Worm

by John Mccrae Wildbow

  Hisoka, suffocated on powder, as Kenta almost had. Arata, gasping for air he couldn’t seem to pull into his lungs. Ryo’s head had a dent in it, and his eyes were unfocused. Jirou’s airway had been blocked, much as Daiichi’s had. Both Takeo and Shuji lay dead with no apparent wounds.

  All dead or dying, with no blood spilled. Technically.

  Kenta waited, holding Arata’s hand as the boy slowly died, then he straightened.

  Idiots, he thought, with a degree of anger. It had been foolish to escalate the fight after seeing what the woman was capable of. He’d be more careful of who he fought in the future.

  ■

  November 2nd, 1999

  Lung toyed with a flame in one of his hands as he watched the great lizard-man’s rampage.

  The Sentai Elite were battling the thing, assisted by the gaijin heroes. Once every few minutes, someone passed him, flying, carrying wounded. Lung didn’t care. It was about timing. If he was going to do this, he’d do it right.

  A tidal wave rocked the area, and Lung had to hold on to a nearby building to keep from falling. Heroes were swept up in the wash of water, and buildings were leveled.

  The anticipation of a fight stirred inside him. He could feel the scales beneath his skin, just itching to be brought to the surface. The fire, too, was warm in the core of his body.

  This was a fight that was worthy of him. The trick was orchestrating it so he wouldn’t die before he got strong enough. It was his biggest drawback. The fight… the heroes were stalling in their own way as well. He could tell by the way the heroes moved. They fought in shifts.

  Eidolon was fighting now. He hurled globes of energy the size of small houses at Leviathan, and each one was sufficient to knock the creature away, flaying away the thing’s skin and simultaneously slowing it. The hero’s own hydrokinesis deflected the lizard’s ranged attacks, diverting them skyward or off to one side. Leviathan couldn’t attack from range, and couldn’t get close without getting pummeled. He attempted to run, only for Japan’s foremost team, the Sentai Elite, to step into his way, blocking his progress.

  “Are you fighting?”

  Lung turned to look at the speaker. A woman in a yellow and black Sentai costume.

  “Yes,” he answered, his voice a rumble. His power had granted him additional strength, durability, regeneration and control over fire even in his ordinary form, but the changes to his body had altered his voice.

  She glanced at the fight, as if unsure whether she should be participating or talking to Lung, “You’re a yankee?”

  “No.”

  “You’re a villain?”

  “I am me.”

  Another tidal wave rocked the area. This time, the water reached Lung, sweeping up to waist level and forcing him to hold the windowsill again to avoid losing his footing. He caught the Sentai woman’s wrist to keep her from being washed away.

  He could feel the scales beneath his skin stirring, threatening to rise, eager.

  “Sumimasen deshita,” she said, once the water was mostly gone.

  Lung only grunted a response.

  “Why are you back here?”

  “I’m waiting,” he answered. “And you should be fighting.”

  “I can’t do anything. My power hurts people, but it doesn’t hurt him. I’m not permitted to leave.”

  The heroes were winning, slowly but surely. Slowly more than anything. Each tidal wave was doing catastrophic damage in the meantime.

  I’ll fight, he thought.

  With that very thought, his power started stirring into effect. The scales began growing, slowly but surely, bristling like a sea urchin’s spines as they arranged themselves. The very anticipation of the fight was serving to fuel his abilities. When he changed, it would be rapid, accelerated by the sheer threat his opponent posed.

  He abandoned his handhold and began striding through the flooded streets, towards Leviathan and the others.

  He’d made a promise to himself. He wouldn’t lose again. Victory, it didn’t matter. But losing? He wouldn’t accept it, not like the loss he’d faced at the hands of the unnamed woman.

  And that very thought, that certainty, it stirred his power further, as though it were something alive, something other.

  Another tidal wave hit. Leviathan disappeared in the midst of it, reappearing elsewhere. Lung could hear the destruction as the beast clawed and tore through the base of one building that heroes were perched on. He quickened his pace, felt himself growing stronger as he got closer.

  The beast was otherwise occupied… this was the time.

  “You’re going to die!” the Sentai in black and yellow shouted.

  I’ll never die, Lung thought. I might fall, but I’ll come back again and again. I might falter, but I’ll return with twice the fury.

  The waves were more frequent now. Buildings here had been built to tight specifications, to remain standing in the face of earthquakes and tsunamis, but it wasn’t enough. Barely a minute passed between the strikes, with each wave reaching further inland than the last, and only a handful of buildings stood at their full height, where there had been a city here only an hour ago.

  It was in one of those brief moments of respite that the ground shuddered. Lung nearly lost his footing. When he looked up at the night sky, he could see that the tallest standing buildings were swaying, like fronds bending in the wind.

  Somewhere he couldn’t see in the gloom, a building swayed too far and crashed to the ground.

  Eidolon backed off, and Alexandria stepped in, flying into close quarters with the beast, battering him. He tried to duck beneath the water, but she broke off to fly beneath, using her strength and the speed of her flight to part the water, cutting off his retreat. He slowed as he entered open air, though slow wasn’t the word. Legend caught him square in the chest, and Leviathan slowed long enough for Alexandria to catch him by the tail.

  She flew straight up, holding the monster by the tail. Between Leviathan’s dark scales and Alexandria’s black costume, they disappeared in the gloom.

  Leviathan fell, and the resulting impact was oddly out of sync with his mass. The water in particular seemed to react, a single ripple extending outward, clearing an area around him of any and all water.

  Lung braced himself, felt the water collide with him with a force like a locomotive, was summarily dragged beneath, trapped, suffocating.

  Scales pierced his skin, strength surged through him, and his pyrokinesis boiled around him, disrupting the water’s flow, rendering it to steam.

  Other heroes were pushed back a hundred meters, but Lung was already standing, burning himself dry, advancing on the fight, where Eidolon was again engaging with Leviathan.

  Another tidal wave struck, barely giving the defending forces time to recover from the last assault. Lung lost his footing, lost another dozen feet of headway.

  More scales were sprouting, they were growing en masse now. His blood coursed through his veins at twice the usual speed. Fire burned around him perpetually now. He was naked, the burned rags of his clothes swept away by water, and he didn’t care. He was in freefall, of a sort, but it wasn’t the ground waiting for him. It was Leviathan.

  His flame blasted out to pelt the Endbringer. It didn’t do any substantial damage.

  Lung ran, and it took him an instant to get used to his newfound strength, to find a stride and a rhythm.

  The ground was shaking almost constantly, now. The lasers, Eidolon’s strikes, the very impacts of the blows Alexandria delivered, the Sentai’s attacks, the barrages from assisting heroes. A cacaphony of noise, light and violence.

  He struck Leviathan, and was struck in turn, his bones broken, internal organs smashed.

  He very nearly blacked out, but his rage won out. He struggled to his feet, found one femur in two distinct pieces. He knelt instead, resting his weight on one knee, the other foot planted on the ground, taloned toes biting into asphalt, and he directed a constant stream of fire at the Endbringer.


  A flick of Leviathan’s tail sent him sprawling.

  But Lung knew he’d reached a critical point. His leg was already healing, the changes speeding up. He stopped to hold his leg, pull the bones into what was more or less the right position, so they could bond.

  Anyone who crosses me will pay twice over, he thought.

  A Sentai in purple and green offered him a hand. Lung ignored the man, standing on his own. Again, a stream of fire, but the color was more blue than red.

  The Sentai joined him, adding their ranged fire to his. They had a man who mass produced their armor and weapons, each with wrist-mounted laser guns, rifles at their hips. Sixteen or seventeen of them opened fire with both weapons at the same time.

  Leviathan turned, struck. Some Sentai used powers to soften or deflect the incoming scythe of water.

  Leviathan charged, and Lung stepped forward to meet the brute, roared in defiance.

  He wasn’t strong enough. Leviathan knocked him aside, and Lung rolled, putting taloned hands and feet beneath him before rushing forward, shallow leaps that carried him over the water that was knee-high to the humans. Barely halfway up Lung’s own calves.

  He found handholds in the shallow wounds on Leviathan’s back and shoulders. The abomination moved, and the watery echo that followed its movements crashed into Lung. Not enough to unseat him.

  The tidal wave that struck wasn’t enough either, nor Leviathan’s speed as the creature swam. Lung dug deeper, clawed flesh away. Deeper in Leviathan’s body, the flesh was only harder, the ichor making it slick.

  Lung roared, burned head to toe as he clawed deeper still. If Leviathan’s muscle was as hard as steel, Lung would burn hot enough to melt steel.

  Leviathan surfaced, and Lung found his way up to the monster’s neck. He tried to reach around, and his arm shifted, reconfiguring to be a fraction longer. Lung’s legs, arms, and talons were growing as well.

  Stronger, larger. Another man might have been afraid of what he was becoming, but this was only continuing the freefall. Freedom.

  Leviathan shook him free, and Lung found no trouble in putting his feet under him. His mouth strained, opened wider than it should have, four individual mouthparts flexing, bristling with teeth, his own lips buried somewhere deep inside, altered.

  Water steamed and boiled around Lung’s calves as he stood as straight as he was able. He’d changed more, his shoulders broadening, his chest heavy with muscle. He had to rest his taloned hands on the ground to maintain his balance. His senses focused on Leviathan like a laser, taking in everything, even the faint creaking of the monster’s movements and the Sentai’s muscles, and the infintesmally small burbles of ichor bubbling forth from Leviathan’s wounds.

  The ground was rumbling constantly, to the point that the local heroes were starting to seem more concerned about the landscape than about Leviathan.

  There was a crack, and Lung was put in mind of the gun Daiichi had fired, more than two years ago. A loud sound, a wrong sound.

  The ground shifted underfoot. Heroes scrambled for cover, scrambled to run or save their friends, and water rushed forth. Lung merely set his taloned toes in the ground, ignoring the water, the debris, and the people that flowed past him.

  Leviathan charged him.

  He can’t ignore me now, Lung thought. He was only half the height of the Endbringer, but it was enough. Fire against water, claw against claw. Leviathan hit harder, but Lung healed faster. Every second he fought without Leviathan tearing him in half was a second that was to his advantage.

  The ground parted, and Lung could hear the water rushing in to fill the void. The landmass had parted, and ocean water was streaming in from miles away.

  Leviathan tried to drag him closer to the chasm, no doubt wanting to fight in that churning abyss. Lung planted toes in the ground and resisted.

  Alexandria was there in a heartbeat, helping, keeping Leviathan from finding his way inside. She drove the monster back, bought Lung purchase.

  She said something in English, but Lung didn’t know the language. The only others who spoke Japanese or Chinese were gone, now. They’d evacuated who they could, and the remainder were left to drown. The only ones left were the indomitable, and for now, Lung was among them. They fought to keep Leviathan from continuing his rampage, to keep him from carrying on until he’d wiped away all of Japan. Lung just fought.

  Fought for minutes, hours. Fought until four wings extended from his back, and he burned so hot that the steel-like flesh just beneath Leviathan’s skin was blackening and charring to ash by proximity alone. Until he was larger than Leviathan, until even Alexandria hesitated to get too close.

  For that indeterminate period of time, Lung was king of the world.

  But he began to weaken. The lesser heroes were gone, washed away or helping others to evacuate, the greater heroes a distance away.

  And Lung had nothing to fuel his power. He was engaged in a fight of ten times the scale he’d been in before, and his power was leaving him.

  The landmass disappeared beneath the pair of them, the shards of land drawn beneath the waves, and Lung was now fighting Leviathan in the monster’s home ground.

  For an instant, he thought he would die. But Leviathan, wounded, broke away and fled into the depths.

  Lung only sank, too dense to float, growing wearier by the second as his power left him, the fight over.

  He’d expected a feeling of satisfaction, but he knew he hadn’t delivered a killing blow, that he had been a long, long way from it, though he’d done more damage than anyone had in years.

  His enemy couldn’t be killed. Lung had become something more terrifying than the Endbringer, but there had been nobody to see. None of the public to recognize him, to respect and fear him.

  He sank, feeling a kind of despair. Too tired to move, he touched bottom.

  Alexandria found him in the depths and brought him to the surface.

  ■

  August 13th, 2002

  The walls of the C.U.I. prison loomed around him.

  Lung fumed, but his power was denied him. He paced, punched walls, burned the concrete with his power. All around him, the area was pockmarked with the wounds that marked his periodic struggles.

  They’d had him in regular cells before. It had been a learning process for them. He’d found that surviving in a prison like this involved being a true monster, so he’d bowed his head to one boss. When this boss had discovered what he was capable of, he’d attacked another leader in the prison. The ensuing war had ended with Lung being placed in higher security, until he fought the man who’d brought him food, very nearly escaping before Tōng Líng Tǎ, who never showed herself, encased him in a mountain of stone.

  All in all, three years since he’d fought Leviathan. Two years since he and his mother had come here to Chaohu. A year and eight months since he’d been arrested by the Yàngbǎn.

  A year and four months since Tōng Líng Tǎ had buried him here at the base of this pit, with the same routine. Twice a day, he would get two packages with food. Every day, he would pace, trying to tap into his abilities, finding them beyond his reach. He would struggle, fume, scream, and wonder if he was going mad with the solitude. Sometimes it rained, and he found himself knee deep in water. Sometimes it was cold enough he couldn’t sleep. Always, he was here, in a pit so deep that the hole at the top looked no larger than his handspan when he held his hand overhead.

  Every seven days, Tōng Líng Tǎ used her powers on the walls. The floor, she left alone, but the walls were wiped clean, her power to manipulate stone turning the four impossibly tall walls of Lung’s cell into flawlessly smooth surfaces. She would absorb any and all of the trash that remained from his meals, any of the wildlife that had accidentally found their way into the pit, and all of Lung’s leavings, which he customarily left in one corner of his cell.

  Every fourteen days, like clockwork, the Yàngbǎn opened communications.

  Lung was waiting, waiting for Tōng Líng Tǎ to
use her power. Like a ripple traveling over the surface of water, he could see her power extend down the walls of his cell. It touched the base of the wall and traveled along the floor.

  Lung didn’t resist as the ground swept over his legs, trapping him from the knee down.

  They appeared, descending from above, floating. Two of them this time. They made no mention of his lack of clothes or his shaggy hair. Both wore identical uniforms, red jackets and pants, their red masks turning their faces into overlarge, featureless gemstones with coverings over their ears

  At each of their shoulders, there was a number. One-six and two-seven. Not ones he’d met before. No names. No identities.

  “Will you join us?“

  Always, the same questions, always in Chinese. He didn’t answer.

  “The American heroes approached you. What deals did you strike?“

  Again, he didn’t answer. He’d tried to tell them the truth, that he’d told the heroes to go away. The Endbringers couldn’t die. There was no point to fighting them. Twice they had approached him with better deals, promising him the world, but he’d turned them down twice in turn. He’d considered the idea of taking the third offer, but then he’d followed his mother to the C.U.I. states and lost touch with the Americans.

  Not a real concern.

  “You will stay here until you answer our questions.”

  “I will join,” he told them.

  They exchanged a glance between them.

  He moved one hand and saw them flinch. They wouldn’t burn any more than the other Yàngbǎn members had, but they still feared him.

  It made him feel better than anything in the past long months.

  “The Yàngbǎn is the solution,” the taller of the two said. “You agree this is truth?”

  “No,” Lung said.

  “That is a shame.”

  “I want out of here,” Lung told them. “That is all. If I must kneel, I will.”

  “We need to hear the right answers before we can go any further. We will come again in two weeks time and we will ask you again. If you give us the answer we require, we can move on to the next step.”

  And, Lung thought, carry down the chain of questions, steps, and procedures until I fail. You will break me and brainwash me until I am one of you.