Icon v1

(A Worm AltPower AU)

"…the children, just shoot," Lung snarled. "Doesn't matter your aim, just shoot. You see one lying on the ground? Shoot the little bitch twice more to be sure. We give them no chances to be clever or lucky, understand?"

Lung had a deep, commanding voice that carried easily up to the roof from which I was listening. It was dark enough that I doubted either the gang members or their leader would spot my as long as I did not draw attention to myself. On the other hand, my enhanced senses enabled me to both see and hear them with no problems.

There were around twenty or twenty-five of them. All of them seemed to have some sort of weapon, including far too many guns.

They were Asian, some wearing hoodies, others wearing headbands or long-sleeved shirts, but all wore the same colors. Red and green. They were members from the local gang that left the tags 'Azn Bad Boys', ABB for short, all over the East end of the city. More than a few went to my school. As far as the criminal element in Brockton Bay went, they weren't small potatoes. While the typical gang members were just young men and a few women forcibly recruited from Brockton Bay's high schools and lower-class neighborhoods, their leadership were capes. And not just any capes.

Oni Lee was bad enough, a teleporting duplicator, or duplicating teleporter, who favored knives and hand grenades as his weapons of choice. But even with his rumored body count he was nothing on the leader of the gang. Lung, their top boss, had gone toe to toe with whole teams of heroes and had managed to keep himself out of jail. He was one of, if not the, strongest capes in the city. No one in her right mind wanted to face him by herself, especially when he had so many of his soldiers with him.

But I wasn't certain I had a choice. Not if they were going to kill kids.

I looked at him as he harangued his men into a killing frenzy. He was a little over six and a half feet, which put him head and shoulders above most of the gang members. He had an ornate metal mask over his face, and wasn't wearing a shirt, despite the chill. Sprawling tattoos over chiseled muscles covered his body from the neck down, all depicting dragons from Eastern mythology. A shiver passed though me as I felt his twin auras of animal charisma and raw power.

I levitated back silently, inches above the noisy gravel, and pulled out my new mobile. Dad had agreed to my carrying it, insisted on it, when I started going on my training patrols. I used the preset contact for the PRT hotline.

PRT Hotline. What is your emergency?

"Lung and twenty plus ABB gang members are gathering the parking lot behind the Duncan Building on Frasier. The bangers are all armed and Lung is ordering them to kill children. My name is Icon. I am a new hero. I am going to try to hold their attention while you get me some back up. Clear?"

You should not attempt to approach Lung. Please wait for PRT and Protectorate forces. They should be on site in fifteen minutes. Again, under no circumstances should you approach Lung.

"Under these circumstances, I don't think I have any other choice. Icon out!" I set the phone on a ventilation duct, pointed towards the parking lot and started the video recording. I did not hang up the call and hoped they would be able to trace the signal and maybe hear what was about to happen.

With a last swallow to try to moisten my suddenly dry mouth, I looked down at the crowd of enemies.

I had been both lucky and diligent in the past two months and had accumulated almost a hundred charges. This, along with my physical training to raise my base capabilities, had given me some real progress towards my goal. But I still wasn't Supergirl. I wasn't even close. With a half-ton weight limit, I was barely stronger than Captain America. Though I could fly and bounce small arms fire off my skin, which he couldn't. And I had my arc beam and taser touch. I even had two stored charges to boost those powers further before the fight began.

I knew even the armed gang members were no real danger to me, as long as I avoided getting dogpiled. I could stay out of their reach easily sniping at them, though that would remove my most effective attacks. It wasn't them I was worried about. It was Lung. I was in no way ready to face him.

Yet there he was. I sighed. This was going to suck.

I don't know whether he heard me or if he saw my movement out of the corner of his eye, but somehow, he knew I was there. He pointed at me and his men opened fire.

I grabbed one of my reserve charges and dropped it in to my resistant defenses. This supercharged both my general toughness and my environmental resistance. While he wasn't throwing fireballs yet, he would be soon. The extra defense helped me tank the fusillade of gunfire as I grabbed a dumpster and used it to plow through half the crowd. Mooks went flying or crashing into each other. I wanted to give out an appropriate quip, like Spiderman, but couldn't think of one. Nor did I think they would hear me over the general tumult.

I felt new charges pop into existence as the gang bangers went down. It always felt like I was playing one of those videogames Greg was always going on about.

Then Lung plowed into me.

It was worse than flying into a wall. I was slammed back and down, cutting a furrow in the asphalt of the parking lot. I shook it off and flew to my feet. I knew that Lung got stronger the longer a fight went on. I thought I might have a chance to take him down now, before he got more powerful.

I dropped the three charges I now had, one from my reserve and two new, into my power punch and pasted a right hook across Lung's chin. Energy surged from my fist to at least partially penetrate the steel mask and whatever other defenses he had. It sent him barreling backwards. I rushed to follow.

Three more pounding blows delivered at jackhammer speed and I thought the fight might be over. Then Lung exploded. Not metaphorically. He detonated in a blast of rolling fire that set his clothes, several pieces of litter, and one of his gang members alight.

The heat was too much. Pain washed over me. I could smell my black hair burning.

As I stumbled blindly backwards, I felt another charge pop. And almost as quickly, I felt the new charge drop into increasing my fire resistance. Sometimes my subconscious, or possibly my power itself, seemed to determine the best way to spend charges gained in the middle of fights. I occasionally wondered if a power could have a mind of its own. This time the choice, whoever made it, was the right one and I felt the pain in my skin recede.

Lung roared a challenge. He held out his hand to me, as he began to bounce on his toes, gesturing me forward. I suspected he was grinning behind his dragon mask. I glanced around. His men were retreating to the edge of the lot, putting distance between themselves and their fiery leader. It looked like no one wanted to meddle in their master's sport. It was a good way to get burned.

I tried surprising him with my arc blast. But the electro-kinetic bolt, especially at its default level, was too weak for him to notice.

He shook his head and rumbled "No! Fight me!"

"If you insist …" I charged in and we traded a half dozen blows, like fighters in a ring. He was getting bigger, and if I used my flight to maintain height parity, I lost power to my blows and blocks as I lost traction and could not use my full body's strength.

So, I set myself on the ground and kept pounding. Every charge that popped was automatically dropped into either defense or attack. The extra power from the first few charges expired after the normal three minutes, but new charges kept me in the game.

My defenses were increasing. My supercharged power punches were able to damage Lung even through his steel plates. And, as the fight progressed, I noticed a new power that was partially nullifying Lung's. He was regenerating more slowly. Even his growth rate seemed to decrease.

This did not mean I was winning, or even holding my own. Six minutes into the fight, the dragon was tossing me across the lot, slamming me into buildings, and stomping me into the mostly melted pavement. His men had all fled at this point as there was nowhere left unburnt, and the surrounding buildings were half-destroyed.

"You know, I can keep this up all night," I quipped as I pulled myself out of the viscous tar pit the asphalt had become. "Why don't we call it a draw and go bowling instead?" Mom's comics had demonstrated the importance of heroic humor during super battles.

Lung just looked at me with what I figured was draconic confusion.

I sighed and rocketed up in a parabolic arc, attempting to slam the dragon down into the sticky blacktop. He was becoming faster than me as well. He dodged and I managed to twist so that I rolled rather than slamming into the ground. He followed, kicking and stomping my recumbent form.

I punched his ankle. It snapped. By the time I had regained my feet, it had already healed. Whatever nullification power I had developed, it was also being overcome by Lung's continued evolution. I was still gaining the occasional new charge, but I was not growing as fast as him.

Ten minutes into the battle, there was not a building left standing in two blocks from the parking lot. Which was too bad, because I could have use somewhere to hide from the now twenty-foot-tall dragon. With every second Lung was growing stronger, faster, tougher, and more deadly. While I was starting to exhaust my last reserves. My charges were almost gone. My defenses were no longer able to withstand either his heat or his blows. All I could do now was try to stay out of his range, which meant my new power suppression field was could not slow his growth. I could not even fly away as he had his own wings and could take me in the air.

I was in a lot of trouble.

He lined up a flame blast. I dodged up. But he had anticipated that and used his wing to collapse the last standing wall of one of the buildings on top of me. The falling masonry and steel slammed me to the unforgiving ground.

Right at the dragon's feet.

Lung roared in victory as I worked to dig myself out from under the rubble. He looked down on me as he slowly raised his massive clawed forefoot. I was still to tangled to move away, so I braced myself, catching the descending limb. I struggled to hold it as Lung leaned into his attack. He made a bizarre chuffing sound that I finally realized was laughter. He was laughing as he tried to crush me under his foot.

Then Lung screamed. And leapt away. I turned to follow him and saw a man in dark blue body armor with silver highlights. There was a sharply angled v-shaped visor covering his eyes and nose. A well-trimmed beard lined his chin. And in his hand was his famous halberd. Armsmaster, the leader of the local Protectorate, had finally come.

Lung was looking at Armsmaster in what appeared to be astonishment, possibly that the lone hero would dare attack him, definitely that the tinker had managed to draw blood though the dragon's steely scales with that surprise attack. For a moment the two glared at each other.

I took advantage of that moment to slam a power punch into the side of the dragons nearest knee. I thought at even a momentary disabling might buy time for more of the Protectorate to arrive.

Lung tried to swat me away. I caught his foreleg and hung on, pounding at his joints as he tried to shake me off.

Armsmaster grasped the moment to lay in a series of shallow slashes. Just deep enough to slice through the scales, drawing blood. My accelerated cognition allowed me to notice he was leaving small injectors inside each open wound. These were left inside the dragon's body when the wounds healed over.

I continued to cling to the monster, letting go only to dodge fire blasts or direct physical attacks. I always alighted somewhere else on Lung. Very quickly the great beast started slowing down. A minute later he was shrinking. Two minutes after Armsmaster's first injection the ABB leader finally collapsed to the ground, unconscious and fully human.

The Protectorate hero quickly secured him with steel shackles, containment foam, and some sort of metal cage he retrieved from his motorcycle.

While he worked, I sat watching and recovering. My own regeneration was much slower than Lung's, but my cuts and burns had started to heal by the time I dropped completely out of supercharge. I conducted an internal inventory. My power let me keep exacting track of my powers and advancement.

Let's see … I thought. I started the fight at Brute 3, Mover 3, Striker 2, Thinker 2, Blaster 1, Changer 1, and Breaker 1. I used two saved charges and gained another fifteen during the fight. Now I have Brute 4, Striker 3, and a brand-new Trump 1. I'll have to look more into that one. It doesn't really fit with my planned Supergirl build, but it did save my bacon tonight.

"Icon, I presume?" Armsmaster asked from ten feet away. "Do you need any medical assistance? PRT is on the way."