Taylor Hebert was as new as one could be to the whole parahuman business, but she was learning quickly.
- Lung was bad news.
- Lung, with a bee stinger in one eye, murder in the other, was very bad news.
- Lung, on fire, on the same rooftop coming towards her was extremely bad news.
- Lung, on fire, clutching his head and screaming was moderately less bad news.
She also knew when it was a good time to make like a tree and get the fuck outta Dodge.
---===---
It had been a long time since someone, alone, had tried to take him on.
Ages really.
But it was like setting a biker on fire; you never forget, really. It just comes back to you as you go through the motions.
This one was pretty ballsy. Stupid, but ballsy. Took care of his minions pretty well too, got him in the eye, stayed out of sight.
He'd faced worse.
As his face crested the rooftop he thought on what to do. A bit of vigorous manhandling, a few broken bones, and if his opponent was Asian, perhaps enlist them?
This one was tall and skinny, maybe an Asian boy? Probably not with hair like that (A wig? Odd to have that sticking out of a decent costume like that), voice was a bit shrill (admittedly most were upon facing him) and with all the protective fire he couldn't smell much, but most of the time the lady capes didn't face him head on unless they were Alexandrian or at least a Brute of some sort. The accent had sounded like a local, but the voice was not one he knew.
Definitely a new face.
If the Asian card wasn't there, he'd probably not kill them.
Maybe.
A coin toss really.
He'd be fair and just toss them off the building. It was only a couple of stories. If they lived, fine. He had places to be.
A step. Another. There wasn't much more roof for them to retreat to.
No overlapping fields of fire, no snipers, no Tinker bullshit. Just a plain old stomping.
Goodness, it had been a long time.
And then his brain was on fire. And not in the normal way.
---===---
As the data poured into the host's, brain the shard was looking for targets. Finding none, it fell back to patterns statistically determined to maximize host survival.
[More scales! More fire! Get a little bigger!]
This had to be an attack, but from where? How?
It studied the host as it screamed. No energy beams were piercing the tissue it had applied, and there had been no physical contact with an opponent.
The attack itself was clever, just overwrite the brain and the conflict was over, and just like that, they had a converted ally.
But not on its watch. It had faced things like this before.
[Bigger! More scales! More fire!]
It would not lose this one, despite their somewhat haphazard communion, it had faced one of the Culling Units directly and had not perished. Few of the shard's brethren could boast of that in this Cycle, especially while alone.
Maybe more scales would help.
---===---
Overwriting the human brain was extremely traumatizing and damaging to it, which was why Contessa was just a bucket full of charm at times.
But it was damage, and thus he healed it. With scales and fire.
The human brain obviously had to go once he passed ten feet of height, it'd just slosh about in the larger skull otherwise. And be vulnerable to sudden shock, energy propagation, and other things that had been tried to end the life of Lung.
Thus, replace the brain with scales. Intricate ones. Heat based circuitry.
He grew and grew, fire growing as his body sought to ward off the attack. The extra size also gave him plenty of room in his skull for more scales for all that data.
Gradually, he was healing faster than it was hurting him, like always.
And then it stopped. It was done.
---===---
What the fuck was that?
Slowly Lung straightened from the fetal position of scales and fire he had curled into. Slowly he rose.
Despite the lack of anyone on the rooftop, he did not shrink. With no idea what had happened, or, if it'd happen again, his power appeared to be taking no chances.
He was smarter like this and he'd always hated the fact that this was so. What good was a rising IQ when you couldn't communicate beyond roars and fire and had a mouth that couldn't speak? With talons too large to jot anything down? And of course, it's not like he had a real choice when he was growing, there were usually people coming in through the windows and gunfire and screaming.
He strained his enhanced senses, seeking a target. Nothing.
A minute passed, then another.
Slowly he started to shrink.
Slowly his brain turned back into meat.
Then shit got weird.