To cross another practice session of Union off his list, Mark went to the gym to the treadmills.

Running while purposefully breathing Union was great training, but unfortunately, Mark was fucking up somehow. He was succeeding in some sort of way, but then the fuckups happened, and he had no idea why.

Sweat dripping, pulse pounding, Mark ran at top speed, 24 kilometers per hour. He breathed in and out; in with the good, out with the bad—

He hit a sudden stride for some reason and his pace evened out, it was easy to run—

And then suddenly his breathing fucked up and he lost it and it was difficult to run.

That had happened several times so far. Mark was determined to figure out what he was doing wrong, and to fix it. Maybe it was other people around him breathing with purpose, draining the nearby air of ‘goodness’? Maybe they were breathing out too much ‘badness’ and thus Mark was accidentally breathing in miasma? He had no idea. Maybe he needed to point a fan at himself, to get more air throughput, to wash away the miasma? Or maybe Mark was ‘wearing out’ his ability to use Union? Astral body fatigue, as they call it? That was also highly possible…

Mark huffed and puffed as he ran, and he had a thought.

What was ‘goodness’? What was ‘badness’?

Did astral body fatigue count as ‘badness’?

Well…

Mark mentally added the idea of astral body fatigue to his idea of ‘badness’, and then he breathed out with purpose—

A gust of black smoke huffed out into the air in front of him, and then came right back in his face, thanks to the fans billowing across the entire row of treadmills. It smelled like something bad that he had no basis to understand, and it vanished in the air even before it got—

“Hey!” said the man running next to him, as he slowed down his machine, “The fuck?”

Someone said something in French that sounded like ‘disgusting’, but not quite.

Another person said, “Who did that!”

A few more people down the line complained.

Mark had already called out, “Sorry! Didn’t mean to do that!”

One angry woman pointed at a sign hanging up in front of them, between all the televisions and repeated down the wall several times. “Read the sign!”

‘Don’t use Talents, Powers, or otherwise, that might impact others!’

“Sorry! I didn’t know it would do that!” Mark turned off the treadmill and started to walk away, “Sorry! Sorry.”

Mark got out of there fast.

One tram ride later, Mark stepped out at a new running spot.

A track ran all around the entire Citadel, just in front of the wall that surrounded the place. Mark went out there, to where the wall held tens of meters tall and thick as multiple buildings on the right, while on the left lay open ground and scattered farms. Straight ahead, curving left, was a wide road that wasn’t a main road at all. It was just an empty space to ensure there was ample area between the wall and the farmlands of Citadel.

He went for a run.

Shoes pounded on hard-packed dirt and the wind whipped through his hair.

The road ahead was long, and it went around all of Citadel, but it also had tram stops everywhere. Mark could stop whenever he wanted.

It was nice.

When the course encountered a main road that went from the wall to the city, the circle road went into a tunnel underneath. They were short, brightly-lit tunnels, with cameras. They provided an escape from the hot world above. When the course went back above ground, Mark ran in the open sun, under the bright sky and in the breeze.

Mark ran, and he was not the only one out here, in the hot day.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

He passed people, and speedsters passed everyone, running like bullets around the entirety of Citadel. Mark laughed as he caught a glimpse of the same guy passing by twice, for that guy must have run around the entirety of Citadel already. The whole track was a good 130-ish kilometers long, and Mark was absolutely not going to do the whole thing…

But that was a new goal. One of many. ‘Run around all of Citadel without stopping’. That’d take around 6 hours, nonstop. He could do it. He could do that, with Union and Healthy Body. He could push himself in that way, and in so many others.

For Mark ran, open and as free as he could be, realizing that he was alive.

He was alive, and Mom and Dad wanted him to live, and he had so much life in front of him that it was scary and wondrous.

And he was sad. He missed his parents. They had already forgiven him for what he had done to help Addashield come back to humanity, but they couldn't have known he was going to hybridize into a dragon. No one had, except Addashield. But did that matter? Mark didn’t want to live his life for revenge, and his parents didn’t want him to live like that either; that was the important thing. Equally important, though, was the fact that Addashield had willingly killed kids and made hidden dragons every 10 years as a part of his Contract. Even if Addashield was a Hero of Humanity, he did some dark things to get there.

And Mark was terrified.

Addashield’s Dragon was a dragon. A ‘High Dragon’, whatever that meant. Only an idiot wouldn’t be scared of that thing Mark had seen in the sky. Mark had absolutely no way to fight that thing. He had no way to injure it at all. He knew this. He knew he was less than a bug to be squashed by that High Dragon.

And that High Dragon had called Mark a ‘brother’.

Mark would never get a real revenge. If the dragon proved to be a problem, all the rest of the world would come down on him long before Mark got the chance. But if all the dragon did was clear out kaiju and other dragons, and install himself as true Hero of Humanity, even though he wasn’t human, then all the world would love him.

So Mark… Mark… postponed the idea of revenge. To be revisited, later, when it wasn’t such an impossible dream.

Killing Addashield’s Dragon was just too large of an impossibility, and Mark had enthusiastically gone along with that whole mess of a situation in order to be the hero, anyway. Mark didn’t care for the news calling him a hero, for he certainly didn’t feel like one, and Addashield was back to being a ‘Hero of Humanity’ even if he wasn’t human… Right?

Mark had no idea what to make of all of that. It was too soon to know how he felt for real.

Mark focused on what he could actually do, and that was what he had planned on doing.

Getting stronger.

Going out into the world.

And making a positive difference.

Because Mark wasn’t going to lose anyone he cared about, ever again.

He’d find friends and fellow warriors, that could make up for his own lack. Organizations that would multiply his power. Artifacts to find, or maybe make. And he’d grow his own, personal power, as deep and as wide as he could. That meant learning everything about the world that had been hidden from him his whole life and stretching his Talents far beyond the norm.

For a High Dragon, born from ‘parents’ who had killed Mark’s own parents, had called him ‘brother’. Mark could not comprehend the entire meaning of that, or even the general idea of what that might have meant, but he knew enough. He knew that he needed more power than most people would ever rightly need in their life.

He needed the power to kill anything and he needed the power to save everyone.

Because even if he couldn’t reach Addashield’s Dragon, even if he forgave the son for the sins of the father, Mark knew he would absolutely be gunning for kaiju, monsters, and all the horrors of Daihoon and otherwise. That had always been the plan, after all. Mark would walk in the open, explore the world, and save small parts of it however he could, and however they needed saving.

His scope of ‘what needed saving’ was just larger than he had anticipated.

Union would get him there, along with his other Talents. Union was what Freyala used to become a Goddess of Healing and Protection. Other people had surely had that power since then, but only Freyala had achieved divinity, and only because she had reason to push herself that high. She was forged in the fires of the Reveal. She had lost so much, but still she worked to keep what she had left. It was the same for many people during that time. It was the same for most people who fought monsters.

Sadness was a luxury.

Action was a necessity.

Mark was not a god at all, but he had Union, a reason to rise high, and Adamantiumkinesis and Healthy Body.

It was more than enough.

Mark breathed in the good, then breathed out a flow of miasma that flowed away on the wind, vanishing, becoming little more than a distant memory.

He ran faster.

He ran stronger.

He tried not to think about the High Priestess, Holy Mother Julia Garin, and how she told him that she spent lives every day, to ensure that civilization survived. If Mark thought too much about that, then what, really, did his personal hatred of Addashield even amount to? If Addashield’s Dragon wasn’t actually Addashield, and if he was accepted by the world, then where did that leave Mark?

Would such a vendetta make Mark an enemy of the world?

… Maybe it would.

Mark scoffed at that thought.

He wasn’t going to be some stupid villain.