The dragon spread his building-sized wings wide into the clouds as he flew. The sun soaked into the silver scales of his long body and mist cooled him down. He waved his tail through the air, flicking at cloudbanks, the wind flowing over him like an ocean. At the speeds he flew, the air pressure almost felt like water. He shook his neck, stretching out, sending a ripple down his body as he beat his wings and ascended higher in the clouds. Spikes of adamantium rippled down his spine in the wind, ripping at clouds, gonging as they struck each other.

It was a nice sound.

It was the sound of power. Of wealth.

Sloane Addashield had never had this much adamantium before.

He still didn’t, not really.

… It was weird being a dragon.

Sloane had always heard it was a loss of self. A destruction of the individual. And it was. The Addashield of today was not the Addashield of last year. But Sloane had often considered the day he would have to abandon his humanity and accept dragonhood, and what it might mean for him. He never considered it in the open, of course. Becoming a dragon was a far-off possibility that he never let Kanda know about at all, and that he hoped he never had to use, because it was a death, of a sort.

Kanda was gone, though. Truly gone. But some of her mannerisms were still here. The call to be praised remained, and that was fine. The dragon was a lot more vain than Addashield used to be. Addashield liked nice things, yes, but he would have been aghast at carrying around a world’s worth of adamantium on his back. It was like wearing a target on one’s back, and also showing off too much, and it was so dangerous, but also, it was all under the dragon’s control, and more adamantium grew all the time.

Addashield would have been giddy with joy…

And the dragon was too. Hmm.

The dragon was not his father, and yet, he had an entire lifetime of his father’s memories.

But the desires were all different… sort of.

That’s what truly let the dragon know that he was not Addashield.

Yes, the dragon wanted to help humanity, just like Addashield. But Addashield became a Hero of Humanity because he could, and out of a horrific sense of guilt, and a true desire to help humanity.

The dragon had no guilt, but he did have that true desire. What, after all, was there to be guilty of? A few thousands dead, but the world saved for a generation? Maybe a lot more than that? That was an acceptable loss that any rightly-minded person would have accepted in a heartbeat.

… Addashield would have considered the past in exactly that way, too, though.

So was he Addashield, or not?

Looking back on ‘his father’s’ life, the dragon thought the man flawed, but decent. A good man. A Hero of Humanity. That’s what the dragon wanted to be, too. Addashield had burned all his connections to both worlds, though. This was both a blessing, and a curse. If there had been someone still alive, like Yunthal Brightwind, then the dragon would have gone to that person, in particular, and tried to establish himself through them. Would ‘dad’ have liked that?

No. That was dad’s life.

… Or was the dragon his own dad?

The dragon wasn’t sure.

The dragon sighed as he flew, thinking about how to connect to the world.

Daihoon was right out. That was dad’s world.

Earth was a better option. There was that Hero/Villain Program thing. The dragon could be a good hero through there…

Honestly, the biggest indicator that the dragon was a new person was his outlook on life. He wasn’t concerned about politics, or kaiju, or even other dragons. He just wanted to have an easy life, and he wanted a real connection to humanity. The easy life was practically guaranteed, because he was a High Dragon, and he had enough adamantium to shred absolutely anything.

The connection to humanity was harder to source.

That was probably why he had spoken of that guy, Mark, to reporters, and claimed him as a brother. It humanized the dragon, even though he remained firmly a building-sized dragon. The dragon hadn’t even intended that while claiming Mark as a brother, though… But Addashield had.

Seemed like the dragon still had Addashield’s instincts to talk obliquely to reporters, and to accomplish many things at the same time.

But the dragon just wanted a family to connect him to the world, right?

And yet, he knew he was not going to get that from Mark. The guy probably hated him, and he had every right to hate the dragon.

Honestly, the dragon was kinda furious at Kanda for making Addashield kill Mark’s parents. Mark ended up a tri-Talent, with the full Union Talent, and also Adamantiumkinesis. Healthy Body wasn’t anything too special to note, but it existed, and therefore Mark was a tri-Talent, and there were synergies everywhere with that Power. Mark was going to go far and probably live for a while.

Therefore, Mark was a good person to know. To be connected to.

… Eh!

That was enough thought spent on a guy who ultimately was beneath the dragon’s concern.

If Mark rose high enough to be of note, then maybe they’d speak again some day.

… Maybe Mark would even try to kill him. That’d be cute. Ultimately impossible, though. The dragon would need to instruct Mark how to fight better, if that should happen. That’s what big brothers were for, after all.

… Huh.

The dragon grinned.

Maybe it was useful to think of ‘that other person who was born at the same time as him, from the same parents/situation’. They had a word for that sort of thing, over on Daihoon; Talzarki. The rough translation to English was ‘Happenstance Sibling’. ‘Battle brothers’ or ‘war companions’ didn’t quite hit the same idea. A talzarki was more like a person who survived the same kaiju attack which leveled a city, and then they met each other and built and survived and thrived in their new, destroyed world. Sloane Addashield had been talzarki with Yunthal Brightwind. Addashield had a real family, of course, but that was 300 years ago and Addashield kinda just stopped caring about his technical-offspring when some disasters killed everyone from the main line. Brightwind was the only one who went on to make a true family, that he overlooked for hundreds of years and with great care. Addashield had always been closer to Brightwind’s family than he was to his own great, great, great...

… Huh.

Now there was a thought.

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Maybe the dragon couldn’t make a human family, but Mark could.

The dragon could be a great uncle! A family protector!

And that would show humans that he could be trusted, because of course he could be trusted.

And if people didn’t want to accept him into a city somewhere, then he could make his own city. Dragons always did that back on Daihoon, before Earth came into the picture and threw the dragons off. Addashield was a big part of that overthrowing, but even he had ‘allies’ among the dragons. People still needed grand protections from the bigger threats out there, and there was always a bigger threat out there, and the dragons only demanded farm loads of fresh food and tribute and stuff like that. Or at least the decent ones did. The political dragons were the actually dangerous ones, and it was only ever good to have a few of those around…

The dragon was a political dragon, wasn’t he?

The dragon grinned.

Maybe his future people could farm cows and he could bring rain! And they could build their little houses and maybe a castle or two for the dragon and he could make rivers and— And so much! Oh! This was a fun idea—

Oh. There’s a kaiju down there.

It was a mutated crab-type and it was chasing a boat-like thing. If the crab-part wasn’t enough of a reason to kill it —for those tasted amazing— the dragon could also get some credit for saving the humans!

Win/win.

The dragon dropped out of the sky like a divine hammer, crashing into the kaiju in the ocean, crunching it with ten thousand tons of adamantium spikes, mincing it to make sure it was dead. With his spikes lodged in the beast, the dragon hovered above the beast, observing its corpse. It was going to be delicious, for sure. The whole encounter took less than 30 seconds and the beast tried to fight back with high-pressure water jets, shot out of barnacle beasts that grew on the kaiju. It was a pretty standard big-kaiju/small-supporter monster configuration, and all pieces of that ecosystem were now very dead.

The dragon cast a gaze at the people the kaiju was chasing.

It was a transit hover-type vessel that was smoking a bit, so they probably had needed to land due to emergencies, or whatever. Maybe a long range water bolt from the now-dead kaiju barnacles had gotten it? Yes. That was it. It looked like something had clipped the front end.

They were screaming even more now that the dragon was here, hovering with wings spread wide, letting them gaze upon his magnificence. Why were they screaming so much?

The dragon huffed and told them, “What! I killed the monster! You’re safe now, except I think your ship is still sinking. Want a ride somewhere close?”

The screaming stopped. They whispered about ‘That’s Addashield’s Dragon!’ and ‘Oh FUCK!’.

The dragon tried not to smirk—

Someone stepped out and said, “Go away, dragon! We don’t want you here!”

The dragon scoffed.

The people with that rude person rapidly beat that person and then apologized to the dragon, but the dragon just huffed.

“Most dragons would kill you for that. I should know; I killed enough of those bastards over the centuries…” Or Sloane had? Hmm. “Or maybe dad did. Whatever! I can take you somewhere. I think I passed Argentina back there.”

“We thank you for your kindness and could not think to trespass upon the rescue you have already given us. In an hour, we’ll be back up and flying!”

“Nonsense! I’ll take you to Argentina.”

The dragon would hear no more objections. With a bit of an adamantium shell, he grabbed the ship and protected the people from the strong wind as he flew them back to Argentina. He found a city easily enough, the city wall rising on the horizon…

And there were explosions?

Oh! It seemed the city was experiencing a monster wave! Looked like malformations; dog-type. Maybe more like a giant tiger-type, actually. Either way, the turrets on the walls were mowing down the monsters and some heroes on the wall were doing their best.

They’d win the fight; the dragon easily saw that.

But the dragon wanted to help.

Turning his spikes into a blender of metal, into a minor hurricane of death, the dragon wiped out hundreds of tiger-things within minutes. It was so easy as a dragon to cover tens of kilometers with adamantium death, and then sweep a hundred kilometer-wide wave into broken, dead mush. When that was over the dragon set down his cargo of a rescued vessel just a kilometer outside of the city, pulling his adamantium shell away and putting it back on his back, in the shape of spikes.

Everyone was completely unharmed, but now the wall turrets were shooting him, which kinda stung. That was why he had set the cargo so far away; so they wouldn’t be caught in the friendly fire.

The dragon shielded himself with adamantium as he approached the city again. He raised his voice, “I found some people in the water, running from a kaiju! I set them down over there! Good luck to you all.”

He flew away, away from the shooting turrets, back to the crab kaiju.

Crab kaiju was absolutely delicious.

After the meal, the dragon found some more problems to solve.

Problems were just so much easier to fix when you were a dragon.

Addashield should have become a dragon a century ago, but then, of course, Kanda would have fucked it up if he had ever made actual plans in that direction...

Hmm.

The dragon was still unsure if he was Addashield, or not.

The dragon, unnamed as of yet, wondered if it was time to pick a new name and move on, or pick ‘Addashield’ and go back as much as he could.

… Sons often took their father’s names, right?

Hmm.

Brightwind’s demon, which had been sister to Addashield’s demon Kanda, was named Adank.

‘Mark’ became Karm?

… No, it would be Kram?

The dragon chortled.

No.

He was not a ‘Kram’, thank you very much.

- - - -

Mark sneezed.

“… Huh.” Lola raised an eyebrow at Mark, then she asked, “Was that a normal sneeze, or a miasma sneeze?”

“… A normal sneeze? I don’t smell any miasma?”

It was the end of the first week of Healing Club. Mark’s training mission was next week, though he had hung out with Eliot and Isoko twice again. He had decided to spend next week up here on the stands of the arena, and not move on to the smaller, more intense brawny sparring courses, because stressing Union in these wide scale applications was doing wonders for his astral body growth.

He had checked out his gains in the scanner just this morning.

Body, Healthy Body: 020

Shaper, Adamantium: 019

Mind: 16

Natural, Union: 029

Soul: 18

Arch: 13

Almost tier 3 in Union! And he had reached tier 2 in Healthy Body.

Healthy Body was supposed to cap out at 25, but Lola already thought that Mark would go higher than that, but she couldn’t tell him how high.

Lola looked at him. “It’s weird for you to sneeze. Usually that’s the sign of an attack, or a miasma problem. Keep that in mind.”

Mark wasn’t sure how to take that information, because he certainly didn’t feel attacked— “Wait. That means you haven’t sneezed in… in a long time?”

“Correct. I have not. Not unless I was being attacked.”

“… Huh.”

“Just keep it in mind.” Lola moved on, saying, “Anyway. Repetition of lessons is always useful. Now is a good time to go back to those cleaning magics, to make yourself pure, so that you aren’t affected by atmospheric or environmental attacks. Mind you, you still will be affected by those, for an area effect attack is always going to be dangerous to you due to the ephemeral nature of Union, but there are ways to make it easier to function in such areas…”

Mark listened. He adjusted his breathing and heartbeat accordingly.

He learned.