43

🎵 No one man should have all that power… 🎵

Obnoxious hip-hop music, loud and overpowering, blasted across the sands of the beach. Each bass-boosted beat struck his sensitive ears, now mere holes in the side of his scale-covered skull, and lances of dull, throbbing pain pounded at his brain. Existence was a mixture of rage and frustration, and Lung…

Lung did not understand what was happening.

It should have been easy. It should have been swift. He hadn’t brought many men with him because he should have been enough. Avalon had been out on a dinner date, according to the phone call he’d gotten - out of costume, but most of the boy’s face was rotating around the internet like a whirlpool. There was no way for him to have known that it was coming. There was no way for him to have prepared, the same way Lung had prepared. The same way he’d felt his scales stretching and growing beneath his flesh, the fire in his gut burning at the very thought of what should have been an easy, if tiring battle.

So why… why the fuck was he losing?!

They’d only been fighting for quite a few minutes now, after the second lightning bolt of the night sent him skidding into the surf, and getting a clean hit off on the frustrating cocksucker was nigh fucking impossible. Mottled, fragmented shards of obsidian-like glass spread throughout the beach in spiderweb-like formations, the side effect of him releasing burst after burst of white-hot fire, but none of it… none of it fucking mattered.

Avalon was immune to fire. Avalon was a Brute. Avalon was a Thinker. Avalon was a Blaster. Avalon could fly, and teleport, and his god-damned spear pierced through Lung’s fucking scales like a hot knife through butter.

Avalon was bullshit. 

This was all bullshit

 “STAND. STILL!”

Water bubbled, hissed, and steam as a gout of fire the height and width of a fucking bus billowed from his maw in a blazing inferno of blistering heat and hatred. Even as rage burned in his chest and his brain quivered from overstimulation of the senses, Lung’s body stayed moving - because he knew what was coming next in this infuriating game of cat and mouse. Burning, draconic eyes flew right, then left, as he abruptly cut off the overpowered flamethrower and swung both arms out in a sharp, vicious arc on both sides of his body-

He barely heard the sound of footsteps slapping across the water behind him.

plop plop plop plop plop.

Lung’s X-shaped maw warped into a alien-like grimace, and he twisted around in a blur of silver scales and foot-long claws, swiping down to exenterate the annoying pipsqueak’s brain meat-

Woosh.

In his red-tinted vision, he only caught a flash of black, bold, and silver, before it abruptly disappeared and something red hot was piercing through the back of his neck. Dimly, even as fire exploded around him in yet another defensive conflagration of flame, Lung scrambled to get a good grasp on the eight feet of spear shaft that was skewering through his windpipe and gushing steaming blood that burnt up in the radius of the heat emanating from his body. His hand slipped on the first attempt, but on the second he managed to grab it…

Only for a kick that felt like a speeding train slamming against the back of his armored neck, forcing the weapon fully through his flesh in another burst of liquified agony. Lung roared wetly, blood spilling from his maw even as the wound healed and scales began to cover the former opening.

“NO… MORE!”

His body was growing again - he could feel it, starting in his throat and moving down to his chest. Muscles quivered and shifted, his spine cracking and scales growing as more power was fed into his form. At this point, he was well above ten feet already - almost half of what he was when he fought the Leviathan. Merely that realization sent chills down his spine… chills that had nothing to do with the cool Bay water that bubbled and frothed around his now digitigrade legs.

With the growth, however, came power, and Lung did not plan to let this worm push him to the point. He refused to acknowledge that a mere boy - a new cape, no less - had the ability to do such a thing. To be that strong.

Because with that realization would come fear, and Lung knew what would happen then.

Fifteen feet tall and ablaze with blue and yellow flames, the Dragon snarled and whipped around with a sudden burst of speed, fire easily five times hotter than his previous blasts accompanying the blurring movement, but there was no one there anymore. No Avalon.

He stood on the surface of the ocean, not a ripple in sight, roughly a hundred feet away. His spear was grasped lightly in his right hand, but the wood was warped all along the shaft, and the large, ornate head of the weapon looked burned and dulled.

The boy glanced down at the weapon, tilted his head, and… tossed it away, where it disappeared into motes of golden light. He didn’t even seem bothered by the damage Lung had done, and that pissed him off.

The music abruptly quietened, easing down the banging going through his head.

“You’ve gotten big,” the boy acknowledged, and with his enhanced sight, Lung could see that frustrating grin on his face. There was sweat and soot on his face, streaking down his cheek, but absolutely no wounds. It was infuriating. “About halfway to your recorded peak, yeah? Interesting…”

Lung hated this. He hated how much the boy knew. He hated how the boy predicted his moves, how he always seemed to be in the right place at the right time.

He hated how similar he was to her.

As if he could read his thoughts, Avalon’s smirk shifted into a wicked grin.  “Heroes are ‘prolly on their way to cordon off the area and fuck up the fun, so I’m gonna go a lil’ rougher on you, ‘ight? Try to survive. Or don’t. You’re dying tonight either way.”

The arrogance. The fucking arrogance.

His pride rankled, his heart burst, and Lung saw red.

He didn’t even realize that he was roaring so loud that his voice created waves with its volume. All that he knew right then was that either Avalon would die, or he would. And Lung was not ready to die.

Large, scaly wings unfurled from his back, fire roared down from the heavens, and Lung charged.

___________________________________________________________

Avalon

A month ago, if you told me that I’d be witnessing a miniature version of Chinese Godzilla roaring and sprinting at me over the Atlantic Ocean, I would’ve called you words that would see me canceled on Twitter. There was no way that something like that would ever happen, right? Godzilla was a big fucking boy, and I never had any interest in fighting kaijus.

Now, however? Well… it was as scary a sight as you’d imagine, even if he was a mere fifteen feet tall instead of Godzilla’s four hundred. For a man roughly human in both stature and height, the difference was pretty fucking negligible in the moment.

Lucky for me, a Hero doesn’t falter at the sight of danger. They welcomed it.

One golden spear blasted past my head like a bullet, warping the surface of the water as it blasted towards the sprinting Lung. I could see the moment where he debated between trying to dodge it and just tanking it, but that thought costed him - the spear smacked into his armored chest with a loud, meaty ‘thwack’, and his steps faltered for just a second as the soul magic did its work and poured a little bit of water on the inferno that was his rage and escalation.

That was all the time I needed to finish up my incantation.

I closed my eyes right before the spell went off.

FWOOSH!

Blinding Lights exploded all across the waters, burning my retinas in spite of my eyelids being in the way. I could hear Lung screech and trip over himself in shock and pain, the water surface jolting as the giant humanoid dragon fell heavily into the water, and I immediately began channeling my next spell. I’d learned quite a few things while fighting Lung so far, but the most important thing about him was that his escalation was not a joke.

He scaled fast.

Physical attacks were not doing it at this point - not at the potency I could unleash them. I was fast - still faster than him, even, but I couldn’t go fist-to-fist with him anymore; the last time I tried it, he completely overpowered me, forcing me to teleport around him and attack from a different angle. His regeneration was ridiculous, and I was pretty fucking sure I had clipped or straight up pierced his heart multiple times at this point. The fucker was a beast.

But that was fine. I could feel my movements getting crisper as we fought, my brain working faster to come up with strategies on the fly, and I knew - at the core of my being, where Heroic Aptitude rested - that I was growing, slowly but surely.

And I wasn’t even a physical fighter. I was a mage, and it was about time I made that known to him. Hopefully before those sirens I could hear in the distance made themselves kno-

HISSSSS!

A geyser of steaming, boiling water burst from the ocean, and a massive shadow with glowing orange eyes lurked behind it. My hands traced symbols through the air at a speed that turned them into blurs, Rise blaring from my soul and drowning out the sound of my muttered incantations. At this point I wasn’t even consciously choosing the songs, which probably said more about me as a person than I necessarily wanted to dive into now. I had to act.

Lung was fast on feet, but his wings gave him a level of agility that he’d lacked before - he was on me before the spell was finished. My face warmed from the heat of his body, a reminder that he was beginning to stress the limits of my Shield of Aqshy, but I didn’t allow the stray thought to deter me. I soared backwards, the heels of my boots skidding against the surface of the water as I dodged the overhead swing that crashed into the ocean. It shrouded Lung’s form in an explosion of steam and superheated liquid, but his shadow was large and flagrant.

“-Leøœn!”

I sensed it before I heard it. 

The crackle of lightning, the smell of an unnatural storm, the pressure of magics that could ensnare this entire world in Chaos. It consumed the very air itself, stilling the brisk, salt-tinted breeze and almost robbing me of breath with the abruptness of its arrival. Lung waffled too, hesitating mid-air as he hovered over the surface of the ocean. We’d moved further away from the shore than I’d originally thought in our battle - the black-tinged beach was hundreds of meters away now, and I was floating an inch above the water, looking as if I was standing on it.

Not for long, though. 

The water would become dangerous soon.

It was nighttime now, so the sky was supposed to be dark…

The unearthly blue rift that tore through the gray clouds refuted that notion. It was, in a way, eerily similar to the VFX-like scene that happened when I first invoked my Reality Marble, like some God became bored and decided to crack the sky open like an egg. It was large and frightening, but it was contained directly over the battlefield that Lung and I fought on, dark clouds beginning to swirl around the rift like cowardly scavengers.

My skin tingled, hair standing on end, but I wasn’t scared. It wasn’t a true portal to the Warp, after all - it only went one way, and the only thing that would be coming from it was what I summoned forth.

Lung, his long, scaly neck tilted up towards the massive rift in the sky, shuddered. I didn’t need any magical abilities to perceive the uncertainty wafting off of his form. The flames that constantly licked at his scales seemed to flicker in doubt as he turned his bestial gaze back down towards me. There was only a moment of hesitation, the slightest stall, before he released yet another senseless growl and flew towards me. He didn’t know what was coming, and, bereft of any usable intelligence or information, decided to try and take me down with his newfound bulk. I almost pitied him.

My body tingled again, a sense of trepidation filling my soul, and I teleported into the air just in time-

BOOOOOOM!

For the first massive bolt of Aethyr-fueled lightning to rip its way out of the Warp.

Unfortunately for that sad excuse for a dragon…

He wasn’t nearly fast enough to get out of the way.

___________________________________________________

At The Pier…

“God fucking damn… you decided to threaten that monster, Armsmaster? Like, are we seeing the same thing right now?”

Assault’s tone being a genuine smorgasbord of awe, fear, and incredulity instead of its normal obnoxious flippance was the main reason why Colin didn’t snap at the ginger-haired man. That, and right now of all times simply wasn’t the best moment to allow emotions to cloud his judgment.

Things were bad. No, even further beyond that, things were downright scary.

It was shitty enough that they’d gotten reports of Lung simply walking through the Market, flanked by goons, on a normal Monday night like he was going out on a criminally-charged stroll. That would have already been cause for alarm, since Lung acting in-costume usually resulted in injured heroes, kidnapped and injured civilians, and gratuitous property damage. 

Since it was a school night, no Wards were on patrol to assist - not that they’d even want to send kids off to chase away a determined Lung. Unfortunately, Miss Militia and Dauntless were both out of town, accompanying Deputy Director Rennick with negotiations for additional cape manpower, so that left Assault, Battery, Triumph, Velocity, and Armsmaster himself available for emergency response. 

Brockton Bay was big, however. That was the most frustrating part about his team, in Collin’s personal opinion. They never had just the right amount of capes to handle everything happening in their city. Velocity was busy handling yet another bank robbery - this one orchestrated by Uber & Leet, and Triumph had been called over to assist once it was clear that Leet had actually concocted something with some weight to it.

Tron Bikes, last he heard. Absolutely ridiculous.

The thing was, Lung wasn’t a cape you could simply apprehend with a mere three heroes. Oh, it wounded his pride severely to say so, but Lung was something akin to a force of nature here in Brockton Bay - either you manage to overwhelm him too quickly for him to properly escalate, or you run away with your tail tucked between your legs after the fight lasts for a little bit too long and he grows strong enough to immolate you with a chuff. Rarely were there any in-betweens.

So, imagine their horror when, on their way to the Market in order to intercept whatever villainous and destructive act the sleeping Dragon had planned for the night, they received word from one ‘Iris’, conniving hacker and member of ‘Invictus’, that Lung had attacked them out of costume at Fugly Bob’s and was now engaging Avalon in mortal combat.

Avalon, the young and exceedingly powerful Trump that said, on record, that his abilities ‘grew every single day, even as he was forced to speak politics with them’. 

A Trump with supposed ‘infinite potential’, if his words were to be given serious consideration, versus a Brute/Blaster/Changer mix that managed to scale so high in power that he almost single handedly made Leviathan flee Japan.

Those were the two capes fighting in their city right now.

It had been a very tense ten minute drive.

Now, here they were, watching from the sidelines again as the two metaphorical titans duked it out too far into the ocean for them to realistically assist or intervene. Hell, even if they were able to walk on water like Avalon suddenly seemed capable of, they wouldn’t survive the mere heat that Lung was exuding at this stage in his escalation. The obsidian-like glass that the beach had been reduced to was proof enough, and that was before Avalon tore apart the sky and started summoning lightning bolts down onto Earth like some sort of natural disaster made flesh and bone. With it came such heavy rain that agents were pulling black parkas and umbrellas out of the back of their vehicles.

Even the ocean was violent, waves crashing down on the shore with thunderous force. They’d be battered and broken apart by the water way before they could get to the battle.

‘We are completely and utterly outmatched here,’ Colin thought dully, trying his damnest to swallow down the huge ball of way too many emotions that threatened to break his already brittle composure. ‘We… we can’t do anything but watch. They would kill us without even noticing.’

And as another bolt of lightning descended from that whirling blue vortex of energy in the stormy sky, striking a smoldering and clumsy Lung right out of the air and into the ocean below, Colin came to a sudden, bitter realization.

He fucking hated Trumps.

____________________________________________________________

Avalon

Lung was on his last legs.

I knew it, he knew it, and I had a good feeling that the legion of PRT personnel blocking off the Marketplace knew it as well.

He’d slightly grown in the short few minutes since I’d invoked my very own Lightning Storm, but ever since that first bolt had struck him and locked his limbs up with pure, Aethyr-empowered electricity, something had changed. His rage was still loud and apparent, as evident by his roars and snarls as he healed and came back again and again, but even deeper than his anger at me was his desperation and fear. It cracked at the edges of his screams, in the powerful yet clumsy swings of his claws and the hurried flapping of his wings.

He couldn’t even make it to me anymore - lightning struck him down with reckless abandon, sending him crashing into the ocean each and every time, and the Dragon knew…

Lung knew that he was a dead man.

At some point after my Lightning Storm spell, the ocean had become a violent avatar for some pissed off water spirit. The ocean roared with unrestrained fury, its waves rising dozens of feet into the air and crashing back down with enough power to cause yet another violent tide in an eternal loop of destruction. Each surge seemed to carry with it the primal energies of both Azyr and Ghyran, filling the violent winds with the scent of wildberries and lightning.

It gave me inspiration for how to finish this.

From my casual stance hundreds of feet in the air, hands resting in the pockets of my pants, I watched through lidded eyes as Lung - scales fragmented and peeling off of his body, and innumerable volts of electricity sending tremors and spasms through his nerves - fought to escape the massive waves. The water itself was supercharged, rest in peace to all the fishies, and the four flaps of bloodied flesh and scales that acted as his ‘mouth’ opened and closed with drowned, desperate roars of pain and anger as his wings refused to lift him out of the churning ocean. Steam billowed around his body, but the water was cold and his body was growing weak.

Slowly, I began to float down.

He’d put up a good fight, I had to admit. The fact that his main method of attack - his fire - was nullified by my magic robbed him of the majority of his power. Perhaps if I didn’t have the Winds, the battle would’ve been a lot worse for me, but what was a Dragon without his Flames? Lulling him out into the water further weakened him, even if it was very slight, and overloading his body with lightning merely sealed the deal.

There had been some close calls, and I had numerous bruises from when I’d slipped up and gotten smacked on the back-swing, but nothing too debilitating. Lung was strong, but I was stronger - and I grew even more powerful as the fight went on. Heroic Aptitude didn’t just mindlessly increase my strength and speed; with my current powers, that sort of growth was so slow that it was almost impossible to tell over the course of one or two fights. 

No, the actual growth came from my spirit.

I felt more certain now, more skilled with the abilities I had in my repertoire - even the ones that I didn’t use as much as I probably should have. My mind was sharper, plans and strategies coming to the forefront easier than before, and my entire body simply felt… lighter, looser. If linear power ups were like isolated weight exercises, Heroic Aptitude was like a full-body compound workout. Everything felt better, even if it was a slight change. My mind felt clearer than it had in days.

As I got closer to Lung, the music of my soul turned low. I wanted him to hear my voice.

“Aq§i'oy mär…”

The Chamon-tinged words flew from my mouth unbidden, and his burning eyes dilated to pinpricks - a primal, instinctual fear that had him clawing the water to attack.

“NOOO! GRAAA-”

Like an unrepentant toddler struggling for a breath, Lung snarled and moved to send a burst of fire roaring towards me, but I no longer had my Shield of Aqshy up.

It didn’t matter, though - another wave doused him before he could properly stoke his flames, sending him sputtering below the surface again. A wry amusement pulled at my lips as I alighted above the surface, exuding a passive shield of Azyr like a forcefield to cut through the tumultuous waves and sprays of foam. 

When he came up again, coughing out water and spitting all over himself, I was ready. 

The tip of my finger, naked now that my gauntlets were destroyed, skimmed the underside of his long ass neck. He attempted to bite off the digit, but in his desperate and waterlogged state, he wasn’t nearly quick enough to get even close. His weird pussy-mouth snapped at thin air, and I faded out of view, appearing a few feet higher.

And that was when the first of the gold - glimmering, shiny, resplendent - began to bead at the base of his throat. 

He stiffened, his long, brawny arms flapping mindlessly to keep him above the violent waves. “W-wha-”

“You’re gonna drown, Lung. Kinda fuckin’ ironic,” I cut him off, shoving my hands back into my pockets. “Won’t be no Alexandria here to save you before you drown, either. You can trust me on that.”

“What. I…”

I glanced over at the Pier, eyes slicing through the doom and gloom of the night sky, and saw that the PRT were still watching from a distance. More vehicles had shown up, people blocking off the full length of the beach with caution tape and cones, but there were no boats. They were staying well away.

I had time.

“The Golden Touch - it turns people into golden statues, usually temporarily.” I spoke casually, like I was explaining an RPG mechanic to a friend, and Lung started to freak out. He growled and spat, writhing in the water and vigorously flapping his arms and legs, but that gleaming golden luster was already making its way down his throat. In mere moments, it would start to take over the entirety of his unnaturally broad chest.

Before long, he’d sink right to the bottom of the ocean.

“I modified the spell a lil’ bit, adding some extra ‘wa-pow’ to that initial touch to make the effects permanent. It ain’t that hard - I coulda done the same thing with Final Transmutation, but that’s a lot more flashy. You don’t deserve that kinda show in your last moments.”

“No. No, no, no! Let. Me. GO!”

What an articulate man. I merely shook my head, watching dispassionately as the scales along his shoulders and chest went from a mottled, burning silver to an unnaturally shiny gold. The magic went along the full breadth of his wings, moving faster and faster as he struggled more and more, and it didn’t take much longer for Lung to start sinking. His eyes were almost bugging out of his head, weakening bursts of fire spitting out into the air as he began screaming, pleading for me to free him-

“NO! I REFUSE! DO NOT DO THI-”

Grlbglbrlbgrlb.

His words were cut off by the sickening sound of water surging down his throat, and then…

Nothing. Just bubbles as he sank deeper and deeper, too many to be natural - meaning that he was probably burning up even more of his oxygen by shooting blasts of fire underwater. Lung was strong, not necessarily smart.

I waited there, hovering over the slowly calming waves, for one minute.

And then two.

And then two and a half.

When five minutes went by and I saw no more bubbles, I finally let out a quiet sigh.

“Well…” I began to no one in particular, staring down into the crystal blue depths of the Atlantic Ocean. “I did say I’d cut your head off. Ain’t the ‘dragon trophy’ I actually wanted, but it gotta count for something.”

Funnily enough, I didn’t know any Waterbreathing spells off the top of my head, but it wasn’t the hardest thing in the world to make an air bubble around my head with Azyr. Neither was it especially difficult to swim down against the current, eyes wide open as I searched for the massive golden statue that was the petrified corpse of Lung.

Eventually, I found it.

And on that night, February 5, 2011..

I officially became the first Superhero to decapitate a Dragon.

_____________________________________________

A/N:

A fitting end to the dragon, I think. I didn't want to drag it on too long because there really wasn't much Lung could do before getting to Leviathan-levels, and Avalon isn't stupid or foolhardy enough to let him get to that point. He got a good fight out of it and decided to end it once he saw Lung start to flounder on the escalation.

The fight would've been a lot harder had he not had... magic, but when you have a prodigal talent with the Red Wind, fire sorta becomes... cute? At least, non-magical fire.

I was so excited to finally use Lightning Storm. Lung was like the only person in the Bay who could fucking survive it, so I was waiting for this fight to bring that spell out. Avalon could've dropped a meteor on him instead, but...

I felt like that would've been overkill. And would've caused too much of a stir.

Anyways, how do you think the world's gonna react to this battle? Lung being taken out is going to be... huge. The Docks are mostly free now. That isn't something small.

Thanks for your patience guys, and I'll see you for the next chapter!