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Almighty Aurochs meets the Divine Dragon! Dramatic 2nd Issue
Author's Corner: Cosmic horrors, beasts from beyond, alien invaders... Since time immemorial we have feared what comes from beyond, but with our new homegrown heroes, do we really have to worry? hitoshuraprime doen't, I do, and together we bring this issue to you!
Sarah looked out at the crumbling world before her. Living with superheroes, becoming one, loving one, it didn't really mean much in the face of seeing the sky break. She knew, empirically, that she was invulnerable and whatever it was probably would not hurt her, but internalizing the idea was an entirely different problem.
Daylight and nighttime appeared in stripes across the sky, every so often a single, impossibly long and slender claw emerging from the day to charge for the earth. Sometimes it left craters. Sometimes other heroes rose to try and push it back, holding it off until it vanished. Sometimes it would catch something and disappear with it. Every time it pressed the world to the limit merely from being there.
Sarah might have whimpered.
“If you're not ready, we don't have to do this...” Victoria stated from next to her. The cowgirl had been her idol, and now was looking to her as a peer.
Sarah averted her gaze, not wanting to come so far only to disappoint, when she saw it. A long tendril was emerging from behind their very building, snaking around an emergency hospital. Great clots of it tore apart, inky blackness spilling over Sarah, leaving a strange shine as she attempted to dismantle the strand piece by piece. She hadn't even realized she was doing it, body kicking into overdrive and sending her down faster than she could process. One moment she was almost thinking of the deaths it would cause, the next she was already halfway through the battle.
It wasn't easy to tear apart. That was the concerning thing. They hadn't actually been able to measure her strength, and this tiny piece was enough to leave her shaking as she pulled. A firm hand landed atop her own, and Victoria was there.
“Good eye, champ, not a bad priority target.” the gold blur winked at her, and Sarah steadied herself, both of them tearing the entity into ribbons before standing back.
Sarah just looked at her partner. It was simultaneously midnight and noon, about as far from a sunset as could ever exist, but it was still just a little bit romantic.
At least, in the classic sense.
They took off for the skies, flying at supersonic speeds to the source of the problem, rising up and up past the bars of night... and into space. It was Sarah's first time up there, where nothing could live, and it was a surreal feeling to be in the midst of so much nothing and remain perfectly fine.
It couldn't compete with what she saw below, however. The artificial starry sky was still visible from this side. In place of the blue-green marble she had seen in so many pictures and expected a touching view of now, there were only small squares visible through a cage of that same bland starry night pattern, wrapped around the entire planet and drawing tighter.
It was like the entire planet was a fish, being drawn in to a ball of light that shone brighter than the sun. A sphere was all that was visible of the invaders, stark white and occasionally releasing probes or lines, but Sarah already felt a sense of purpose behind it.
It was not one she approved of. The world was big, filled with too many people and too many stories to treat as casually as this thing was, and she felt an aggression build inside her. If they were to be treated like a fish, she'd show him they were an octopus. Something capable of escaping any net. As Sarah raised her claw to strike, a pat on the back reminded her that she was not alone before Victoria took off to make the first strike.
It was... underwhelming. One moment Victoria was there, the next she was striking the target of their wrath with a blow that by rights had enough momentum to crack a planet. The invader didn't respond. Victoria didn't respond. With no air to be displaced, with no medium to carry sound, with miles upon miles of distance to the target, there was no flash to the blow. One moment they were apart, the next they had connected, and the most profound nothing had come from it.
It was not an encouraging sight; but Sarah was done needing encouragement. She charged in herself, raw power carrying her reactionless through space as the world blurred below her and she struck at the ropes binding the planet. She pulled her claws as tight as they would go, cutting at the continent sized bindings, willing herself to tear them all apart and free the planet while the main body was busy.
She could almost do it. Bit by bit, but they were simply enormous, even with her strength. She willed herself to go faster, then faster, then faster still. Making rings around the part, making cuts that all helped one another, scoring it and pulling it, not caring what it was made of. It was a frenzy that could have destroyed almost anything, and eventually, she made it through a strand. She pulled with triumph, releasing part of the net as she looked for her partner, only to see a disheartening scene.
She still had coils to go. Hundreds. Possibly more. Even as she looked, the one she had snapped was growing back. Unfortunately, that wasn't the worst part. Victoria, the Almighty Aurochs, her paragon, was flying past the beast, apparently unconscious. It happened in slow motion, her iron body limp for the first time, drifting almost delicately towards Mars.
Sarah took just one more look at the regenerating coil, before flying off to catch her and get her back in the fight. It seemed like miles to get to her, Sarah screaming at her body to move her faster, the lack of real connection to her powers beginning to frustrate her, but eventually she made it. She swooped delicately behind Victoria, placing a hand on her shoulder, hoping to stabilize her delicately... and losing balance as a powerful pressure went through her.
Sarah had just one moment to wonder if maybe everybody was moving a lot faster than she gave them credit for before getting swept up. The sheer force of the simple contact sent her hurtling past her ability to right, getting pressed against Victoria's rear and blushing despite herself as they slammed into the red planet...
And kept going.
Millions of tons of rock, lava dust and cracks, billions of years of space dust, and entire planet caved in on them. Whatever had set them in motion was strong enough to not just crater the planet, but send them through it entirely. No, it was too much to describe even that way. Down to the atomic level Mars was shattering just from having been involved in the blow. Kinetic energy deposited so fast and at such a level that every material was equivalent... and utterly destroyed.
Every material... except for Sarah. As the world broke around her, she could barely feel it, still trying to push them back into the fray. It was horrifying, in a way, it was witnessing Armageddon from ground zero... and being completely unable to connect. There was an inhabited planet to worry about, and that meant there was no time to care.
Sarah changed her tack, blowing the coldest ice she could muster into Victoria's face, snapping her awake even in the cold of space. The cowgirl took one look at the destruction around them and frowned, putting a hand on Sarah's snout as she looked at her seriously.
“Sarah, if you can hear my voice, this will work, but I'm sorry it has to happen,” the words sounded in Sarah's mind, “See, strength isn't really my actual power. I don't think it's yours either. It's something of a starter power. I like to think God did it to eventually help everybody, but you can blame it on whatever you want. You've got it, too. One real power and one borrowed power. Thing is? My real power? It's fusion. If my goals and ideas truly synch up with another person, we can become one. One person sharing all their powers, all their thoughts, everything. I bring it up partially because it's really awkward and an AWFUL thing to have to do on your first outing... and partially because I'm not sure what will happen if we fuse. One or both of us might lose our borrowed powers; and that looks like it'd extra suck for you because I think you got 'ability to perceive time in super speed' and I didn't.” Sarah heard a mumble in the back of her mind, “Fricken 'hurl the brick' superpower I swear someday I'm gonna smash a hospital... huh... maybe not actually,” and the soothing voice reasserted itself, “Sorry, wandering thought. Anyway, I just want you to be informed and sure. It doesn't matter that much to me, and honestly, if it matters to you, this literally won't work, so don't feel pressured to pretend. If you want to hit the nuclear option, the real one, and save this world or die trying, just press on my abs.”
Sarah wondered for a second. In a way, strength was everything she ever wanted. In another, being Victoria was something she wanted, so literally doing that was kind of tempting in itself. Most of all, though, what she had wanted was power. REAL power, the kind of power that lets you make an actual, meaningful, and lasting change. Something like, say, saving the world. She could putter about forever as invincible queen of space, and it would make her weaker than who she could be now.
Sarah tentatively pressed against Victoria, and fell right in. Hand, forearm, bicep, even costume. All of her being just disappeared somewhere between can 4 and 5 of the six pack, and for just a moment, she felt herself black out.
Sartoria rose from the ruins of a planet. Two... no, three sets of emotions weren't easy to parse, but for now they were all aligned. She had a job to do, a planet to save, and an image to flatter while doing it. She felt amazing. Impossibly amazing. The Victoria part of her was discovering for the first time what super speed felt like, seeing the world move slower and slower as she prepared, slowly using her experience to plumb their joined body and feeling abilities she would never have imagined like regeneration and cold breath. The Sarah part of her was discovering how weak she had been. Her strength before had been like the sun, but this... this was a supernova.
Sartoria's toes curled as she took off. In an instant, she was upon the invader. In another, Sarah's razor claws backed by strength beyond strength had torn the net apart. The next, it had all been unraveled at relativistic speeds. Earth was free, and their foe was so much less impressive than he had been. One punch. Two. A million. They were barraging an artificial star with blows that could shatter planets... and it was slowly being pushed back. There was a stutter, a shuffle, and the entity responded, falling back just the slightest bit.
They pressed their advantage. A power foreign to both Victoria and Sarah pulled their flesh wider and wider, blowing up their body. With a flex, their bicep rose to its ordinary peak of 30 inches, then kept going and going as the arm became astrologically sized itself, one giant hand slowly wrapping around the invader, treating it the way it had treated their world.
The time inflating it was near agony from their perspectives, but with the speed Sarah contributed, it appeared to the world below in a flash. A second sun plucked from the sky and pulled off.
They stopped just a moment beside mars, holding the ball next to it expectantly while nothing happened... then they shook it vigorously and it let out what could only have been a sigh, thousand fingers reaching out and reassembling the red planet as they made to leave the solar system. Victoria's memories showed where to go, an old spacial rift, one this beast had emerged from once before. The journey was long in astrological terms, but not really much for them. They found their course, swooped past, and shook him a bit once more. Sartoria watched the stars rewind, putting them back far enough that their trip would have them arrive when they left, and they dunked the entity back in its rift like a basketball; grabbing the sides and forcing space whole through sheer strength.
It was a quiet flight back home. The need of battle was no longer keeping them together, and the panic of realizing just how powerful they truly were could send them apart, but for the moment all they wanted was to get back home.
When they arrived, a crowd had gathered to thank them. Sartoria saw herself in lights, screens showing an absurd dragon cow with the muscle of an entire superweight bodybuilding contest and a costume that had gone from skimpy to just ridiculous, but they all supposed it fit for how overkill they were. It was an awkward ceremony. Key to the city, presidential thanks, a million little consequences from the grandest gesture of their lives, and they were just focused on not un-fusing rudely nor accidentally breathing hard enough to strip off the crust.
There were dogs in spandex, humans in business suits, birds with too many pearls and cameras. Everybody seemed to need their attention. There were cats in power armor, foxes with grins and bald spots, equines with nurse hats and superhero licenses. It was too much for them, and they felt the fusion destabilize more and more as the day went on. Sarah had been prepared to meet one superhero, not the world.
At least it passed in a blur. Their first big gig finished before it was too late and they showed up to Victoria's farmhouse miles away from the city once the really necessary formalities were past. There, they took a moment to look at each other, remember why they couldn't, and just laugh before separating with a simple 'pop'.
Sarah and Victoria both passed out, but it was on a pretty nice bed.
Sarah looked out at the crumbling world before her. Living with superheroes, becoming one, loving one, it didn't really mean much in the face of seeing the sky break. She knew, empirically, that she was invulnerable and whatever it was probably would not hurt her, but internalizing the idea was an entirely different problem.
Daylight and nighttime appeared in stripes across the sky, every so often a single, impossibly long and slender claw emerging from the day to charge for the earth. Sometimes it left craters. Sometimes other heroes rose to try and push it back, holding it off until it vanished. Sometimes it would catch something and disappear with it. Every time it pressed the world to the limit merely from being there.
Sarah might have whimpered.
“If you're not ready, we don't have to do this...” Victoria stated from next to her. The cowgirl had been her idol, and now was looking to her as a peer.
Sarah averted her gaze, not wanting to come so far only to disappoint, when she saw it. A long tendril was emerging from behind their very building, snaking around an emergency hospital. Great clots of it tore apart, inky blackness spilling over Sarah, leaving a strange shine as she attempted to dismantle the strand piece by piece. She hadn't even realized she was doing it, body kicking into overdrive and sending her down faster than she could process. One moment she was almost thinking of the deaths it would cause, the next she was already halfway through the battle.
It wasn't easy to tear apart. That was the concerning thing. They hadn't actually been able to measure her strength, and this tiny piece was enough to leave her shaking as she pulled. A firm hand landed atop her own, and Victoria was there.
“Good eye, champ, not a bad priority target.” the gold blur winked at her, and Sarah steadied herself, both of them tearing the entity into ribbons before standing back.
Sarah just looked at her partner. It was simultaneously midnight and noon, about as far from a sunset as could ever exist, but it was still just a little bit romantic.
At least, in the classic sense.
They took off for the skies, flying at supersonic speeds to the source of the problem, rising up and up past the bars of night... and into space. It was Sarah's first time up there, where nothing could live, and it was a surreal feeling to be in the midst of so much nothing and remain perfectly fine.
It couldn't compete with what she saw below, however. The artificial starry sky was still visible from this side. In place of the blue-green marble she had seen in so many pictures and expected a touching view of now, there were only small squares visible through a cage of that same bland starry night pattern, wrapped around the entire planet and drawing tighter.
It was like the entire planet was a fish, being drawn in to a ball of light that shone brighter than the sun. A sphere was all that was visible of the invaders, stark white and occasionally releasing probes or lines, but Sarah already felt a sense of purpose behind it.
It was not one she approved of. The world was big, filled with too many people and too many stories to treat as casually as this thing was, and she felt an aggression build inside her. If they were to be treated like a fish, she'd show him they were an octopus. Something capable of escaping any net. As Sarah raised her claw to strike, a pat on the back reminded her that she was not alone before Victoria took off to make the first strike.
It was... underwhelming. One moment Victoria was there, the next she was striking the target of their wrath with a blow that by rights had enough momentum to crack a planet. The invader didn't respond. Victoria didn't respond. With no air to be displaced, with no medium to carry sound, with miles upon miles of distance to the target, there was no flash to the blow. One moment they were apart, the next they had connected, and the most profound nothing had come from it.
It was not an encouraging sight; but Sarah was done needing encouragement. She charged in herself, raw power carrying her reactionless through space as the world blurred below her and she struck at the ropes binding the planet. She pulled her claws as tight as they would go, cutting at the continent sized bindings, willing herself to tear them all apart and free the planet while the main body was busy.
She could almost do it. Bit by bit, but they were simply enormous, even with her strength. She willed herself to go faster, then faster, then faster still. Making rings around the part, making cuts that all helped one another, scoring it and pulling it, not caring what it was made of. It was a frenzy that could have destroyed almost anything, and eventually, she made it through a strand. She pulled with triumph, releasing part of the net as she looked for her partner, only to see a disheartening scene.
She still had coils to go. Hundreds. Possibly more. Even as she looked, the one she had snapped was growing back. Unfortunately, that wasn't the worst part. Victoria, the Almighty Aurochs, her paragon, was flying past the beast, apparently unconscious. It happened in slow motion, her iron body limp for the first time, drifting almost delicately towards Mars.
Sarah took just one more look at the regenerating coil, before flying off to catch her and get her back in the fight. It seemed like miles to get to her, Sarah screaming at her body to move her faster, the lack of real connection to her powers beginning to frustrate her, but eventually she made it. She swooped delicately behind Victoria, placing a hand on her shoulder, hoping to stabilize her delicately... and losing balance as a powerful pressure went through her.
Sarah had just one moment to wonder if maybe everybody was moving a lot faster than she gave them credit for before getting swept up. The sheer force of the simple contact sent her hurtling past her ability to right, getting pressed against Victoria's rear and blushing despite herself as they slammed into the red planet...
And kept going.
Millions of tons of rock, lava dust and cracks, billions of years of space dust, and entire planet caved in on them. Whatever had set them in motion was strong enough to not just crater the planet, but send them through it entirely. No, it was too much to describe even that way. Down to the atomic level Mars was shattering just from having been involved in the blow. Kinetic energy deposited so fast and at such a level that every material was equivalent... and utterly destroyed.
Every material... except for Sarah. As the world broke around her, she could barely feel it, still trying to push them back into the fray. It was horrifying, in a way, it was witnessing Armageddon from ground zero... and being completely unable to connect. There was an inhabited planet to worry about, and that meant there was no time to care.
Sarah changed her tack, blowing the coldest ice she could muster into Victoria's face, snapping her awake even in the cold of space. The cowgirl took one look at the destruction around them and frowned, putting a hand on Sarah's snout as she looked at her seriously.
“Sarah, if you can hear my voice, this will work, but I'm sorry it has to happen,” the words sounded in Sarah's mind, “See, strength isn't really my actual power. I don't think it's yours either. It's something of a starter power. I like to think God did it to eventually help everybody, but you can blame it on whatever you want. You've got it, too. One real power and one borrowed power. Thing is? My real power? It's fusion. If my goals and ideas truly synch up with another person, we can become one. One person sharing all their powers, all their thoughts, everything. I bring it up partially because it's really awkward and an AWFUL thing to have to do on your first outing... and partially because I'm not sure what will happen if we fuse. One or both of us might lose our borrowed powers; and that looks like it'd extra suck for you because I think you got 'ability to perceive time in super speed' and I didn't.” Sarah heard a mumble in the back of her mind, “Fricken 'hurl the brick' superpower I swear someday I'm gonna smash a hospital... huh... maybe not actually,” and the soothing voice reasserted itself, “Sorry, wandering thought. Anyway, I just want you to be informed and sure. It doesn't matter that much to me, and honestly, if it matters to you, this literally won't work, so don't feel pressured to pretend. If you want to hit the nuclear option, the real one, and save this world or die trying, just press on my abs.”
Sarah wondered for a second. In a way, strength was everything she ever wanted. In another, being Victoria was something she wanted, so literally doing that was kind of tempting in itself. Most of all, though, what she had wanted was power. REAL power, the kind of power that lets you make an actual, meaningful, and lasting change. Something like, say, saving the world. She could putter about forever as invincible queen of space, and it would make her weaker than who she could be now.
Sarah tentatively pressed against Victoria, and fell right in. Hand, forearm, bicep, even costume. All of her being just disappeared somewhere between can 4 and 5 of the six pack, and for just a moment, she felt herself black out.
Sartoria rose from the ruins of a planet. Two... no, three sets of emotions weren't easy to parse, but for now they were all aligned. She had a job to do, a planet to save, and an image to flatter while doing it. She felt amazing. Impossibly amazing. The Victoria part of her was discovering for the first time what super speed felt like, seeing the world move slower and slower as she prepared, slowly using her experience to plumb their joined body and feeling abilities she would never have imagined like regeneration and cold breath. The Sarah part of her was discovering how weak she had been. Her strength before had been like the sun, but this... this was a supernova.
Sartoria's toes curled as she took off. In an instant, she was upon the invader. In another, Sarah's razor claws backed by strength beyond strength had torn the net apart. The next, it had all been unraveled at relativistic speeds. Earth was free, and their foe was so much less impressive than he had been. One punch. Two. A million. They were barraging an artificial star with blows that could shatter planets... and it was slowly being pushed back. There was a stutter, a shuffle, and the entity responded, falling back just the slightest bit.
They pressed their advantage. A power foreign to both Victoria and Sarah pulled their flesh wider and wider, blowing up their body. With a flex, their bicep rose to its ordinary peak of 30 inches, then kept going and going as the arm became astrologically sized itself, one giant hand slowly wrapping around the invader, treating it the way it had treated their world.
The time inflating it was near agony from their perspectives, but with the speed Sarah contributed, it appeared to the world below in a flash. A second sun plucked from the sky and pulled off.
They stopped just a moment beside mars, holding the ball next to it expectantly while nothing happened... then they shook it vigorously and it let out what could only have been a sigh, thousand fingers reaching out and reassembling the red planet as they made to leave the solar system. Victoria's memories showed where to go, an old spacial rift, one this beast had emerged from once before. The journey was long in astrological terms, but not really much for them. They found their course, swooped past, and shook him a bit once more. Sartoria watched the stars rewind, putting them back far enough that their trip would have them arrive when they left, and they dunked the entity back in its rift like a basketball; grabbing the sides and forcing space whole through sheer strength.
It was a quiet flight back home. The need of battle was no longer keeping them together, and the panic of realizing just how powerful they truly were could send them apart, but for the moment all they wanted was to get back home.
When they arrived, a crowd had gathered to thank them. Sartoria saw herself in lights, screens showing an absurd dragon cow with the muscle of an entire superweight bodybuilding contest and a costume that had gone from skimpy to just ridiculous, but they all supposed it fit for how overkill they were. It was an awkward ceremony. Key to the city, presidential thanks, a million little consequences from the grandest gesture of their lives, and they were just focused on not un-fusing rudely nor accidentally breathing hard enough to strip off the crust.
There were dogs in spandex, humans in business suits, birds with too many pearls and cameras. Everybody seemed to need their attention. There were cats in power armor, foxes with grins and bald spots, equines with nurse hats and superhero licenses. It was too much for them, and they felt the fusion destabilize more and more as the day went on. Sarah had been prepared to meet one superhero, not the world.
At least it passed in a blur. Their first big gig finished before it was too late and they showed up to Victoria's farmhouse miles away from the city once the really necessary formalities were past. There, they took a moment to look at each other, remember why they couldn't, and just laugh before separating with a simple 'pop'.
Sarah and Victoria both passed out, but it was on a pretty nice bed.
Category Story / Muscle
Species Western Dragon
Gender Female
Size 120 x 120px
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