Lung, Miss Militia and the disembodied hand to be exact.
And grew.
And grew.
Everyone wisely scattered like roaches.
The green and black battleship turret swiveled towards the largest threat nearby. Armsmaster, Dragon, and the war frame.
Dragon's last thought was to push Armsmaster hard, hurtling him out of the danger.
The turret fired, all three barrels. Many bleeding ears today would need to be repaired, deafness undone. Panacea was not going to like this one.
Dragon exploded, the upper third of her body blown into fragments.
Backups of her memory would lack much of today, though she didn't know why. A glitch, perhaps?
---===---
Not enough. Not
nearly enough.
Sure, all the
nearby shards were silent, fearful that their hosts would be splattered next, like Reverse-Engineering's had been, but the ones further away weren't silent.
Especially fucking Sterilizer.
It needed something. The words of what exactly it was escaped the shard, but it had other resources to look into. Like Key.
[MESSAGE.] Yes, that was what they needed. But what?
Once more it dug into the mind of its host, further back, when fear was more common. Before Lung. Only Kenta. Ten years old. Nine. Eight.
There it was, Fear and Wonder. In capital letters.
[MESSAGE!] Instructions were sent via Key. The slave shard obeyed.
[BIGGER.] A big message.
[BIGGER.] One no one would miss.
[BIGGER!] A message so big, they'll break their little necks if they tried to make eye contact with it.
[PERFECT.]
---===---
I awoke, and I felt strange. It was a nostalgic feeling.
When I got big, really big, I could feel the delay from my head to my limbs, especially my feet.
Only, now it was more pronounced. More than it had ever been before.
How big was I?
I was standing, this I knew by feel, though I didn't recall ever getting to my feet.
But, I was also sitting in a chair? I felt the chair.
My eyes were closed... but also open? I opened them again just to be sure.
Was I in a building? I could see windows in front of me, rectangular, curved slightly, but green.
I tried to turn my head, but I was still dizzy, it felt like the whole building was moving.
My eyes roamed instead.
Why was Miss Militia sitting in a chair next to me? With my tail stabbing her in the thigh with all six spikes?
Why was everything green?
Why did I feel cables on my hands and feet, on my throat and down my spine?
And why did I recognize the layout of this room?
My eyes blinked once and then widened.
The building also blinked.
"What..."
---===---
"...The..." Armsmaster ground out, not believing what he was seeing.
---===---
"God Damn I'm good." Said Contessa, sipping on her latte.
---===---
"...FUCK?!?" Boomed what would be later known as 'Emerald Flash King Lung'.
![[Worm AU] Cogito Ergo Lung : I Think, Therefore I Am Dragon](/data/threadmark-index-icons/l/53/53775.jpg?1629284263){kind=icon}
