The ground trembled beneath Jake's boots, a rhythmic, bone-rattling thrum that cut through the haze in his mind.
The lingering, shimmering dust from the pixies still made his vision swim with nauseating hues, but instinct snapped his limbs into motion before his brain could process the danger.
Girder was coming.
The hulking monster of rusted iron and kinetic fury barreled down the midways of the amusement park, leaving shattered concrete and pulverized wooden kiosks in his wake.
Forty miles per hour—and accelerating.
He didn't just look like a speeding truck; he sounded like a runaway locomotive derailing through a junkyard.
By all laws of physics, a guy encased in thousands of pounds of oxidized metal shouldn't have been able to move like that.
But here he was, tearing through the night with terrifying, unstoppable momentum.
"Fuck!" Jake spat.
With a harsh intake of breath, Jake surrendered to the primal heat waking up beneath his skin.
Crimson scales rippled across his arms and neck like armor plating, his hands contorting into sharp, deadly claws.
His draconic physiology took over, amplifying his strength ten-fold.
He lunged forward, sweeping Haley, Trixie, and Spud into his arms all at once.
The three were dead weight, completely unconscious from the pixie dust, their heads lolloping against his bare chest.
Jake dug his clawed toes into the dirt and threw himself sideways just as Girder thundered through the space they had occupied a microsecond prior.
BOOM!
The air pressure alone knocked Jake off balance as Girder plowed straight through a pretzel stand, exploding it into splintered wood and twisted metal.
Jake landed hard on the dusty asphalt, rolling to absorb the impact while tightly cradling his unconscious group.
His head throbbed, the magical dust threatening to drag him under, but the adrenaline spiking through his blood kept him awake.
"YOSH!" Jake hissed, shaking his head violently to clear his blurred vision.
He didn't hesitate.
Ripping off the shredded remnants of his shirt, he bared his scaled chest to the night air.
With a sickening tearing sound, his crimson dragon wings burst from his shoulder blades, unfurling to their full, imposing span.
He kicked off the ground, taking flight just high enough to gain momentum, desperately trying to put distance between his incapacitated friends and the metal psycho.
Behind him, Girder skidded to a halt, tearing up fifty feet of turf before spinning around.
His rusted, hulking face twisted into a scowl of pure, murderous rage.
He saw the escaping form of Jake in the air and took it as a personal insult.
"NO ONE ESCAPES ME!" Girder roared, his voice sounding like two metal plates grinding together in a rock crusher.
He crouched, his iron thighs flexing, and launched himself into the air like a missile.
"Oh, come on!" Jake yelled, looking down just in time to see the towering mountain of metal descending upon him from above.
There was no time to fly out of the way.
With a grunt of effort, Jake twisted his body mid-air, spinning like a top to build centrifugal force, and hurled Haley, Trixie, and Spud toward the padded roof of a distant souvenir shop.
It was a rough landing, but it was far away from the carnage about to go down.
With his hands free, Jake snapped his arms over his chest, willing his dragon scales to harden into near-impenetrable plate armor.
He braced his wings forward to shield his vitals just as Girder's massive, rusted fist collided with his frame.
BOOM!
A visible shockwave rippled through the air, producing a deafening sonic crack.
The impact hit Jake like a falling meteor.
He was driven straight down into the earth, bouncing off the asphalt twice, skidding wildly, and crashing through the wooden framework of a game stall.
Plush prizes and splintered planks flew into the air.
Using his powerful wings as brakes, digging his claws deep into the dirt, Jake finally brought himself to a halt on all fours.
His wings flared out, his back arched, and a low, guttural growl vibrated in his throat. He was in a purely feral state, breathing heavily, his teeth transformed into razor-sharp fangs.
DOOM!
Girder landed heavily fifty feet away, cracking the pavement beneath his immense weight.
He straightened up, rolling his heavy iron shoulders, looking thoroughly pleased with himself.
"Think you could escape me? ME?!" Girder mocked, his booming voice full of arrogant laughter. "No one escapes me. No one! I'm going to tear those little wings off your back and show everyone why I should be feared and respected!"
Jake slowly pushed himself up onto his feet, his hands and chest throbbing with a dull, radiating agony.
His wings folded back tightly against his spine, disappearing into his skin to conserve his energy.
The scales had absorbed the brunt of the kinetic force, but taking a direct hit from a living battering ram still hurt like hell.
Girder, Jake thought, baring his fangs as wrath boiled in his veins.
He recognized the guy from online rogue registries.
The internet had plenty of logs about his brute force, but nobody mentioned the bastard could move like a jet-propelled missile.
I'm gonna melt this motherfucker and turn him into a damn ring for a souvenir, Jake swore internally.
He inhaled deeply, then exhaled.
Wisps of thick, white steam hissed from his nose and mouth, carrying the scent of ozone and sulfur.
He glanced toward the distant roof where his friends lay safe, ensuring they were out of the splash zone, before turning his gaze back to the brute.
Jake coughed hard, the metallic taste of blood filling his mouth.
He spat a dark red glob onto the dirt and wiped his lips with the back of his hand, his eyes burning with pure contempt.
"What's the matter, midget?" Girder sneered, taking a slow, heavy step forward. "Since the Flash or his little sidekick aren't here to save you all, I'm gonna take my sweet time tearing this whole damn place apart."
Jake spat again, his eyes narrowing. "That's a lot of talk for a guy whose brain clearly rotted alongside his dick. Tell me, do you move that fast to compensate for what you're lacking, or is the rust just hiding a microscopic piece of shit?"
Girder's smug expression instantly melted into raw, unbridled fury. "You little bastard!" he roared, the iron plating across his chest vibrating as he dug his feet into the ground and charged, a blur of rust and kinetic energy.
Jake didn't try to block this time.
As Girder closed the distance, Jake opened his jaws wide and unleashed a torrent of white-hot dragon fire straight into the brute's face.
The intense heat washed over Girder, but the villain pushed right through the flames, trusting his iron hide to protect him.
Just as the massive fist was about to crush Jake's jaw, Jake flared his wings, catching an updraft and spinning upward, dodging the strike by a fraction of an inch.
Girder couldn't stop his momentum.
He crashed hard into the dirt, rolling through an empty funnel cake booth before regaining his footing.
"Get down here and fight, coward!" Girder screamed, shaking his fist at the sky.
"Make me, rust-bucket!" Jake taunted, hovering twenty feet in the air.
Jake played it smart.
He kept his distance, staying just out of jumping reach while continuously bathing Girder in sustained streams of dragon fire.
This wasn't normal fire.
It burned with a pale, fierce brilliance—draconic flame born of magic and apex biology.
As he circled overhead, Jake hurled insult after insult, keeping Girder's rage at a boiling point.
He deliberately lured the screeching, furious villain away from the fairgrounds' central plaza, driving him deeper into the desolate parking lot to ensure no innocent bystanders or his sleeping friends would get caught in the crossfire.
After five straight minutes of endless roaring and desperate jumping, Girder suddenly stumbled.
His feet felt heavy.
His movements, usually explosive, became sluggish and thick.
He tried to take another step toward Jake, but his left leg buckled, bending unnaturally.
Girder looked down, and terror instantly seized his heart.
The rusted metal of his body was turning a translucent, glowing yellow-orange.
The defined edges of his iron armor were losing shape, sloughing off in thick, molten drops that hissed viciously as they hit the pavement.
"W-What... What is this?!" Girder stammered, panic lacing his booming voice. "What did you do to me?!"
Jake descended slowly, hovering a few feet above the ground with his arms crossed over his chest, looking down at the villain like a bored professor.
"Here's a quick science lesson for you, dumbass," Jake said, his voice cold and devoid of humor. "Structural iron melted around 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit. Now, fantasy lesson: a dragon's fire doesn't give a fuck about conventional thermodynamics. It burns hot enough to turn titanium into soup."
Girder looked down in sheer horror as his knees completely dissolved, dropping his massive upper body into a puddle of his own melting, liquefied armor.
The heat was finally penetrating through his power's defense, scorching the flesh beneath.
"Aahgh! It hurts! Stop! Stop it!" Girder shrieked, his tough-guy persona shattering into pieces. He looked up at Jake with wide, tear-filled eyes. "Please! Have mercy! You're one of them. You're a hero, right?! You can't just kill me like this! You can't do this!"
Jake tilted his head, a dark, amused smirk tugging at the corner of his lips.
"Mercy?" Jake echoed, his voice dripping with venom. "I didn't give a shit about you, Girder. I was minding my own business until you decided to make yourself my business. You jumped me while I was trying to leave along with my people."
Jake took a step closer, the radiant heat off his body shimmering in the night air.
"And mercy is something you have to earn by showing it to others," Jake continued, his eyes glowing like burning coals. "Did you show mercy when you plowed through innocent people? When you crushed cars with families inside them? Did you give a damn about the lives you crippled just to feel like a big man?"
Girder whimpered, his arms melting into useless, glowing stubs as he sank further into the slag. "No! Please..."
"You got the wrong guy, rust-bucket," Jake scoffed, raising his hand as bright crimson flames danced across his fingers. "I'm not one of those goody-two-shoes heroes in tights. I don't catch villains and put them in cozy cells."
Jake's eyes turned entirely golden, his pupil narrowing into a slit.
"I'm a dragon. And dragons don't show mercy to provokers."
Jake opened his mouth and unleashed a final, concentrated blast of blinding white dragon fire.
"AAARRGG—"
Girder's screams echoed through the whole place, rising to a desperate crescendo before abruptly cutting out.
The heat was blinding, incinerating everything in its path.
When Jake finally ceased his breath attack, the deafening noise of the battle was replaced by silence, broken only by the crackle of cooling metal.
Where the invincible villain once stood, there was nothing left but a glowing, smoking pool of slag and ruined rust, mixed with the sharp, sickening stench of boiled flesh and burnt iron.
Jake stood over the puddle, wiping a trail of sweat from his forehead.
He poked at a lump of cooling metal with the tip of his clawed feet, watching it crumble into useless ash.
He let out a heavy sigh, his scales slowly retracting into his skin.
"Ah, bullshit," Jake muttered, shaking his head in annoyance. "I melted the whole damn thing. I'm not even gonna get a souvenir out of this."