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Taylor Hebert’s world was overrun by screams and fire, but all she could think about was how she was going to get her and her father out of there.

Tonight was supposed to be a normal, albeit awkward and rather uncomfortable dinner with her father. She’d been out of the hospital for a few weeks now after the… incident, but they hadn’t been able to find the time to actually go out and have some ‘father daughter bonding’ after everything that had happened. Or maybe that was just her coping with the fact that she hadn’t wanted to spend time with her dad after being forced into a locker filled with rusty, blood-crusted feminine hygiene products that had fermented in heat for weeks. 

It wasn’t his fault, and he did try occasionally, but Taylor simply didn’t have it in her - and, a lot of the days, it seemed like he didn’t either. 

Eventually, as the days went by and the incident became a tragic memory that neither of them wanted to revisit, things had seemingly gone back to the usual - only now, Taylor had freaking superpowers, and nothing would or could ever be the same again. Life had a weird way of being tragically funny like that; she finally had the power to fight back and change things in her life, but fear and anxiety and ‘be the better person’ had her tucking her tail like a good little Hebert and going out on forced dinner dates with her chronically depressed father.

Only now, dinner had turned into a god damned villain attack. She was months off of her guesstimated cape debut - hell, she’d barely even started jogging in preparation for patrolling - and now Lung was attacking the one Fugly Bob’s that her and her dad decided to go to? What were the fucking odds? What could she even do here, other than pray that she and her dad didn’t get immolated by the raging dragon, or get shot by a stray bullet by one of the thugs she could feel waiting out in the parking lot, or die from smoke inhalation because they couldn’t leave the diner without getting killed anyway?

As soon as the front of the building had been reduced to smoldering rubble, her and her dad had managed to get behind their booth for cover - just like many other scared and trembling greasy food enjoyers. Now, they were just sitting ducks as the fire slowly, yet surely, spread. The only reason she wasn’t properly freaking out at the moment was because the bugs she’d already been connected to - hundreds of spiders, cockroaches, and wasps, to name a few - were amassing in the vents, walls, and crevices, ready to act at her signal. Their presence was a familiar pressure at the back of her mind, a muted buzzing that she’d gotten used to sinking her consciousness into - all of her anxiety, worry, and fear. 

She couldn’t do much about Lung, but for the seven or so thugs lurking outside in the darkness…

“T-Taylor,” her dad hissed in a voice equal parts scared and furious, gripping her wrist with his large, bony hand so tightly that it almost hurt, and her already shaky grip on her new powers wavered. “We’ll be fine, sweetheart. You hear me? We’ll get out of here. Just keep your head down-”

The sound of glass and wood crunching beneath boots sounded louder than it should’ve been, causing her dad to forcibly cut himself off.  

“Avalon! I know that you are here. Do not be a coward; step forward and die like a man, and these people will be spared death by flame. Play your little tricks, and everyone dies.”

Taylor had never heard Lung’s voice before, or even seen him outside of mandatory YouTube searches for class projects, but the pure grit and vitriol that the man spoke with was enough to make the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. He sounded like he was gargling flint, and his thick accent only made it even harder to understand what he was saying.

The name he’d spoken, though - Avalon - made a gasp of realization unwittingly escape from her mouth. At first, an hour back when they’d first arrived, she had thought that she’d been mistaken. Wasn’t it racially insensitive, after all, to just assume that the random tall, dark, and handsome black guy with dreads eating a few booths away was the very same superhero who was still Trending on Parahumans Online? She’d watched his two recorded fights multiple times while studying the powers of other capes during her little break from school - the battle against Hookwolf, and then Invictus’ battle against the Empire.

The killing was… harsh, and not something she necessarily agreed with, but his power spoke for itself. 

Avalon was strong. New, too, if the rumors were to be believed, and Taylor would be lying if she said that she wasn’t envious of the absolute jackpot he’d gotten compared to her. Fans were already calling him the ‘Black Eidolon’, while she was just…

Well, ‘Bug Girl’ was probably taken already. 

Still, watching his fights and checking out his wikipedia page had made it so that she was fairly familiarized with his face. How could she not be, when his supermodel looks were like half the freaking thing his fanbase spoke about? Taylor could admit that he was handsome, probably the most handsome guy she’d ever seen online, but so were a lot of heroes - people like Assault and Legend, for example. It didn’t have to mean anything. All it really meant, realistically, was that his civilian identity was even more flimsy than most people’s, especially since his mask barely did anything to cover his face.

And as she peeked over her cover, another part of her brain working to re-corral the bugs she’d temporarily lost track of, Taylor saw the man - Avalon, she reminded herself - slowly stand up. It was kind of intimidating, the way that he hadn’t even reacted other than hushed whispers to the girls he’d been eating dinner with. His face was apathetic - bored, even - and shocked, frantic whispers began to spread through Fugly Bob’s as he stepped away from his booth and shoved his hands into his pockets.

The voices of the cowering, panicked civilians were almost overwhelming for Taylor, with the added senses of numerous bugs crawling and inching their way across the floor - more soldiers to add to her growing insectile army.

Holy shit, that’s Avalon?!

We’re saved…

Mommy, I-I’m scared!

Fucking Lung, man! Why fucking Lung?!

Screw this shitshow of a city! Can’t even eat a burger in peace-

And countless other threads of dialogue, all intermingling together into a spiderweb of white noise. Already, a headache was brewing - but she couldn’t falter yet. Even if Avalon fought off Lung, there were still the group of thugs waiting in the shadows outside. For what, Taylor didn’t know, but she sincerely doubted that it was for literally anything good. Taking them out completely was a task that she abjectly knew was impossible for her with the familiarity she held in using her powers to hurt - or, rather the lack of - but desperate times called for desperate measures.

She could only hope that the two powerhouses clashing didn’t blow up the whole restaurant with everyone inside. 

“Lung,” Avalon finally spoke up, his deep voice smooth and unbothered, the polar opposite to the villain’s inhuman bass. “Gotta say, I was wondering when you’d come sniffing around. I’m happy you decided to pull this stupid terrorist shit, though. Makes it easier to plead my case to the Feds after I cut your fucking head off.”

Like she was witnessing the highest stake tennis match of the decade, Taylor cautiously peered towards the smoldering ‘entrance’ of Fugly Bob’s, where Lung stood with his tattooed arms crossed and wide, broad shoulders squared. The flames from his initial blast hadn’t completely set the building on fire, now that she was looking at things more calmly. Embers licked along the floor and the edges of the wall that he’d destroyed, but it wasn’t spreading fast enough to box everyone in completely. 

Unless he decided to drop another fireball, at least.

“The death throes of a boy who doesn’t realize his own mortality,” Lung growled, taking another step into the restaurant. His boots were beginning to melt into a tar-like mess that stuck to the floor like oil, his skin rippling with hard, rigid hives that just couldn’t be pure muscle. His head never turned away from the casual Avalon, a burning orange glow emanating from the eye slits of his mask. “You will pay.”

The hero, still wearing his date attire and sunglasses, offered a crooked, boyish grin in return. “Dahazirek Leøœn says what?”

“...Wha-”

“Gotcha.”

It happened all at once.

One second, Avalon was merely standing there whilst every other occupant of the restaurant - bar him and Lung - cowered or hid behind booths and stools, fearful of what was to come. The next, he had moved in a blur of motion too fast for Taylor’s eyes to keep up with, one of the hands he held in his pocket snaking out to trace a zig-zag shape in the air with fingertips that crackled and popped with electricity.

Lung couldn’t react in time. Neither could anyone else. 

After all, none of them could move faster than lightning.

KRRRRRRRT!

Taylor’s ears popped, eyes misting with tears as a sudden, overpowering flash of light combined with a rumbling, head splitting crackle-pop that sounded like fifty jumbo bags of popcorn burning at the same time. Her dad was shouting something, but his voice was drowned out by at least ten other startled screams and cries. She paid him no mind, eyes as wide as saucers as she watched Avalon wrangle a bolt of pure, unadulterated lightning out of seemingly nothing but random, wacky-sounding gibberish and a flourish of his hand.

She couldn’t even begin to track the arcs of blue energy because it was over as soon as it started, the bolt of lightning almost teleporting from Avalon to Lung and sending him careening out of the restaurant with a quieter, but no less teeth-clenching boom of force. The hero stood, fingers still outstretched like he was just a kid playing cowboy. Smoke drifted from the tips, dissipating as it floated up towards the ceiling. 

There was a grin on his face, too - ear to ear, showing canines that were just a little too sharp to be natural. If she didn’t know any better, Taylor would’ve guessed it was a grin of… excitement?

But why would he-

“Sorry ‘bout ruining dinner, everyone. There truly ain’t no rest for the wicked I guess,” Avalon spoke into the stunned, fearful silence, the grin on his face compacting itself down into something more sheepish. He didn’t look at any one person in particular, which made the anxiety in Taylor’s chest slightly happy. Instead, his shaded eyes seemed to roam over everyone all equally, the grin-turned smile eventually morphing into a disgruntled frown. She wasn’t sure who it was aimed towards.

“Damn. That terrified, huh?”

“Eyes on the prize, babe. I’ve hacked into the CCTV footage around the parking lot - there’s a group of ABB chumps moving in. And, of course, they’ve got guns. Lung’s… pulling himself out of a pick-up truck?” 

One of the girls that were sitting at Avalon’s booth - the really pretty one with pink eyeshadow - was now wearing some sort of…holographic visor around her face? Tinkertech? Whatever it was, it didn’t seem cheap - she was clearly a cape too. Yet another person who seemed oddly at ease with the situation, although the fly buzzing around her leftover fries easily smelled the sweat beading her skin in spite of the air-conditioned interior of the building.

The freckled-face girl beside her was whispering sharply into her phone, looking decidedly less calm than the other two. 

Avalon let out a sort of noncommittal grunt, before sharply spinning on his heel. Seamlessly, almost magically, he went from ‘handsome bad boy on a date’ to ‘handsome dark prince on a quest’, his robe-like coat fluttering around his calves as he idly popped the wide, gilded collar of his costume. The sight was majestic, if a bit overly dramatic, and the inner cape fangirl inside of her wanted to do something stupid like ask for an autograph or something. 

The errant thought made her cringe.

“How many?” Avalon asked coolly, already walking towards the singed hole of Fugly Bob’s former entryway. 

Taylor itched to answer. To help, and actually be a hero. Seven. Five of them have guns, the others have pipes and-

“Just seven! Like I said, though - they have guns, so-”

“So they’re pussy. Understood you loud and clear, Iris. You two hold down the fort, ‘ight?”

“... No, jackass, that wasn’t the point I was trying to ma- Avalon!”

But he was already gone, using his Mover power to teleport through the hole in between one step and the next. With her bugs, Taylor had a sort of sixth sense giving her a decent byplay of what was happening outside of her actual line of sight, but it was still very… overstimulating, keeping up with what was now well over a thousand bugs beneath her control. There was a mottled, multicolor-tinted flash of Avalon appearing in the parking lot - this one she was seeing from a dragonfly - before a rumbling, bestial snarl tore through the night sky, her bugs felt a sweltering heat and then burning, and all primal instincts screamed together as one. 

Run. Flee. Escape.

Belatedly, Taylor realized that a faraway tug was yanking on one of her shoulders.

“-ylor! Taylor, we need to go, sweetheart. Now.” 

She blinked, coming back into herself as her dad yanked her to her feet. People were moving now, rushing and frantic but fortunately not pushing as that same girl - Iris, Avalon had called her - stood on top of her booth, gesturing frantically towards the back of the Fugly Bob’s.

“Not saying you need to go single-file, I’m not your mom, but- hey, no fucking shoving, jerk-face! Emergency Exit’s through the kitchen, people!” There was a nervous waver to her voice, the same waver Taylor sometimes got when she had to talk in front of the class, but that didn’t seem to matter - she was a cape with clear Tinkertech, even though she was unmasked, and normal people tended to listen to the heroes during crises like these.

The freckled brunette was helping as well, although she didn’t seem at all interested in yelling orders. Instead, she seemed to focus on helping the older people traverse the panicked crowd, murmuring words that Taylor couldn’t hear without placing a bug on her. Whatever she was saying, however, seemed to work, as the people around her seemed to straighten up and calm down at her words. It wasn’t much, but it helped with the shoving.

“Taylor!” 

“I’m- I’m coming, dad.” 

It stung, having to run away from the one thing she genuinely felt she could possibly be good at, but she was too unprepared. No mask, no costume, and the grasp she had on her powers was sporadic at best, detrimental and mind-numbing at worst. Plus, whatever swarm she’d managed to gather outside the restaurant was already burned to a crisp, and it would take a few minutes of concentration to start collecting from even further away. 

BOOOOM!

Another explosion ripped through the air, though it was distant this time - coming from the parking lot. Fearful screams and whispers broke through the fleeing crowd, and her dad swore viciously beneath his breath as he shouldered past some pot-bellied man stalling in the kitchen’s doorway and pulled at her wrist again.

Taylor swallowed her fragile pride and worked to keep in pace with him.

‘Good luck, Avalon.’

With Lung, arguably the strongest Parahuman this side of America…

He’d need it.

_____________________________________________________

The charr d, burning bodies of hapless gang bangers littered the parking lot around me, and for once… it wasn’t my fault.

“Guess you saved me some mana, big guy…” I murmured, tilting my head as I stared up and across at the growling behemoth of a man before me. 

Lung wasn’t what I had expected, going into this fight. From my brief but crystal clear memory of his powers, he basically got off to danger. The stronger his opponent, the more his Shard fed him energy to escalate, all the way up until he was practically going blow to blow with the Leviathan. He was by far the strongest opponent I’d ever faced down in this city, but…

I had thought he was supposed to start slow and ramp up, not come into the ring already sporting splotches of burnished silver scales like large, blistering scabs. He was taller, too - at least a feet or two taller than me, and I wasn’t exactly what you would call a ‘short king’. It was an odd sort of bulk, the kind that started at the top of the spine and worked its way down, making him seem like he was slightly slumped over from the bulk of his new size.

The spot where T'Essla's Arc hit him - dead center in the middle of his chest - was covered in spade-like silver scales now, the only reminder of the damage being the red veins standing out over his skin like spiderwebs. Even then, they seemed to be healing before my eyes. If I was a lesser mage, I probably would’ve been intimidated by the sight.

Lung anticipated your strength. Because Lung anticipated your strength, he is transforming at a faster rate.

My eyes narrowed. It was a logical conclusion to draw; he probably did the same shit with Leviathan. I doubted he would’ve escalated fast enough to keep up otherwise.

“Oni Lee. You… killed him, yes?” 

He was barely even trying to sound human now, and the guttural snarl was a freakish amalgamation of beast and man - like two sides were warring for dominance. The name was phrased more as a statement than a question, only compounded by his commanding tone. Lung punctuated his words with slow, purposeful steps, claws reminiscent of small blades sliding free from the tips of his fingers. Aqshy sang around him in the form of sweltering heat waves, filling my nose with the scent of spices.

As my brain worked through how I would handle this fight, I allowed my mouth to take the reins.

“It was assisted suicide via pipe bomb, actually. He didn’t outright admit to clinical depression, but I sniffed it on him. You must be a really hard boss to work for.”

His steps didn’t falter at the casual admittance, not that I expected him to be torn up about his lieutenant’s death. Chances were he already knew, and was just buying time for his powers to fill him with more strength.

“Then… burn!”

And, just like that, the slow march transitioned into a long-limbed sprint, clawed feet leaving melted prints in the asphalt.

To my eyes, though? He might as well have been moving through molasses.

It would’ve been easy to stop him in his tracks before he properly scaled up to an actual threat. I was a mage, and one of the best things about having magical spells at the tip of your fingers was the fact that you probably had a spell for every situation - Dungeons and Dragons taught me that. Already, I could think of no less than five different methods to de-escalate the dragon and leave him with hella performance issues, the most straightforward of them all being a massive onslaught of soul-shearing spears that would make even Gilgamesh proud of me.

There were spells utilizing the Grey Winds that ensnared and bewildered the mind, leaving opponents twitching on the ground or staring blankly at the sky, and spells utilizing the Red Winds that rotted and withered flesh until nothing was left behind but bones. As far as I was aware, Lung didn’t hold any innate magical resistance past what his Brute rating granted him. I could, quite possibly, end this battle before it even truly started.

Only… that felt wrong. Intrinsically, innately wrong.

The Red Winds grew absolutely caustic around the charging scalie as he bound across the parking lot, rampaging over the charred bodies of his fallen comrades. Words of arcane power leaked from between my lips in a near silent mantra, and forcibly, I yanked away the Aqshy hanging over Lung’s body like a shroud in order to power my own spell.

Just in time, too.

A conflagration of pure, red hot fire billowed from Lung’s entire person, as if his very aura was flame and he willed it towards me. Instincts, strengthened by Hidden Intuition, willed me to move - to fly the forty or so feet into the air I needed to in order to escape the height of the flamethrower, or teleport to the side in order to circumvent the danger completely, but…

I commanded the very forces of magic. No, fuck that - the very forces of magics. Plural. I was an Omni-Disciplinary Mage, blessed by the Eight Elemental Winds, and even more recently, Magnus himself. The Celestial Grimoire now acted as the fabric of my very soul. I would live forever, explore countless worlds, and quite possibly become the most powerful Archmage in existence, given enough time.

The fuck did I have to be scared of?

Heroic Aptitude requires you to experience adversity and challenge in order to grow. Hidden Intuition murmured silkily into my ear, a disembodied voice that seemed to almost draw amusement at my internal monologue.

‘But when was the last time I’ve actually felt challenged?’

Lung’s flames washed over my still form, but I stepped through the scorching stream of fire with contemptuous ease, my hair flying backwards against my scalp from the sheer force. Shield of Aqshy wasn’t the most advanced spell ever, but it was one of the very few works of magic in my repertoire that completely and utterly nullified both magical and mundane fire. I couldn’t see Lung through the flare of heated color, but the red was slowly bleeding out into blue - which meant that I was getting closer to the source. He probably couldn’t see me either; I wouldn’t be surprised if he thought that I’d already perished in the flames.

Dumbass.

Maybe it was arrogant of me to actually desire a challenge. After all, I wanted to leave Earth Bet because Scion was too much of one. To a lot of people not in my position, the way that I was thinking could be seen as cowardly, or hypocritical, or even downright retarded.

But I didn’t give a fuck. 

I wanted to grow, as both a hero and a mage. I wanted to reach heights unprecedented, explore mythical lands and battle magical beings. Heroic Aptitude was the crux of all that - the foundation of strength and power that had the potential to forever scale higher. It had been with me since the beginning, molding me into the man I was now, and now that I was standing before one of the few people in this world that could push me even higher…

I refused to let it just slip between my fingers because I wanted to take the easy road. Not today.

CRACK!

The sound of my gauntlet-clad hand smacking loudly against Lung’s snarling, fang-filled mouth echoed through the small parking lot. Segmented blades of silver scales bit into the gold metal, gouging grooves into my palm, but I paid it no mind. My attention was focused solely on the baleful, lava-like orbs of hatred and heat glaring directly into my own narrowed gaze.

Large, scale-splotched hands slammed into my sides in an attempt to gouge out my ribcage, but the claws couldn’t pierce through the silky, magically Infused shirt. The enchantment was a simple durability one, as opposed to my comparatively complex Venetian mask - simple, but effective. There’d be bruises later on for sure, but my guts were staying on the inside tonight.

The same couldn’t be said for Lung, however.

“Change of plans,” I began conversationally-

FWOOOM!

An explosion of fire temporarily robbed me of my vision, but I continued speaking as if nothing happened.

“Instead of just killin’ you… I’m gonna use you. Or, more specifically; your power.”

Lung was struggling now, skin and flesh rippling as he thrashed against the iron-clad grip I had on his face. After my minor power-up the other night I wasn’t 100% certain of my new physical strength, but keeping a seven and a half foot tall dragon man restrained with just one hand was clearly starting to push my limits - and this was with him having shitty leverage. He arched forward, a muffled roar of fury trying its best to escape from around the destroyed remains of my gauntlet. Incrementally, bit by angry bit, he was growing even more monstrous before my very eyes. 

Lung will escape your grasp in twenty seven seconds.

A wry, humorless smile formed on my lips. 

“Don’t disappoint me, Kenta. I’ll kill you if you die too fast.”

Lung is confused. Lung is furious. Lung wants to murder you.

We shot into the air at two hundred miles an hour, a hastily-conjured shield of Azyr keeping the worst of the wind away from my eyes and ears. Lung’s was much taller than me at this point - bigger and beefier, too - but I wasn’t weak by any means. He was screaming again, the wordless roar easing out between the gaps of my gilded fingers, and the clawed strikes against my torso was growing stronger and faster with each passing second. I gritted my teeth, ignoring the uncomfortable heat of bruises beading my flesh. Small fry shit like that wasn’t what I was focusing on.

My Evil Eyes pierced through the darkness like lasers, and through the gloomy overcast of Brockton Bay’s nightlife, I saw it - the beach. A sandy expanse of land that went on for at least a mile and a half, wrapping around to the other side of the Boat Graveyard. The Market area had been cleared out by the time I’d followed Lung outside, although there hadn’t been many people loitering around in the first place, but collateral damage was something that I didn’t want to have to deal with. Fugly Bob’s was already missing half of their front wall, and some poor fucker’s pick-up truck was a smoldering wreckage now.

Lung fought Leviathan in the ocean, didn’t he?

Nothing but sand, water, and two powerful capes duking it out. It was a man’s romance.

Lung will escape your grasp in ten seconds.

Mana suffused my form, writhing tendrils of raw, powerful magical energy soaking over and into my skin. My nerves awakened with a fervor, and my right arm - the same arm currently straining with keeping Lung still - suddenly came alight with power, golden and silver mana coalescing around the limb like smoke from a barbecue pit. My muscles shook and quivered, but not from strain. Tendons popped and roiled beneath my flesh as I fed more and more magic into my arm, the luminosity of my power turning me into a bright beacon in the night sky.

Lung’s struggles increased twofold, but that no longer mattered.

“If you thought ol’ Levy was scary,” I whispered amidst his stifled snarls and screams, closing my eyes to block yet another failed explosion of fire and flame. “You haven’t seen nothin’ yet.”

I blasted forward, going from zero to max speed in a mere fraction of a second. There was only a moment of acceleration before I abruptly pushed on the brakes, gritting my teeth and yelling out as I slammed my heels into thin air, twisting into a sharp 180 spin and whipping the near eight foot tall man around with me. I fed even more mana into my overcharged arm at the exact same time I released his flailing form towards the sandy shores of Brockton Bay’s beach.

BOOOOOM!

Lung turned into an actual fucking comet, a roar of pure anger and bestial, unhinged ferocity escaping his throat as his body was sent shooting down from the sky at a speed that clearly broke the sound barrier. Fire consumed his very form, leaving a trail of smoke and flame behind him as he reached terminal velocity. Within what felt like a couple of breaths, the wingless dragon finally made it to the shoreline, a massive explosion of sand, water, and steam billowing into the air on impact. A wave of heat - and Aqshy - billowed outwards from the cloud of bullshit, and I felt it even from hundreds of feet in the sky. 

“Haa… yeah, he’s pissed.”

My right arm sagged down against my side, a pulsating, discomforting pain emanating from my shoulder, but raw Aethyr pressed against the dislocated joint. With a sickening crack, I forced it back into place with my magic. Maybe it was the adrenaline and the excitement, or maybe I was just beyond such small injuries, but I barely even felt the jolt of agony.

Somehow, that pain felt trivial in the moment. It was easily dismissed.

As I took a step forward, Conveyance teleporting me forward another hundred feet with each step of my boots, I began weaving together the Winds once again. I pulled from Aqshy to revitalize my fire shield, and I pulled on Azyr to quicken my movements. Hysh soothed the ache in my shoulder with only a single murmured phrase, and Chamon enchanted the tip of my freshly-summoned Armament with magical sharpness capable of piercing a dragon’s scaly hide.

It took me less than a minute to step onto the sands of the beach with my spellwork still fresh on the tip of my tongue.  I could have attacked him while he was recovering, press this minor advantage for all that it was worth, but I didn’t. There would come a time in the fight where I took every opening I could and punished him for it, but the real battle… it hadn’t started just yet. I leaned against the long, ornate haft of my spear, watching with lidded, focused eyes as the massive amount of dust finally cleared away from Lung’s impact zone. 

What greeted me then, jumping out of a crater that had to be as deep as I was tall and twice as wide, was something I could no longer just call a ‘bestial man’. 

Standing just over twelve feet tall at an estimated guess, covered head to toe in silver, spade-like scales licked and prodded by blue hot flames, Lung glared at me with burning crimson eyes. His hands flexed at his sides, claws half a foot long glinting against the light of his fire. He didn’t even have a normal face anymore - oddly enough, it was more feline than it was draconic, with a weird, X-like hole where his mouth and nose was  supposed to be. Fangs jutted out from it like daggers that gnashed against each other, and as I stared, two scale-covered protrusions tore themselves out of his shoulder blades. If I had to guess, they were supposed to be the groundwork for wings.

The sight was impressive, I had to admit.

“Now that you’re all ‘roided up and ready to go,” I began calmly, using Force of Spirit to make my voice carry across the sands, “Let’s play a lil’ game while we fight to the death. You down, Spyro?”

Lung didn’t respond - hell, I didn’t even know if he could at this point. A low, bone-quivering growl rose from his chest, the fangs in his pussy-mouth clicking together uncomfortably.

“Great.” I straightened up, pulling my Armament from the sand, and pointed it directly at him. The flames on his skin came alive at the movement, coiling around his body like writhing snakes, but he didn’t move an inch. “The game’s called ‘Who Has The Worst Trauma’. Me, with my fear of toothy pussy orifices, or you - with your fear of getting your ass kicked so overwhelmingly bad that your only chance of survival is assuming the position and takin’ it up the butt-”

“STOP! TALKING!”

An inferno of white-hot fire ripped across the beach, the mere heat surrounding the blast hot enough to turn sand to glass, but I was no longer there. Two chain teleportations found me ducking behind Lung’s considerable bulk, the sweltering, flesh-melting heat surrounding his body like a cloak dissipating harmlessly against my Shield of Aqshy. As words of magic flitted across my tongue and my free left hand gesturing idly towards his back, I could see the sheer amount of anger and panic shoot through Lung’s molten gaze as he swung his head over to track me. Only, at this stage, he just wasn’t fast enough.

‘Yeah,’ I grinned internally, lightning crackling into existence around the palm of my hand, ‘I’m gonna enjoy giving this motherfucker PTSD.’

And maybe, if Lung played rough enough, I could finally see just where my limits stood and push beyond them.

In the end, it would all result in the same fucking thing:

The Hero slaying the Dragon.

______________________________________________

A/N:

Thank you guys for your patience, yo. Finally settled into the new place, so I was able to write up the chapter!

A couple things I wanna preface here:

No, Taylor won't be a main character. I just wanted to introduce her and show a bit of her POV. The butterflies from the Lung fight here will be immense, but we won't be seeing her journey as a character.

Yes, Jason isn't cheesing Lung with Weapon Magic. It's a direct counter to Lung, since it would de-escalate him, but we can't forget - Jason's whole character is based around growth. He can't grow if he can't sweat in a fight, and fighting Lung like Purity or Lady Photon would not make him sweat. Sure, he could kite him and overwhelm him from a distance with Weapon Magic, but where's the fun? Where's the challenge? How does he grow as a mage and a hero if he takes that route in every fight?

He explained it best in-story. Don't think that, from now on, Avalon will limit himself against every opponent or refuse to use cheesy strategies - he will one tap some opponents, just as he will engage in longer battles against others. But for Lung in particular, he saw an opportunity to push himself beyond what he has gotten so far, and since they're on the beach away from the city, he can even let loose with some of his bigger spells and attacks too - assuming Lung survives the onslaught. Lung scales indefinitely, so he's like the best whetstone for Jason to grind against right now - no freaky. Just sit back and enjoy the upcoming action. <3