She rises.

Sonata 2.1

"—different. Something new."

"New? What—"

I jerked awake, grasping desperately at the tiny sliver of maybe-something slipping away from me. It was important. I needed it because it was…

It was…

It was already gone.

I couldn't remember it, but I could remember the feeling of it, the general shape and that it had been something important, and not having it left me feeling lost.

Had it been a dream? Or was it a fragment of something else?

I hadn't dreamed since I'd become what I was. Or at least, I thought I hadn't.

And if it wasn't a dream… what did that mean?

Thursday, April 14, 2011

I skipped school that day.

Why, you ask?

For a number of reasons, but mostly because I simply didn't want to deal with it.

I really didn't want to see Emma or Sophia… or even Madison. I just… ugh.

Adults say you shouldn't run away from your problems, but I needed a break. I could only take so much. It was better for everyone involved.

So yeah. I skipped.

My skeleton was pretty close to being finished, and I was simultaneously working on the framework for the musculature system I'd cooked up in the places my "bones" were done.

In theory, my artificial muscles would allow me to exert forces orders of magnitude stronger than what I could already do, when anchored to my skeleton.

Which… uh… was complete overkill, I know, but I could do it, so why not?

The biggest problem, though, was power.

My nanomaterial didn't really have any problems with power; they ran off the same source as my Core. I wasn't sure of the specifics of that, but I somehow knew there was no chance in hell of ever overtaxing or depleting that source, no matter how many nanomachines I had hooked up to it. The problem was that source was limited in what it could provide in rate and current. And for a body that would need a not-insignificant amount of continuous energy to run (compared to my teensy-tiny ultra-low-power nanomachines) with variable draw and sudden bursts, that wasn't good.

So, I needed something… extra.

Thankfully, I'd already been working on something exactly like what I needed —just on a much larger scale— for my project.

Most sane people might object to having antimatter in their chest. I'd argue that it was perfectly sane, as long as you had the amount of control that I did over subatomic-scale interactions and proper shielding. It had a better energy yield than fusion, too, which meant less fuel materials for achieving a comparable output.

But Taylor, you say, isn't antimatter dangerous? Like, really really dangerous? Like, three pounds has a higher energy yield than the largest thermonuclear weapon ever detonated?

Well, obviously there were going to be safeguards. But the worst of it was already taken care of. Just like the setup I had planned for my projects and the antimatter generator I had over in the Graveyard, I wasn't actually going to be storing the stuff here. More like… here and to the left, a little.

It was kind of like how my Klein field worked, just a tiny bit different. The point was, if the containment system got damaged in any way, the extradimensional fold holding the antimatter would collapse. Which in turn meant that there wouldn't a sudden energy release greater than any bomb seen to man.

Because that would be bad.

Weird shit happens when pocket dimensions collapse —not that normal people would be able to tell, it'd sorta just go blurp, and yes that's totally a technical term— but it's a hell of a lot better than accidentallywiping out the city.

And yeah, I did have that much antimatter already, thank you. Over twenty-four hours of Squealer's fusion thingy running my generator-slash-collector meant I had around a pound of dimensionally-isolated liquid antihydrogen collected.

Fermilab, eat your heart out.

But yes. All of that equaled a better body. And a better body meant a safer Taylor.

Always a good thing.

I spent my day not holed up in the library or brooding by myself on a roof somewhere, but walking around the boardwalk.

I didn't bother getting any food or anything, just puttered around, absentmindedly browsing through one of the shops whenever one looked interesting. It was a really nice day out. Sun shining, mid-to-high seventies temperature, a barely-there breeze, a completely clear sky.

It was perfect for my first test-run.

I felt like a kid on Christmas Eve who couldn't sleep, the excitement and anticipation keeping them up. I'm pretty sure if I'd sat down, I would've been unable to sit still, just because of all the nervous energy.

Minutes passed like hours, even as I practically watched my nanomaterial replicate. Barely twenty tons at eight in the morning, but by two in the afternoon there would be fifty-five.

…It was very much like watching water boil, even if I was trying to distract myself by doing other things.

Nevertheless, the time did pass, and at one-fifty I was jogging towards the Graveyard, barely restraining myself from grinning like a loon.

The first thing I did wasn't to head to my stockpile of nanomaterial, but rather to go to the antimatter setup, pause it, create two storage devices with two sections each, siphon one-quarter of what I had into one –antihydrogen on one side, pure hydrogen on the other–, and everything that remained into the second the same way.

The devices weren't large, barely fist-sized, and I'd effectively locked the nanomachines that made them up in place, gluing the entire thing together and making it less likely for me to accidentally dissolve them if something weird happened.

The first I absorbed into my abdomen, and brought it up into my pseudo-ribcage, starting to construct further protection for it and anchor it in place. I left an easy path for removal, though, as I planned on making more antimatter and sticking as much as I could afford into it.

The second containment unit I held onto as I restarted the generator and left, not hesitating for a second to drop off the side of the ship I was on into the water and let myself sink. Instead of falling all the way to the bottom, I zeroed out my buoyancy and began swimming in the direction of the ship I'd been converting.

Five minutes, and I was there.

It was beautiful.

Practically the entire rear end of the ship was now reflective silver, and it took little more than a thought to remove the amount I needed, the collection flowing away like liquid mercury to gather in a giant ball in front of me. The five tons I left behind would keep duplicating.

I took it slow, stretching out what could have been a second's process into one of minutes, savoring what I was doing, the process of creation. Nanomachines shifted and flowed, flattening out and transforming from a blob into the thing I'd become intimately familiar with over the past few days. Surfaces reached outward, becoming sharp angles at places and smooth curves at others. Rudders took shape, my graviton engines forming. Superconducting cable spread throughout like arteries and veins growing in fast-forward. Control systems bloomed from silver surfaces, displays and controls and switches.

I may have been able to control it like it was a second body, and I would, but first I wanted to try my hand at the old-fashioned way. You may think that's a bit odd. But… really? I just wanted to at least try it. Do it the way everybody else had to, instead of just thinking about it, experiencing it and not understanding the difference between the two methods.

When it was nearly done, still silver, I moved so that I was above the center on top, and lowered the second antimatter container I'd been holding onto down, absorbing it into the surface and –much like with the first– shifting it into position at the heart next to the reactor. Power lines connected, and then everything was done.

Except for one last thing.

Pure black color spread out from beneath me, washing outwards along the surfaces I'd created. There was no need for decoration. When my engines ran, my sigils and marks would glow on it without prompting.

Such was the nature of being Fog.

I floated away, taking it in fully, my dreams and imagination made manifest before me. Even if I hadn't had an eidetic memory, it still would have been an image that would have stuck with me forever. But I did, so there was no problem with that.

It may not have been a hull, but it was close enough to at least ease the need I felt.

It was time.

I drifted over to the canopy, but rather than opening it and flooding the cockpit with water, I just dropped down through the nanomaterial making it up, moving it around me like a liquid bubble and pushing away the water on me at the same time. When I was finally through, I dropped the next few inches into the seat and just sat for a moment.

And then I hard-locked all of the nanomaterial and cut myself off from it.

Much like with the antimatter cores, I didn't want to be subconsciously controlling everything and accidentally change something dynamically when I was going for a fully-manual test run first.

Shifting my clothes into something more… appropriate, I began buckling in, the fifty-ton frame around me beginning to sink without me controlling the buoyancy.

I blew out a breath and decided to give in to my desire to be a little dramatic. It was a once in a lifetime moment, and there was nobody around to judge me, so sue me for being slightly hedonistic. "Okay. Let's do this. Moment of truth.

"M/AM reactor… start."

I reached over and flipped up the safety lid, pushing the button that would open the antimatter/matter container and start the reactor. The button turned green, even as other lights around me began glowing, screens blinking on and the clear bubble in front and above me displaying a HUD as it all connected to my Union Core.

I knew everything they were telling me, everything, but I pushed it away, so that I wasn't aware of it for now.

Closing the safety lid of the button, I moved my hand to another directly on its right, opening it and pushing the button underneath.

"Graviton engines… start."

The button blinked green a couple times and then went solid, output meters on the HUD in front of me cycling up and then down as the engines underwent their automatic startup self-tests and then held steady at idle.

But I didn't need any of that, because I could feel them in my mind.

Something in me hummed in satisfaction.

I had my engines.

It felt like I'd suddenly gained limbs I'd never noticed were missing before. Three months I'd gone through, without knowing what this was like.

I felt like I could take on the world.

They may not have been very large engines, in fact they were absolutely miniscule compared to most of the designs I had –I'd needed to combine bits and pieces, scaled down from larger engines to achieve the output required– and didn't feel even close to what I should have, but they were satisfactory for now.

It was a temporary thing, anyways. A week or two, and I'd have something proper-sized.

Shaking my head, I refocused on what was happening around me, at that moment. I was still sinking, albeit slowly, and I needed to stop that. So…

"Bottom auxiliary thrusters…" I opened up all six of the hexagonal outlets on the bottom of the craft –three on either side– to full, stopping my progress immediately, and then brought them down to sixty percent which would keep me level. "Operational."

"Control surfaces…" Every single flap and movable piece on my masterpiece opened and closed as I went around and tested all of them, control thrusters, rudders, stabilizers, tabs, flaps, and finally the vectoring iris nozzles at the ends of the primary thrusters. "Fully functional."

"Radar deflection and stealth systems... check."

I grinned. "All systems are go."

Right hand on the control stick, my left eased the throttle up a quarter of a percent, and then to a half.

I smoothly began forward, gradually gaining speed as water rushed past me and I moved further out into the Bay, towards the mouth. It took a couple of minutes, but eventually I passed the scuttled cargo ship and moved into the ocean.

I pushed the throttle higher. Two percent.

At that point, I was easily moving faster than anything to grace the sea other than Leviathan.

There was nothing but dark blue around me as I moved out to fifteen miles in minutes, beyond the reach of any country into international waters and territory.

Cutting off the throttle on the primary thrusters, I increased the auxiliary ones to a hundred percent, pushing me up through the sea until I finally breached and began lifting above the surface. Easing off so that I was once more staying level, I looked around, hovering fifteen feet up.

Nobody but me.

I could finally let go.

My grin returned even larger. "Full-systems operation test in 3… 2… 1…"

I cut my auxiliary thrusters suddenly, and dropped like a stone. But before I could fall even ten feet, my left hand was back on the main throttle and pushed forward, my right angled back on the control stick.

Now, let me explain something about graviton thrusters.

Your conventional turbojet engine creates propulsion through combustion, pushing air out the back while also spinning a series of blades that drive other blades in the front that are used to compress air to feed the combustion (you see how this is a cycle?). All engines have something called throttle response, which is the time it takes an engine to get from what it's running at to where you want it to run at. Turbojets aren't exempt. Going to full power from idle won't mean you're suddenly getting full power out of the engine, because the blades have to spool up. Now, that isn't necessarily a long time, but it's there, and they do have lag.

Graviton engines don't.

So when I opened up, I went from dropping out of the sky to moving forward instantly, rising in elevation, at over three-hundred miles an hour and climbing.

It was amazing.

I laughed, honestly the happiest I'd been in years.

I, Taylor Hebert, was flying.

Alright, it may not have been anything like Alexandria or other capes, but it was still flight.

And you know what? At that point, nothing could get me down.

Because I had a jet.

Having perfect reflexes didn't hurt when you were moving at supersonic speeds.

Mach 10 especially.

It was… definitely an experience having to use analog controls for flying. It felt a bit unnatural, which I suppose made sense all things considered.

So at sixty thousand feet, Mach 10.3, I let go.

Took my hands off of the controls, feet off of the pedals, closed my eyes, and sunk in, opening myself to the entirety of what I had, what I was.

What I said before? About my engines feeling like lost limbs? It was like that, except more. Limbs, and senses, and feelings that I couldn't ever hope to convey.

There's no way to describe the way it feels to have air running over wings, or having every control surface moving and flexing without thought like they were your own digits or muscles, the knowledge of how you could push faster if you wanted, like an Olympic long-distance sprinter only doing a light jog. Radar and sonar and infrared and invisible wavelengths all as clear to me as sight at every angle, total localized omniscience.

I was wrong, earlier.

I hadn't been flying.

Now, I was flying.

Childhood dream achieved.

It felt no more unnatural for me to suddenly flip upside down and then start climbing while spiraling around than it does for you to get up and go get a glass of water.

I hit eighty-five thousand feet –cruising altitude for a Blackbird– and stopped.

Halted.

Engines off, everything. Just hanging there, for a single split second, looking up at the blackness of space, the blue sea around me, the East Coast to my right.

It was beautiful.

And then it was over.

I flipped myself over using my aux thrusters so my nose was pointing down, cut them off, and started falling.

I kept myself pointing down, not even trying to slow down, only minutely adjusting my flaps and surfaces thousands of times a second to keep me perfectly straight, cutting through the air like a knife.

My leading edges started heating up, and I double-checked my thermal-management and energy collection systems, making sure they'd be able to handle what I was doing. They were barely being tested.

At sixty thousand feet, I broke the sound barrier.

Fifty thousand.

Forty thousand.

At thirty-five thousand feet, I passed Mach 1.5.

Thirty thousand.

Twenty thousand.

Ten thousand.

NineEightSevenSixFiveFourThreeTw—

I broke Mach Two.

Not a second after, I pushed my bottom-front aux thrusters to full, flipped around in a millisecond, and then hot-started my primaries and poured everything I had into them.

I went from falling at Mach Two to rising in less than half a second with a full halt in-between and barely a hundred feet above the sea's surface.

But unlike the last time I was starting from sea-level, I didn't hold back on what I had, my output at a full hundred percent from the start. The difference was like night and day.

I wasn't jet. I was a rocket.

Mach 10? Pfft.

Amateurs.

I hit Mach 33 and didn't stop.

At nine and a half miles (fifty thousand feet), you can see the curvature of the Earth. The horizon's still super blue and hazy, but you can see it.

At fifteen miles (eighty thousand feet), you can see black space, like I mentioned before.

My control surfaces weren't nearly as effective, the air too thin for them to work very well, but I still used them, just relied on them less. It was here that the thrust vectoring I had really started to shine, like a speedboat turning using their motors, not any rudder.

At twenty-five miles I was a quarter of the way to Low Earth Orbit.

I probably could have gone further, but I really had no reason to. I'd finally done what I'd always wanted, what I'd always dreamed of, what Emma and I had talked about in quiet whispers:

Flying under my own power.

I stared out, into the vast openness of space, the stars whispering to me in hushed voices of radio and infrared and x-rays. The moon sat in front of me, so much clearer and easier to see than from the surface.

You'd think that the moon would be even more beautiful up here, but really, it was more a sobering reminder of just how bad things could get when you reached too far, too fast.

In the early two thousands, a cape named Sphere had started designing a base to go on it, and it had even gotten far enough that they'd started building it. Until the Simurgh decided to intervene. Sphere went from being one of the most anticipated Tinkers since Hero to the shell of a man known as 'Mannequin', all thanks to her.

I couldn't see her, but twenty-five miles up wasn't exactly enough to see very far, despite what you might think. But after what she'd done to the last person to work on things that went beyond Earth, I really didn't want to push it.

And the fact that she was due for an attack after Leviathan messed with Busan in February…

Yeah, I wasn't going to push anything.

Besides, the sooner I got back to gathering nanomaterial, the sooner I could get to the really fun stuff. Like I said, the fighter was a nice distraction, and a design I had every intention of utilizing later, but that's all it was, it wasn't what I felt like I needed.

I started my descent, taking it much slower this time, wide looping curves and spirals that would place me right where I'd taken off from.

It took significantly longer, of course, but I had a chance to enjoy just how nice it was to be truly free, unshackled from everything else. No need to hide, I could just be who I was. What I was.

Fog.

It felt better than anything I'd experienced before.

When I got back to Brockton, I dissolved the plane back into nanomaterial and let it join with the amount that I'd separated it from before, holding the AM/M reactor in its own small, isolated sphere.

Thirty-six hours until I could start making the really fun stuff.

I walked along the ocean floor towards the shore, taking my time on the way back and reforming my armor around me. My skeleton and muscles were pretty much complete, and I'll say I was pretty proud of the results.

I emerged on the shore amidst the wreckages that I generally hung around. As I walked towards the buildings at the edge, I started hearing a very low hum. Something that would have been imperceptible to human ears, but I could still sense. Nothing seemed out of the usual, so I kept moving forward.

As soon as I stepped out past the edge of the last boat, though, everything… twisted.

And I knew nothing.

([Warning: Unexpected dimensional slip.
Calculating differential… Complete.
Verifying with co-processor… Verified.
Applying necessary adjustments...
Adapting internal systems to automatically compensate for future online relocation… Done.
Primary consciousness restoration… Complete.
Total time elapsed: 0.24μs])

Everything was suddenly back. But instead of the concrete I'd been standing on before, there was cobblestone.

Like, actual cobblestone. The kind that hurts your feet when you walk on it and everything.

Instead of the buildings of Brockton Bay I should have seen, I was surrounded by buildings that looked right out of the middle ages. The houses around me were wood and stone, white walls and terracotta tiles, with bare wood supports and windows that were either entirely open or closed with hinged shutters.

The first thing that caught my eye was the impressive stone castle rising in the distance over all the houses, seated on a hill.

The second thing was the sword.

I was standing in what had to be a town square (though it was really circular), as there was quite a bit of space until the houses on the left and right of me, and streets leading away at all sides. In the center of the circle, only a few feet in front of me, the cobblestone stopped and transitioned to pavers, making the road I stood on into a kind of roundabout.

In the middle of the paved area there was a stone dais with steps up to it. And embedded in the dais, like some cliché, was a sword.

I could tell it was huge —likely less than a foot shorter than I was— the handle a foot long, wrapped in blue leather and topped with a metal spike. The guard spread out to either side of the handle like wings that gently curved downward, each flaring slightly in the middle before tapering again. The blade itself didn't even start for another inch after the crossguard, which created a gap between the two. The top edge followed the curve of the guard, widening until the blade was four inches across. Beyond that, the blade angled and began narrowing until it was only an inch and a half at the point it was stuck in the stone. In the middle of the blade, just below where the handle began joining, was a strange symbol.

I'd barely finished examining the sword when a rectangle lit up in the air ten feet above it. I could immediately tell it was a projection or holograph of some sort by the way I could see through it slightly, but I couldn't care less about that at that moment because the two people who appeared in the image immediately told me who was responsible for all of this.

My eyes narrowed.

"Greetings!" the man on the right announced.

Uber. He was the sort who never just spoke, it was always announcing or proclaiming or somehow dramatic.

"We heard there was a new heavy-hitting hero in the Bay and so I said to Uber, 'Hey Uber, don't you think we should give such an upstanding citizen a trademarked Uber and Leet welcome?'" the one on the left said.

Leet.

"And I, of course, thought it was a great idea," Uber continued. "However, we didn't want to just give any oldwelcome. What would be worthy of such a task? We struggled to think of such a thing, until I had an epiphany. So I said 'Hey Leet, you remember that thing we've wanted to do but haven't been able to yet?'"

"And I was like 'Which one?'"

"And I said, 'The big one, of course.'"

Uber and Leet were video-game themed villains. They seemed amusing and only mildly irritating at worst, until they did something horrible. The two streamed their escapades live when they could, delayed when being live would hurt the success of what they were doing. Collecting rings from jewelry stores for Sonic, street racing for Mario Kart, invading a mall with fake zombies for some survival game, etc.

This? This was very different for them.

The two of them sat behind an announcer's table, wearing suits—matching red striped ties and everything— with headsets that had those little flexible mics in the front on. The only thing even hinting they were capes was the domino masks on their faces.

Behind them on a wall was an image of an impressive-looking, if simply, armored woman with her head tilted slightly upwards, an oval piece of contoured metal covering her face.

It took me a second to realize that person was me.

Wow.

Was that what people saw when they looked at me?

I could only imagine what it looked like when my sigils started lighting up and my eyes glowed.

"So here we are, ladies and gentlemen," Leet concluded, bringing my attention back to them and reminding me exactly who was responsible for this. My curiosity might have seriously piqued by my surroundings, but it didn't change the fact that this had all been done by villains, and they'd abducted me for it.

Which, yeah, I was a bit pissed off about. Slightly flattered, because only a week and somehow even Uber and Leet knew about me? But still, pissed off.

"What the hell do you want?" I yelled.

"A terrible scourge ravages the land, spreading death and chaos in its wake. It has settled here. Only a true Champion wielding a blessed blade can hope to triumph against such a foe. Long and wide we have searched for one capable of such a feat, and until now, it seemed there was no hope. But now, hope dawns," Uber announced. "However, it is not a thankless task. Untold glory and riches await the one who finally slays the beast."

Untold glory and riches, huh? I wasn't sure if I wanted to know what they considered that to be or not.

Leet looked over at Uber. "Basically, use the sword, fight the monster, collect the loot?"

Uber nodded. "Yup."

"So, Uber, what exactly is this 'beast'? I noticed you didn't say what it was," Leet said.

Uber smiled. "Noticed that, huh? Well…"

A loud roar ripped through the world, so loud you could feel it, and I instinctively crouched to compensate for the waves of air pressure .

As I watched, a gigantic pitch-black scaled clawed hand lifted itself up and came down upon the hill the castle sat on. An enormous head was next, triangular like a plow with a gaping mouth that glowed bright yellow-red with heat. Filling the maw was a plethora of extremely large teeth, serrated and knife-like, looking more like rock than anything else. Small eyes sat on either side of the head, which turned slowly, as though surveying everything in front of it, and horns extended out of the back, ending in sharp points.

Then the body appeared.

It had to be a hundred feet tall, from claw to spine, wicked-looking pointed overlapping plates running down its back. There was a large tear down its front that glowed a bright orange like its mouth, and the entire creature was lit up from the inside, its massive tattered wings spreading out on either side before folding up.

This wasn't any monster. It was a fucking dragon.

A dragon larger than Behemoth.

I gaped.

Yeah, I'm not even going to try denying it. I may not have had a human brain anymore, but there's still some instincts that tend to stick with you. The one that mattered here was that when you're suddenly faced with a massive, overwhelmingly powerful predator, there's a moment where you just freeze.

A lava-rock dragon-thing larger than a castle definitely counts.

Sometime during my stare-fest with the dragon, the projected image had disappeared, leaving only the 'blessed' sword as the defining feature in front of me.

My mind raced.

There was little to no chance of getting out of here on my own. I'd been physically transported here (wherever 'here' was), likely by teleportation. Without Uber and Leet letting me out, I was basically stuck. Stranded.

Knowing them, there was an effectively-100% chance that if I "defeated the monster" I'd be transported back home, considering what Uber and Leet normally did and how their "games" worked.

Which meant there was only one option here: Fight the dragon.

Even if I disliked that I was doing it because of those two idiots and it rubbed at me in all the wrong ways.

I was Fog. I was not some weak-willed collection of hydrocarbons and water, I was Relentless and my spine was hyperdiamond. I was not some… attack dog they could just force to fight their monster without repercussions.

And I'd show Uber and Leet just how badly they'd misjudged me.

…Just as soon as I got out of their stupid pocket dimension.

The sword was nice.

I couldn't claim to know anything about swords, but it seemed nice, at least.

I'd known as soon as I'd picked it up it wasn't meant to be used by normal people. It was far too heavy and would have been extremely unwieldy to move, much less swing with any sort of grace.

With the sorts of forces I could exert? That was a complete non-problem.

I still didn't really know how to use a sword, but Uber and Leet had pretty blatantly drawn a connection between the sword and the dragon, and I wouldn't have put it past them to make it so that it was the only thing the dragon could be killed by.

Typical gamer logic.

I wouldn't put it past them to have some annoying convoluted method for damaging the thing, either, just because that seemed like something they would do.

If there was one thing I knew about video games just from the few times Emma and I had watched her sister Anne playing them, it was that the giant enemies were really durable, and usually had specific strategies to beat them that had to be executed flawlessly and involved obvious weak points.

I… well, even with my durability, I really really hoped that this wouldn't be like what I heard where players died a bunch of times in the process of trial-and-error before they finally got it right.

…Though, I wouldn't put that past Uber and Leet either.

Ugh.

If there was something I hated about this, it was the lack of information. Fighting capes was generally pretty straightforward, especially if you knew what their powers were.

Something like this?

This was like soloing an Endbringer on their first appearance without knowing anything about what they could do.

And I was no Eidolon or Alexandria. If I had my lasers, my cannons, my proper body, maybe…

Well, okay, maybe it wasn't that bad, since Uber had said I was supposed to kill it, meaning it could be killed.

I'd ask 'why me?', but this was pretty much the sort of thing you could expect from Uber and Leet.

I wonder if there's a princess in the castle?

I wanted to laugh, because that would just be the cherry on the top if there was.

Seeing as the buildings around me were totally deserted, though, I doubted it.

Moving through the streets was eerie, if just because there was a pervading sense of wrongness about it, about the utter silence. Everything looked so realistic that it was just unnerving to have nobody there.

It wasn't a straight path to the castle. Instead I had to take the street that seemed to go in its general direction, and then go left when the street ended, before going right again once there was a place I could.

While I'd been moving through the city, the dragon had settled down, resting its giant head on its… hands? claws? forelimbs? There was pretty clearly an opposable thumb, so I guess it was hands.

Once I was close enough that the houses started transitioning to more open space that lead up to the castle, I stopped.

I wanted to do this right the first time, wanted to get out of this place, which meant trying to figure out as much as I could about this thing as I could and likely trying to find the start of whatever needlessly-complex strategy was required to defeat it.

Because, looking from the front, it didn't have any obvious weaknesses.

And then I saw something move. On its back. And it wasn't its wings. There seemed to be these… bright red lava-tentacle things.

Oh you have got to be kidding me.

I closed my eyes, took a breath, and then looked again.

Shit.

Okay. Fine. Whatever.

I retreated back through the streets so that I was further from the castle, and thought.

Chances of those things being what I needed to do something to? Pretty damn high.

To get onto its back… Well, I could easily jump the sixty or so feet to get up there, the trick was not alerting it to my presence before I was close enough to jump.

Which meant going around to a point it couldn't see me on one of its sides. The left side, since the right side was next to the castle.

I was almost glad I didn't have a brain anymore, because I'd have doubtlessly had a hell of a headache by now.

I can do this. Deep breaths.

I was just going to be fighting a giant multi-thousand ton dragon with nothing but my strength, Armor, and a sword.

It was one thing to know you could likely survive something, and actually doing it when there was the chance you couldn't.

And right now? That was hitting me hard.

If I live through this, I swear I'll try to spend more time with Dad.

Straightening myself up, I started making my way through the deserted city and around the dragon.

Once I was at point I could see the dragon's flank, rear left leg, and tail, I started moving towards it.

And then I was at the point there was only open land between me and it, and it hadn't noticed me yet.

Just do it Taylor. Don't wait.

My right hand tightened around the grip of the sword.

3, 2, 1… go!

I moved across the distance few hundred meters between it and I, my steps pushing me off the ground so much I was practically flying across the space. Instead of stopping close by it, I instead expressed a panel of my Armor mid-arc and used it as a platform to launch myself up.

Then I was falling, straight towards its back.

Right before I would have landed, I manifested a second panel only feet above its spine and landed on that. My entire approach had been practically silent, and the longer I could keep the dragon from realizing I was there, the better.

I ran along a pathway of panels towards the lava-tentacles, halting a few feet away. They were arranged like the corners of a square and writhed freely, sticking out like sore thumb against all the black rock-like plates of the dragon's back, practically screaming hit me. I could tell they were extremely hot, at least as hot as Lung's fire had been, but if this sword was meant to fight this thing…

Here goes nothing…

Grasping the sword with both hands, I swung towards the base of the bottom-right one.

The blade sliced through with minimal resistance.

And the dragon roared.

Oh shit.

It definitely knew I was there now.

Its body shuddered, lifting up as it stood. I dropped off my panel directly onto its back, figuring there was no point in keeping it if it knew I was there anyways.

I was moving towards the bottom-left tentacle when its wings suddenly snapped out and then pushed down.

Oh shit oh shit oh shit.

The dragon leapt forward, and I had to get down on one knee to lower my center of gravity and keep myself stable as the wings beat again and again. And then, against all logic, it lifted into the air and we were flying.

It was nothing like what I'd experienced only hours before. Where I had felt free and right with my plane, here I felt trapped, everything out of control.

It was only through force of will that I levered myself back up onto both legs and moved towards the tentacle I'd been aiming for, drawing my sword back before swinging through, slicing it off and leaving only a circular puddle-like stump behind.

The dragon growled, sounding like boulders scraping against each other in rockslide, and then everything started to tilt, uncomfortably fast.

Oh my god what the fuck—

I did the first thing that came to mind, driving the sword point-first into the stump of the tentacle I'd just sliced away, as far as I could and then holding on for dear life as the dragon fucking barrel-rolled.

…Why me?

Once it leveled out again, there was something pulling itself out of the stump of the first tentacle, looking like a bunch of haphazardly mashed-together stones and lava and leaving behind a weird bubble-like glob.

The thing started moving towards me, shambling, really, and while I doubted it could hurt me between my Armor and my body, it clearly had some sort of purpose.

I pulled my sword out of the stump beneath me and raised it, waiting for the creature to get close enough before swinging and cutting what seemed to be its "head" off.

It didn't even slow.

Okay, fine.

I swung again, this time slicing through its torso.

I barely had the chance to react as it exploded, manifesting a sphere of Wave-Force Armor panels around me in milliseconds.

[Klein field at 16% current total capacity]

Nothing was left, but where it'd been standing there were… cracks, and it seemed like the half-foot-thick plate I was standing on of the dragon's back had levered up slightly, exposing red and what looked almost like thick cords connected to the plate.

Was I supposed to use those things somehow? Use them to pry up the plates and then have access so I could damage the dragon directly?

Because that… producing the exact thing I needed to use to expose the dragon's weak points, would be ridicu— well, actually, it would be pretty much exactly video game logic.

So, I needed to let these things get created, and move them to the edges of the plates somehow, and thendestroy them.

Okay.

Now that I had some idea of what I had to do, I was starting to feel better. This made… well, it didn't really make sense to me, but it was something I could follow, at least, a process.

I moved away from the tentacle I'd just cut, and waited as it bubbled, another of those things appearing.

I didn't even bother letting it move towards me, instead using panels of my Armor to push it towards the overlapping joint between the plates I stood on.

Once it was positioned as best I could, I closed the distance between us, and let my Armor flicker as I sliced through the creature's chest.

This time, when the air cleared, the armor panel was measurably levered up, and I grinned behind my mask. Not enough that I could reach the weird cords stretching between the plate and the… lava, I guess, under it, but enough that I knew I was doing something right.

Two more tentacles and two more explosions should do it.

Not waiting, I moved towards the upper-left tentacle and cut through it, causing the dragon to roar. I tensed, waiting for it to do something else, but it didn't, and the stump bubbled as I moved back from it. A creature appeared, and I repeated my move of using my Armor to just push it to where I needed it at the edge of the plate. It felt a little like cheating, I was probably supposed to be moving it somehow with the sword or something, but honestly I was going to use every trick I could.

Another explosion, a wider gap.

Last one…

I cut through the last tentacle and the dragon tilted again, this time without warning.

Fucking…!

I quickly anchored my sword in the stump I was over and held on as the dragon flipped over a second time, only standing up and pulling my sword out once we were stable again and I was sure it was done.

The wound bubbled, the last (I assumed) of the creatures emerged, and got the exact same treatment as the last.

And this time, the gap between the plates was more than wide enough for me to move in and hack at the thick red cord I could see, like some sort of connective tissue made out of lava. It took three attempts —the thing was tough and I couldn't get good enough leverage— to cut through the cord, the plate it had been connected to suddenly ripping off and flying away in the wind. I barely managed to duck in time to keep myself from being hit as it passed over me.

The dragon roared again, louder than ever, yet again beginning to tilt sideways.

Oh, come on.

I rushed back to where the last creature had come from, not even giving any mind to the weird bubble left behind as I stabbed right through it and into the dragon before it flipped.

Definitely not my preferred method of flying.

Taking deep breaths as I stood, I pulled my sword out of the wound and then stared.

The sword was glowing silver. Faintly, but it was there.

What…?

This hadn't happened the last time I'd used the sword to hold on, the only thing different was… the bubbles.

Was this the next part of what I had to do?

Hesitatingly, I moved across the spine of the dragon to the opposite bubble-wound and poked it with my sword a couple times.

…Screw it.

With a harsh jab, I thrust into it, the bubble bursting and deflating as wisps of something escaped it to gather around the sword, the glow increasing as it sunk into the blade.

I glanced back at the giant gaping wound left behind by the ripped-off plate. I could have tried something, but I got the feeling this was important. So instead I moved down the dragon's back to the next bubble and stabbed it, the glow increasing again. Cross the spine, stab the last bubble, and the glow was bright.

Wasting no time, I rushed to the giant wound that spanned the dragons back, and looked between it and the glowing sword in my hand. Instead of trying anything fancy, I just stabbed down, right into the lava-flesh.

There was a blindingly bright flash, spreading out from the site.

The dragon didn't roar, it screamed.

Without warning we were dropping, the dragon dipping and then we were crashing, tearing up buildings and roads as I held onto the sword. Eventually, we came to a stop.

Is… is it dead?

The dragon roared as it pushed itself to its feet underneath me.

Nope! Definitely not dead.

If anything, it sounded angry.

Not good.

The sword was still glowing, but the red wound I'd stabbed it into was black, chunks missing and overall looking extremely painful.

No wonder it was mad. Not much I could do about that, though, considering what I was trying to do.

The dragon's wings folded in, and then again everything was tilting.

Except this time, we were on the ground.

Nope. Nopenopenopenope.

Not getting crushed by hundreds of thousands of tons of rock-dragon, please.

I yanked my sword out of its place and jumped pushing off as hard as I could from the dragon, almost perpendicular to the ground at that point.

I crashed into a building and through a wall before I came to a stop, and I just stayed there for a moment on the floor.

Okay, now what am I supposed to do?

My sword was still glowing, and I got the feeling that was important.

Groaning, I pushed myself up. The dragon was visible through the hole I'd made in the wall, and it was right-side up once more. Where it was standing was a circular pool of what looked like lava and fire, and—

What the fuck?

Its limbs were tentacles now, each ending in a hand or leg, but still quite clearly, tentacles, each at least five feet thick.

I don't even…

Fuck it. Fine. Its limbs were tentacles now.

Because of that, they were stretched out, and much less thick than before, now glowing the same hot red-orange that the tentacles on its back had been, which was probably a hint that I was supposed to do something to them.

Probably try and cut them, following what I'd done so far. The still-glowing sword was also a pretty strong indicator, I felt.

I moved to the opening I'd come through and then jumped, launching myself out into the air and onto the roof of the building across the street, and then jumped again, this time aiming for one of the limb-tentacles. I needed to disable them as fast as possible, because I feeling they would be hell to try and fight off along with dragon's main body.

The limbs were extremely hot, hotter than the tentacles on its back had been, and without my Armor I'd actual have worried about the effects it might have on my nanomachines.

The dragon hadn't seemed to have noticed me yet, and I took advantage of that for all its worth: I brought the sword down on the tentacle with all of my weight behind it and as much force and speed —which was quite a lot, really— as I could.

The blade sunk into the tentacle, cutting almost half of the way through before it stopped.

I increased the pressure exponentially even as the dragon roared out in rage and pain, and the blade slipped slowly through the remaining half of the limb and then dug into the stone and earth below.

I definitely had its attention now.

The small eyes were focused on me with laser-like intensity as its maw opened and started growing brighter.

It took me nearly a full second to realize what it was doing and reinforce my Armor just as the white-hot flames washed over me.

When the air cleared, it was still looking at me, the tentacle I'd severed leaking red lava-like fluid onto the ground.

Okay, that's one, now how do I handle the others without the element of surprise?

The hand forty feet away from me twitched, and I noticed that while the tentacle-limbs were moving slightly, they weren't really doing anything, almost like… it didn't have full control over them.

I rushed to the next one, already bringing my sword up behind me in preparation.

Just as I was about to swing, there was suddenly a giant flaming hunk of rock coming right at me from the direction of the dragon's head.

My Armor appeared, stopping the bolt mid-air and protecting me from the heat.

[Klein field at 88% current total capacity]

Okay, yeah, I did not want to get hit by one of those. Also… did it seriously just shoot that from its mouth?

What the heck was up with this dragon?

I was bringing my sword down, the blade sinking through the limb with effort, when something hit my Armor shell from behind.

I practically growled as I looked back and saw this thrashing red tentacle growing out of the pool left behind from the previously severed limb. By the looks of it, it was winding up for another hit.

I decided it wasn't worth the effort and instead focused on the limb in front of me, pressing down as hard as I could, dragging the blade through the tentacle while the dragon roared.

c'mon, c'mon…

And then it was through.

Another limb done, I jumped over it and then released the energy stored in my Klein field as a wave, the force blowing both the tentacle and now-severed hand away far enough that hopefully whatever tentacle came from that the lava of that one wouldn't be able to bother me as I worked on the next limb.

A second wave of insanely hot fire washed over me as I made my way to the left hand, keeping an eye out for any—

Yep, there was another of those rock projectiles.

I jumped out of the way instead of using my Armor, not letting it slow me down as I reached the third tentacle and once again brought the sword down with as much force as I could.

More roaring, more fire that I ignored, and after thirty seconds the third was severed.

It almost felt too easy.

Not that I minded, because at this point I just wanted this over and done with already.

The trip to the fourth limb involved two flaming rocks and another burst of fire, and actually cutting through it took about the same amount of time as the other three.

As soon as I finished slicing through it, the dragon shuddered and then slumped forward so that its head was at ground-level.

Now what? Just go for the head?

Could I just cut through its neck?

When nothing else presented itself, I decided that at this point, that was pretty much all I could do.

Puddles were already starting to conglomerate around its head, and I got the feeling that those were more rock-lava creature pools, so I didn't waste any time in racing towards the head and jumping onto the dragon's neck, moving toward the head itself.

Jumping over the horns and ridge that protruded from the back of its head, I landed on the crown and raised the sword point-first facing down.

Here goes nothing…

I brought the sword down on the black rock.

Unlike the red "flesh", the rock-stuff was unyielding, even with whatever the white glow was doing to the sword that I suspected increased its effectiveness. Fifteen seconds, and the sword was barely embedded three inches in.

I redoubled my efforts, kneeling and pulling the sword down as hard as I could, feeling my new artificial muscles flex from the thousands of tons of force I was exerting. It wasn't anywhere near my limit, but I also really didn't want to break the sword.

Slowly, achingly slow, the sword dug down. Ten inches. Fifteen inches. Twenty inches. Twenty five.

And then I felt something give way and the sword practically slammed down, embedding itself up to the crossguard.

Around me, the glowing red-hot parts of the dragon began dimming, and I relaxed.

Now it was dead.

I'd done it.

Holy shit.

I-I won.

I felt wired, energized, even more than I'd felt after fighting Squealer and getting shocked by her. My sigils glowed around me, and I hadn't even noticed when they'd appeared.

Without warning, the dragon started dissolving, starting at the snout and then moving backwards, blowing away like dust in the wind. I fell as the effect passed me and caught myself on one of my Armor panels, just standing there, the glow from my sword disappearing with the dragon.

I was pretty sure I would have been heaving from the exertion of the fight if I were still human, but instead I was breathing as easy as ever.

"Congratulations!" A holographic view appeared in front of me, mirroring the one I'd seen at the beginning of this, with Uber speaking. "The champion has prevailed, slaying the evil scourge and freeing the land from its threat. …Even if it was a rather unconventional strategy. Still, in thanks for her efforts, she receives one! blessed sword used to kill Deathwing the Destroyer."

"It has plus thirty against dragon-type," Leet added.

Uber just shook his head, mouthing "no it doesn't" at the camera.

Well, it wasn't exactly "untold riches and glory", but I'd definitely take it. I'd grown kind of attached to it, actually. Plus, the irony of them getting beaten by a sword that they'd given me was rather appealing as well.

"Anyways as always, thanks to all our viewers, especially those who support us, you know who you are," Uber said.

"Thank you and good night!"

"…It's not night."

"…Whatever."

The holograph-screen suddenly disappeared, and then everything disappeared as it all shifted, leaving me stumbling on sand. At the beach. In Brockton.

I was back, the sword was still in my hand.

I immediately started looking around and listening for anything, any hint at all of Uber and Leet, how they'd managed to do… whatever they had done to me.

And… there was nothing. Just the waves slapping against the ships behind me, the wind whistling through the spaces and the sounds of birds overhead.

Damn.

That was frustrating.

Although, honestly, I'd kind of expected it. Sticking around the area where you just kidnapped and returned the extremely strong and durable brute with a sword was all sorts of dumb, the kind that only Merchants were.

Plus… well, there was the fact that killing the dragon had felt amazing. I doubted there were many people who could say they'd have been able to do that, and —just like Lung— it was my achievement. And as much as I hated to admit it, they'd been the ones to give me that. I may not have gotten Uber and Leet —this time— but I was almost… okay with that.

My feelings were rather confused, and I had no doubt that part of that was the left over high from the fight.

There was also the fact I'd gotten a very nice sword out of it. Actually…

I let some nanomaterial slip from my hand down the sword —not even enough to be visible— examining it on a molecular level. The material was unlike anything I'd ever seen before, static, almost frozen. I had no idea how I might go about creating it, but if it was stronger than what was around my core, it was definitely worth looking into.

It took effort just to move the metal around and perfect the structure, refining the edge of the blade down to a pair of atoms wide and then running a single line of linked carbon atoms down it. For the finishing touch, I changed the weird symbol on the flat of the blade to the sigil that meant me.

I really needed some way to carry it other than my hand. A sheathe on my back would be nice, or even better, magnetic fields like Armsmaster had. Of course, I couldn't just make those in plain sight.

Sighing, I resolved myself to just carrying it around for now.

Considering how late it was, I should be getting home and starting dinner anyways.

The day had certainly been exciting, between flying and fighting the dragon, but I could also say they had been learning experiences.

And in the coming days, I'd learn to appreciate every little bit of experience I'd gained.

A/N: This chapter was brought to you by copious amounts of Paramore, Blood Red Shoes, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

Next chapter will be out next week, since it's actually already been around in full for like three months, but not over here.