Lucretia was still talking. "I— this is going to be hard to hear but remember, almost a century ago, Lup made us promise that we would never again put a world in danger just to thwart The Hunger's plans. And that is exactly, exactly what we did to this world! And—and that's why I took steps to fix it. What makes you think she wasn't out there trying to do this exact same thing when she disappeared?"

I was, Lup thought, but I wasn't gonna destroy the fucking world in the process, thanks.

Davenport cut in, "Where's the ship, Lucretia? We need to leave before it's too late. This plan, it didn't work, so we leave here and we—we try again. We leave here and—Barry, Taako, we leave here and Lup comes back."

"What?" Taako almost sounds… hopeful. And Lup considers. It would work. No reason why it wouldn't. But they'd sworn never to run again. And the devastation they would bring upon this world would be all the greater because they'd spent the last ten years weakening it with their damned relics.

Merle was already protesting. They had to stand. They had to fight. They had to end it.

And then it was too late. The Hunger was here, and they were fighting, and even if they'd wanted to go they had no ship.

Lup stored as much power as she could during the battle, biding her time for the right moment. It was her best chance. Taako and Barry both remembered her now, and they had the staff—surely they would figure it out. She just had to give them a sign.

She watched and she waited and she gathered her power around her, flames licking at her hands. The boys—all of them, really—were in rare form, but the Hunger was strong, and when Taako was knocked to the floor and she was knocked from his hands, she knew her chance had come.

When Angus picked her up and cast his spell, she released it all, the biggest fireball she'd managed yet. If that didn't do it, nothing would.

Angus looked shaken and flung the staff back to Taako, and Taako—Taako knew.

He smashed the staff over his knee.

And Lup was free.

She wasted no time. That fucking Hunger was going DOWN and it was going down hard. Free of the staff, her full power was returned to her, and she reveled in it. Expertly guiding the destruction to the enemy, away from her friends and their friends, she spun and twirled around the column of Hunger and filled it with shattering power. It was almost a dance, and it was delightful. The column exploded, and all its warriors with it.

Lup turned back to Taako, beaming, and a million things came to her lips. All the words she'd screamed at him over the last year, how fucking proud she was of him, how worried she'd been.

And she shouted, "You're dating the GRIM REAPER?"

The end.

I binged TAZ in like a week and a half, and I couldn't stop thinking about all the times Lup must have been just crushed in that staff. So I wanted to tell the rest of her story, and, uh, here it is! Enjoy!