"Don't bother that way, Undersider." She said. She turned, gesturing with her right hand, and the double doors at the front of the warehouse scraped open, letting in a mix of harsh orange streetlight and paler, weaker moonlight. Tattletale nodded to her and moved towards the door, half carrying Hellhound. Taylor watched until she was out the doors, and then turned to Bakuda. She walked towards the Tinker with an unhurried stride, not showing the rage boiling within her. Bakuda, having recovered from her choking-induced sensibility, started talking again.
"Oh, look at you. All heroic and brave. Lung will kill you! Tear the flesh from your bones, sear your spine, crush your organs!"
Taylor said nothing, simply walking towards the crazed Tinker and releasing her grip on her power, letting Bakuda fall to the floor. The Tinker swore as she fell, struggling to gain her feet with both arms useless, but managed it.
"Oh, so tough. Just like that Bitch was, until I realised we didn't need her. Feral. No use to us, only as an example. She thought she was tough too, until we killed her precious dogs. Should have seen the ugly bitch cry, all screwed up face. It was pathetic!"
Taylor kept walking, now only a few steps from Bakuda and keeping an iron grip on her temper, though she let her staff drift from her fingers and come to rest on the floor behind her.
"And that Glory whore, thinking she could take Lung on. She didn't have a chance, needed rescue by you. Pity, I would have enjoyed seeing her forced to serve me once I put the bomb in her head-"
The increasingly shrill ranting finally wore Taylors patience too thin, and she crossed the open space in a single step. The air rushed from Bakuda's lungs and Taylor buried her fist in the Tinkers stomach. A savage frenzy rushing through her, Taylor grabbed Bakuda by the back of her mask and threw her, her enhanced strength sending the Tinker airborne for a brief moment before Taylor wrapped tendrils of power around her and rammed her into the wall again. Bakuda's glass arm shattered. Blood poured. The scream was barely a wheeze.
"Pity. I can't have you bleeding to death." Taylor said, her voice hard and terrible even to herself. She stepped in, and warpfire blazed bright in her left hand. She pressed it to the bleeding stump, and Bakuda's scream seared the air even as the stench of burning flesh filled Taylor's lungs. The Tinker might have fainted, had Taylor not driven a slap across her face and pulled her upright.
"You really should have left the city, Bakuda." Taylor said, pinning the Tinker to the wall with a hand at the throat and lifting her other hand to the gasmask.
"The attack on the Undersiders? No big problem. Attacking the PRT HQ? Stupid, but maybe not too bad. Bombing those churches, those police stations, that hospital, putting bombs in those people? Stupid. Very stupid."
Bakuda choked something, but Taylor didn't give her a chance to speak before tearing off the gas mask, exposing the Tinkers face. Bakuda might have once been pretty, in an unremarkable way, but her features were now dominated by raw, seared scarring from the bomb the night before. Taylor gazed at her without pity, simply dropping her and taking two steps back. Bakuda coughed, and then gave a malevolent glare at Taylor.
"Knew- knew you wouldn't do it."
"Wouldn't do it? Oh, Bakuda. You mean, wouldn't kill you?" Taylor asked, her voice having eased a little into conversational. The anger was still there, but it had receded a little.
"Hero. Useless coward. Too weak to do it." Bakuda rasped, eyes alight with an unsettling fervency. Taylor shook her head.
"Yes. Yes, I suppose you're right. I am a Hero, and I shouldn't kill." She said, half musingly. And then she shrugged.
"Of course, shouldn't is the key word there."
Bakuda's eyes widened in horror, and Taylor gestured, invisible force dragging Bakuda off the floor and dangling her helplessly in the air. Taylor stepped closer again.
"You see, Bakuda, you managed to get a kill order. And really? I can't find any reason not to execute it."
Taylor raised her right hand, her left holding Bakuda up. Normally, she couldn't affect internal organs. But from this close? She could simply close a psychic vice around Bakuda's heart and claim the Tinker died of a heart attack. Who would know? And even if someone realised, who would care?
"This is it, Bakuda. Here it is, the moment when you reap what you have sown."
Taylor shook her head, looking into the eyes of the Tinker, still alight with madness but infected by fear now.
"All your life you've been selfish. You've been pampered, spoiled. Your first failure, you are gifted with powers beyond anyone else, and you immediately use them to hurt others. No, Bakuda. You will be no great loss. And unless you've a very compelling reason to be spared…well. Speak now or forever hold your peace."
"Wait!" Bakuda gasped. Taylor stopped raising her hand.
"Wait?"
Bakuda was grinning now, her scars making the expression entirely unhinged.
"No. No, don't. Go ahead. Kill me, and set off the dead man switch in my heart."
Taylor stilled. A dead mans switch. That could be dangerous. Bakuda was still grinning.
"Yeah, that's right. Kill me. Make all those little schools and hospitals go boom, see if your righteous posing gets you any favours then." She hissed, practically gloating. Taylor blinked once, slowly.
"Bakuda. A switch linked to your heartbeat. How very ingenious." She said softly, thinking through her options and rapidly settling on one. Bakuda ceased gloating- Taylor guessed that something in her tone had frightened the Tinker.
"What? How do you know that?"
"Oh, Bakuda. I know many things. And I'll share one of those with you."
Taylor turned her head up, looking at Bakuda directly.
"I need your body alive. Nothing in there about your mind. Look into my eyes."
Bakuda was, for all her intelligence, weak in mind. She had never attained any strength, coasting through life until she failed. Even her madness only splintered her focus, and though there was some odd, echoing resistance in her mind it was far from sufficient. The will of Bakuda and whatever was helping her was no match for the combined will of Taylor and The Emperor.
Five minutes after starting her mental invasion Taylor dropped the husk that was once Bakuda on the warehouse floor. Her body was alive, but her soul and mind were scattered, mere shards, already dissipating into the Immaterium. Taylor considered the look of utter terror, now etched eternally into Bakuda's face, and shrugged. The gas mask would cover it. Now all she had to do was move the body. Her upcoming fight was with Lung, and he had something of a track record for area damage. It would do her no good if Bakuda's body was crushed because Lung brought down a building. Taylor pulled out her phone as she carried the body away.
"Dauntless."
The voice came quickly- the phone had only rung three times before the Hero answered.
"Hello, Dauntless. You might be interested to know that I managed to find Bakuda. And Glory Girl. And the Undersiders."
"You did it? How- I won't ask. We got Oni Lee, he's in custody now. Where are you? Where's Bakuda?" Dauntless asked, his voice quick and clear. Taylor shrugged, carrying Bakuda into an alleyway.
"Bakuda? She's with me. Took her down, though she seems to have had some kind of mental breakdown. Practically in a coma."
The lie came so smoothly off her lips, Taylor almost believed it herself.
"She said that she's got a dead mans switch in herself, though, so I didn't want to hurt her too badly. She lost an arm to her own bomb, but she's mostly intact otherwise."
"A dead mans- Jesus. She could take out half the city if the bombs are well planted. Where are you?"
Taylor didn't answer the question immediately, instead carefully placing Bakuda on the ground in the alleyway. No guarantee of safety, but better than being in the immediate danger zone. Dauntless repeated his question: Taylor set off back to the ABB warehouse.
"Dauntless." She said quietly. The Hero didn't reply immediately, but after a few steps he replied, clearly deciding to humour her rather than ask her location again.
"Yes?"
"Lung is on his way here. I'm staying behind."
"What? Circaetus, you can't- he's too strong." Dauntless said, a tinge of alarm entering his professional tone. Taylor laughed.
"If I backed down from anyone considered too strong I'd never leave my house. I'm only telling you because, really, you might need to get clear up teams ready."
"I- yeah, I guess. If you tell me where you are we can help."
Taylor paused by the warehouse doors.
"No. You wouldn't get here in time." She said. She thought briefly, and then shrugged.
"You know, I'm doing this the wrong way around. Usually you slay the dragon before you rescue the damsel in distress."
Dauntless said nothing in reply. She gave him the address.
Lung arrived only a few minutes later. Taylor was stood in the shadow of the warehouse stairs to the apartment, arms folded: she had woken the ABB members she had knocked unconscious and told them to run. None of them had hesitated. From the corner of her eye she could see Uber and Leets Snitch, the camera drone trying to be inconspicuous by hiding near the ceiling. It had only just arrived- Taylor had to appreciate the sheer opportunism of the pair. Even if Lung smashed her to paste in the first ten seconds they'd get plenty of viewers.
'This should be interesting.' Taylor noted mentally. She had been leaning against the wall, preparing herself: her mind was open to the energies of the Immaterium. Every cell in her body thrummed with contained power. The only questions now became simple: was it enough? And, in her current state, could she endure the power for long enough for it to matter? Even without the effects of the War in Heaven, the Immaterium was the thing that had become the Warp. Its energy was inimical to those without great strength of body as well as will.
"YOU CAN ONLY FIND OUT." Observed the Emperor, himself working to keep the power in check.
'Never really thought of myself as a knight in shining armour before. You think we should end this fast?'
"IF YOU CAN. ALWAYS END FIGHTS FAST IF YOU CAN. BUT IF IT GOES ON TOO LONG, HE BECOMES TOO STRONG, YOU MAY HAVE TO USE YOUR…NEW TECHNIQUE."
'Ah. Yes, that. I'll try to avoid it unless I have no other choice. Quite a way to field test, though.'
"INDEED."
Taylor straightened as a black vehicle skidded to a halt in front of the warehouse doors. The door of the vehicle opened, and a bulky figure emerged. Lung. The gang leader was shirtless as always, metal mask in place, and his skin bulged oddly, deformations covering his flesh that denoted the scales already formed within. Lung was already prepared for a fight. Taylor smiled as she stepped forward.
"Hmph." Lung grunted, staring at her. His eyes were like molten pits of orange behind his mask: Taylor imagined it made quite a contrast to her mask, lit by the blazingly electric blue of her own eyes.
"So. Circaetus. You continue to war on me." Lung said, his voice thick with his accent and heavy with power. Taylor fancied she could smell brimstone on the breeze as he stared at her, but that was probably her imagination.
"There's no continue, Lung. You made a mistake, and now you'll pay for it." She responded, voice flat and cold. No quips. No puns. Not yet, at least. The ABB leader chuckled, his shoulders shaking briefly with mirth.
"You threaten me? Lung? You are nothing, hero. Stay here to fight? You'll die. Then your friends. And it will be seen by the camera of those jackals. I am Lung. You are irrelevant."
Taylor crossed the space before them in a lighting fast leap, and her pressed against Lung's chest, a focal point for the massive psychic push she unleashed. Lung crashed into a wall, and Taylor looked into the cloud of brick dust without moving any further.
"Am I still irrelevant, Lung?"
The roar that followed shook her bones, and a gout of flame exploded from the warehouse wall, rushing towards her as Lung rose, boiling with fury. The fire parted before her, uncontrolled and no threat, and Taylor gestured as Lung rushed her. The first brick from the opposite wall hit Lung in the mask, and the big man, now scaled in silver and growing larger, staggered as it dented his mask. The bricks that followed sent him reeling, bringing his arms up as Taylor unleashed a storm of stone to cover her rapid approach.
Lung dropped his arms, a roar beginning to build.
Taylor rammed her staff into his chest.
Bones cracked and Lung's roar choked in his throat as she thrust her staff with both hands, the wood sheathed in energy so fierce it was visible. The backlash blew her back several feet, but it hurled Lung into the wall again. Structural damage didn't matter. She'd bring the whole warehouse down on him if she had to.
Lung hauled himself out of the wreckage of the wall again. Flames dripped from his battered mask, hands clawed and scaled and he was taller than before. Already big, Taylor guessed that he was approaching nine feet now and his wounds seemed to be healing as she watched.
'Guess he isn't all talk.' She idly commented. Lung glared at her, and one taloned hand rose to point at her.
"Kill you!" snarled the ABB leader, his voice more guttural than before, Lung already losing himself to the animal within. Taylor raised her hand and beckoned to him, the beckoning hand already crackling with a gauntlet of lightning.
Lung charged. The bull-rush came right at her, roaring and bringing his claws up, and Taylor ran at him, gritting her teeth in concentration as she readied herself. The trick she was about to try would need timing: she couldn't face him head on, she would need to outmanoeuvre him. Lung lunged, a massive, surprisingly agile leap from almost ten feet away. Taylor planted her staff on the ground, shoved hard and vaulted him. The enraged scream was still leaving his throat when she landed, twisting on her heel and ramming her left fist hard into his back. The scales held even against her brutal strike, her warp-augmented muscle not enough to pierce the metallic defence, but the energy around her arm leapt into Lung, racing through flesh and bone with terrible force. Lung roared as he fell to his knees, thrashing and twisting from the warp-born electricity, but a flailing elbow caught Taylor in the stomach and she was sent sprawling.
"Fuck!" Taylor spat as she landed hard, rolling barely in time to avoid a smashing blow from Lung, the draconic man already recovered and moving, if a little jerkily. She dodged frantically, trapped in close with the brutish villain as he rained furious, pulverising blows down upon her, smashing concrete as she rolled and jerked, desperately evading blows that would crush her to a bloody pulp if they ever hit. Lung loomed over her and she rolled onto her back, taking hold of her staff in both hands as Lung raised his arms. The arms came down in a crashing double blow and Taylor met it with a shield of force from her staff, but Lung was stronger than her and the fire around his fists was growing hotter as he inexorably pressed the shield down, closer to her. Taylor gritted her teeth, drawing up a leg and lashing out, blindly hoping it would distract Lung.
Lung might have been making the transformation into a dragon, but he wasn't there yet. And Taylor's blind kick slammed into his groin.
Lung lurched, the pressure on the shield almost vanishing as he hunched in instinctive, automatic pain, and Taylor rammed her staff up, converting the shield into a battering ram that knocked him back enough for her to stand. She snapped to her feet and glared at Lung, who glared back. His mask had fallen off, his eyes blazing with fury and his mouth twisted into a four-part maw more like an eel than a man. Taylor slugged him in the face.
Lung staggered from the blow, mouth and head wobbling and twisting on the long neck but his claw came around and Taylor barely avoided it, turning to gain distance but something latched onto her coat and a thrill of utter panic went through her. Lung dragged her back, and she dragged one arm out of her coat, throwing her staff away with the other but Lung swung her around, flinging her and keeping hold of her coat. Taylor was able to cushion her fall, but the breath still went out of her in a gasp, and as she looked up the fire around Lung's fist spread to her coat with alarming speed, turning the garment to ash. Lung looked at her, giving an ugly, bubbling laugh from his malformed mouth, and she snarled.
"You fuck. I liked that coat!"
Her power flared, the very air tasting metallic from the weight of it, and the metal and shrapnel all around them whirled towards her, snapping and twisting into a makeshift suit of armour around her. Taylor let electricity pour through the armour as a plate closed across her mouth, glaring at Lung.
"Round two, bastard."
Lung leapt across the open space, triumph filling his roar as he hurtled towards her, and Taylor grinned. He was too used to fighting the Empire leader Kaiser, thinking she was going to armour up and brawl with him. He had no idea.
She charged forward, acting as though she would meet Lungs own rush, but at the very last moment she pushed her power through the shrapnel and debris that made up her armour and exploded it into a swirling maelstrom. A maelstrom centred directly on Lungs face.
The dragon-man flinched back, the metal shards slicing at his eyes, and Taylor ran at him, warpfire bursting into existence around her clenched fist even as she dragged the floor behind him into a hump, tearing the already damaged concrete. Lung arched his long neck and exhaled with a bellowing roar. Flame lanced through the cloud of buzzing metal and speared towards her, and Taylor gritted her teeth and sprang. Her boots left the floor as she crashed into the plume of fire, parting it before her and smashing into Lung. She slammed her boots into his chest, rammed her fire-surrounded right fist into his face. Lung staggered back and tripped over the raised floor and fell and Taylor threw herself away from the now nearly ten-feet tall man, rolling and snatching for her staff with her left hand. Lung rose and Taylor spun and the warpfire around her hand burst across the brief space and struck his face, clinging and burning. Lung might be fireproof, but having a face full of near napalm was going to distract anybody.
Taylor ran for the doors while Lung was threshing and roaring, sprinting through them and sliding to a halt as she turned. She needed more time: there was one easy way to get it.
She stretched out her power, and tore the supports from the walls, shattering the warehouse structure. The roof fell in.
'That should slow him down.' Taylor remarked, swaying a little on her feet. She held out a hand, dragging the bag that she had left at the edge of a nearby building across to her, but as it reached her a savage spike of pain seared through her stomach and chest and she doubled up, choking. She fell to one knee, clawing her scarf away from her mouth and coughing. Blood spattered the ground below her.
'That isn't good.'
"YOU'RE PUSHING TOO FAR, TOO FAST. YOUR BODY CANNOT WITHSTAND THE WARP FOR MUCH LONGER."
'I know! I know. But I can't stop now. Just a little longer. Just a little more.'
"YOU CAN STILL USE…IT."
'I've got one more trick before that.'
Taylor rose to her feet, tossing her scarf away before dragging a hand across her mouth and spitting some more blood onto the ground. The pain had receded, but it was still there, hovering at the edge of her mind. Didn't matter. The fight was more important.
Fire plumed, and Lung came roaring out of the rubble that was the warehouse. Taylor smiled thinly, reaching into the satchel she had called to her hand and withdrawing a small, round object.
'Remind me to thank Bakuda for this. Or at least, thank her husk.'
Taylor threw the grenade. Lung barely saw it in time. The explosion took out a chunk of street, but Lung had thrown himself aside and wasn't even scratched. Taylor shrugged: there were plenty more. She didn't bother throwing them, instead flicking her hand and sending the explosives sailing towards the ABB leader, forcing him to dodge and twist desperately. Even as she did so, she manipulated others, bringing them along the ground, forming a circle. Lung didn't notice them until he leapt away from a time-dilating blast and landed in the middle.
"Goodbye, Lung." Taylor said, closing her fist and triggering every impact detonator at once.
Just like with Oni Lee, the explosion was a kaleidoscope of sound and light that brought a slightly grim smile to Taylor's face as she watched it.
"Just like the Fourth of July." She commented, leaning on her staff and hoping that was the end of it. She knew her hope was wrong, but a girl could dream. She sighed and straightened as a vast roar of anger split the air.
"The man doesn't know when to die."
She waved her hand, blowing away the mist and dust that obscured her vision, and gazed tiredly upon the scene before her. The explosives had torn a great hole in the ground, a hemisphere where all was simply missing and which was rapidly beginning to fill with water from a shattered pipe, but that was not what occupied most of her attention. No, that place was given to Lung, who was hunched over, his back to her. The heavy, bony protrusions that extended from his shoulder blades and would become wings given long enough had been turned to glittering glass, much of his tail otherwise, and a portion of the scales on his back glittered, transparent and showing the flesh underneath, but it was too much to hope that it would stop him. Lung rose from his crouch, his roar agonised as glass cracked and broke, fledgling wings and scales shattering and slewing off to leave gaping tears and flayed flesh, but as he turned to face Taylor his fury burned brighter than ever.
"ILL!"
Lung leapt across the crater, even larger than before and as fast as ever, and Taylor hesitated for an instant, delayed by surprise. She was able to dodge the pullmeting claws and snapping fangs, getting behind him but his tail caught her in the ribs and she was sent sailing. Something- several somethings- cracked on the hit, and Taylor cried out as her ribs flared with agony. She landed brutally hard on her left arm, a sick crunch accompanying another burst of pain, and gasped in a breath as she looked down. Lungs glass tail had shattered on impact, driving the shards into her flesh, and Taylor let out a sharp gasp of pain as she forced her arm up and dragged them out, relying on her power. Everything hurt.
"RIBS, FRACTURED. ARM, FRACTURED. WARP IS BREAKING DOWN YOUR BODY, AND YOU WILL BLEED TO DEATH IF THOSE WOUNDS AREN'T SEALED." The Emperor reported, crisp and urgent. Taylor gritted her teeth as she forced herself to stand, forced herself to ignore the agony.
'Yeah. I get it.' She mentally responded, lighting her left hand with warpfire. This would hurt.
Taylor threw back her head and screamed as she clamped her burning hand over her injuries, searing the bloody gouges shut to the accompaniment of her howls and the smell of burning flesh. Lung, standing across from her, laughed, a brutal sound of rasping metal and ugly intent. Taylor staggered after extinguishing the fire, light-headed with pain.
"He's too tough. Keeps regenerating." She said, realising that she spoke aloud only after she said the words.
"HIS POWER IS FORMIDABLE, BUT YOU CAN WIN. HE IS NOT INVULNERABLE. NOTHING IS." The Emperor responded. Taylor blinked, shook her head back into focus and looked around, her eyes falling upon one of the glassy wing-struts that had broken away from Lung.
"He's just getting stronger while I get weaker. I guess it's only in his interest to keep on dragon the fight." She said aloud, smiling at the last bit. Puns would never desert her, she thought and even as she thought that another struck. Glass. Glass, the Fulgurite.
'The fulgurite.'
"THE FUL- THAT COULD WORK." The Emperor responded immediately, some life entering his monotone. Taylor looked up at Lung, who was still laughing and had begun a slow, measured approach. She flexed her left hand, and pulled the glass into it, snapping and shattering it until it looked vaguely like a spear.
'This will hurt.' She absently noted, even as she forced her power through the glass spear and let it crackle in her hand with all the power she could muster. Her headache flared, but she forced it aside. This would work.
The fulgurite. A weapon crafted by The Emperor himself, forged from the Chaos-tainted sands of a conquered world, fused into glass by the tremendous power of The Emperor's psychic lightning and imbued with a very simple, very terrible power: The Fulgurite killed. Anything. Not even a Perpetual could survive it's might, a weapon that destroyed the very soul. Taylor might not be able to replicate the effect, but something that would hamper Lung's regeneration? Yeah, she could manage that. She took the first step forward, her legs unsteady but firming with every stride. She let her staff fall as she broke into a run, charging at Lung. Seeing her move, he roared and sped up himself. Taylor leapt from the edge of the pit in the street, dragging a cloud of debris behind her and launching it at Lung with a cry of defiance. Lung roared as it tore his flesh, his own leap altering slightly. Taylor thrust with her glass weapon.
A claw smashed into her, driving the breath from her and shifting her trajectory with a blaze of pain in her ribs, but the bootleg Fulgurite had buried itself in Lung's briefly exposed flesh and the twist shattered it and his roar was more pain than ever before as she tore out the fragments of shrapnel imbedded in him in a bloody torrent of flesh and bone. Taylor landed hard on the side of the crater opposite the one she had leapt from, but she was still alive and even if the pain from her now-almost-certainly broken ribs was blinding and she was on her hands and knees she had managed it. She blinked, a wetness in her eyes that fell to the concrete and she hoped that the thick redness of the liquid was an imagination colouring tears because the alternative was…disturbing. But it didn't matter. She stood and turned.
Lung had landed without grace, on the opposite side of the crater. He rose faster than she did, but he was thrashing and howling, clawing at his chest where the silver scales gave way to bright, bloody crimson red and Taylor grinned savagely. Already Lung was shrinking, his flesh not closing as well as it should, his regeneration slowed, and his face was a mess of red blood and white bone and yellow, glowing eyes and ivory fangs, the shrapnel tearing from inside the flesh inflicting horrid injuries. And yet he stood and turned, more maddened beast than human and Taylor knew that she only had one choice.
'It's time. I have to use it.'
"TAYLOR, YOU AREN'T IN ANY FIT STATE TO- YOU COULD DIE. THE PRESSURE ON YOUR BODY COULD BE TOO MUCH."
The Emperor sounded worried. Taylor knew why, but she didn't have a choice. And she knew that, in his very soul, the Emperor understood that.
'It doesn't matter. I win. I lose. I fight. Doesn't matter. I do not bow. I do not serve. I do not flee. And if I die here, I will do so knowing that I have done everything I can. That I fought to my last breath, my last drop of blood, my last shred of will. I will not yield.'
The Emperor said nothing. Lung, staggering, slid down into the crater and started towards her, a terrible, malevolent determination in every bloody step. Taylor took a deep breath, and smiled.
"I hoped you liked all my other tricks, Lung." She said, loudly. The Snitch might be watching, or it might not. But if it was…well, the viewers would get a show.
"But even if you didn't, this last one…well, it'll take your breath away."
Taylor flung her arms wide, dragging and twisting with all her might, and pain screamed through her. The fire around Lungs head went out, the water moved away from him, and a massive, clawed hand grasped at his throat as his eyes bulged and his knees gave way. Taylor screamed, venting the agony that ran through every limb, every bone, every nerve but she kept going, kept pulling, kept Lung trapped and he was shrinking, writhing, struggling to escape and climbing from the crater but the prison moved with him and she just had to hold out longer than his regeneration could stand and she was winning and she-just-had-to-
Taylor opened her eyes to find the Emperor roaring at her, the booming voice crying out for her to stand and she blinked and moaned as the pain came back with a fury. She reached for her powers but there was nothing there, nothing and she panicked for an awful, eternal instant before she found it, a tiny trickle that was all, barely a fragment of her might but still there and she could have wept. She looked up.
Lung was in the same position as her, bent over, fallen on his hands and knees on the concrete several feet away while she rested on the crater lip. He was barely larger than a human now, claws and fangs and tail and fledgling wings gone, blood running down his chest and face that were still dotted with scales, but he was standing and Taylor screamed inside her mind, screamed at herself to move. It was a race now, to see who stood first. Lung won.
Lung stood, unsteady, shaking, bloody, and Taylor gained her feet an instant later, every inch of her body in agony but her will unbroken, and she would not lose. Not here. Not to him, not even if she had to drag him into the crater and drown him in the water there and she gritted her teeth, fought through the pain but Lung wasn't approaching her. He was backing away, turning and she stretched out her hand, snarling and cursing and willing him to fight because she wasn't done yet but he was limping away and he had vanished and she heard a car start and she had fallen again, was falling, toppling towards the ground but something had landed before her and caught her in a soft grip and was laying her down and Taylor blinked at the older woman in the white costume. New Wave, she thought. Lady Photon? Something like that.
"Circaetus? Circaetus, talk to me!"
The woman sounded urgent but Taylor couldn't manage more than a soft groan as she lay back, the concrete and rubble suddenly seeming very comfortable to her. More figures in white, two rushing across, and Panacea and Glory Girl suddenly appeared over her, worry in their faces and Taylor found it in herself to smile up at them. She might not have captured Lung, but she supposed she could call this a win. She rested her head back, still smiling through cracked and bloody lips. Now all she needed was some sleep.
'Held off Lung, got Bakuda and Lee, saved Glory and the Undersiders. Yeah, I'm gonna call this a win.'
Ah, there was that blissful darkness. Unconsciousness was a wonderful thing, she concluded as she slipped away from the pain.