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Chapter 12

  I've recently learned, despite being capable of creating ice and generally preferring to rest in colder climates, to the point that we've moved the ice cave to the shores of her lake, Aqua definitely has absolutely no chill. Some would even argue she has Absolute Zero Chill.

  She moves swiftly. The air is like water to her and so she swims up into the sky, wiggling her tail and growing fins along her wrists and ankles. She swings her entire body in a powerful blow that strikes the upright worm with the force of a meteor, nay, the force of an entire extinction event of a meteor, creating a powerful shockwave that distorted the air.

  As if the world itself was catching up, the worm suddenly shot off, and pulled what looked to be an entire kilometer of segmented body out of the ground.

  Aqua's massively powerful uppercut sent the worm rising high into the sky.

  "Oh! Good thinking removing its advantage by putting it in the air! That way it won't be able to go underground again, and it can't cause any more destruction!"

  That was indeed a clever move!

  I don't know if she heard me, she moved along the air, first it seemed like she would just allow herself to float back down but she suddenly moved, rapidly, a burst of motion that moved her just out of the way as the Worm's extremely long tail whipped where she had just been as the creature weaponized the very momentum Aqua had imparted upon it.

  She moved again as the worm whipped its non-mouth end over and over again, but it seemed almost as if Aqua was riding the waves of pressure and air that the Worm's movements were generating to dodge it, as if she was reading and anticipating its movements and using the very force of the attack to dodge it.

  Surfing on air, impressive to look at to say the least, she made dodging seem so effortless that I was taking notes on the movement, maybe I could-

  Wait.

  Shit!

  The waves of air were so powerful that they would certainly hit the festival grounds and destroy everything that hadn't already been destroyed by the emerging worm, and that, that I could not allow.

  In the brief time I had available I had to do whatever came to mind in order to stop it, the best idea I came up with was unfurling my wings and then beating each of them in turn, swinging all the way to my shoulders, moving fast enough that I was disappointed I didn't hear my bones cracking or popping in that satisfying way.

  With the beat of my wings I unleashed waves of my power and manipulated the air into blades of wind that I then shot off, using similar principles to the one I used for flying, and dedicated myself to intercepting each force wave generated by the Worm's whipping tail, managing to cancel out each attack and-

  Accidentally slice off the last segment of the worm's tail.

  Aqua looked back at me, glaring. Was she pouting? She was pouting.

  I then raised a hand and blasted a wave of green energy at the worm, managing to land it just before the tail segment actually detached fully and was flung off by the sheer force behind the Worm's whipping movements, using all of my speed to do so, and managed to heal it.

  It might not even be aware that its tail was ever cut.

  "My bad! I was just trying to protect the buildings and stuff!"

  The Worm then suddenly grew a pair of unbelievably gigantic wings, which came out in a very disgusting and slimy display, from the thicker segments near the middle of its body. The crater in its body left by Aqua's punch then filled back in.

  Aqua turned back towards the Worm as it regained control of itself in the air, twisting its body like a giant pretzel, and turning its many-toothed mouth towards Aqua, who suddenly dropped height like she had dropped an anchor and thus managed to slide under the attack just in time to stick her hand up, an extremely high pressure jet of water erupting from the tips of her fingers.

  The worm's own attack saw it slicing about half of its own body in twain, many of its segments split into halves and spewing their contents all over the place, spewing disgusting brown juices all over the place.

  It smelt terrible.

  Aqua then moved out of the way as the Worm's split body began to fall, but before it could drop even halfway towards the ground, I blasted it with a buffet from both wings, sending it back into the air and far away from falling on top of all of my stuff.

  It also had the effect of blowing the disgusting worm juice away, which I see as a double win.

  "Again!?" she accused.

  "Yes, again! If you were more careful about how you killed it, I wouldn't have to stop the entire venue from smelling like worm guts," I accused. "Also is it regenerating?"

  I pointed at the flying worm, and Aqua turned back to it.

  "Of course it is," she said, her voice sounding quite annoyed. Well, at least she wasn't having trouble with that. She once again swam up into the air and chased after the worm, in a moment matching the height it had gained, though before our eyes both of the halves she had cut regenerated into a new head.

  Immediately I could tell what was about to follow, as Aqua created a crescent shaped water construct and then sliced both the heads off, only for, merely moments later, the worm to grow four new heads from the stumps of the heads Aqua sliced off.

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  She swam around its ever increasing rate of attack, moving ever swifter as the worm increased the rate at which it attempted to swallow her up, four heads making it quite difficult, but as she began to spin and twist and dive and rise all around the attacks, she began to add blades of water, high pressure torrents that cut the heads off, over and over again.

  In what felt like mere moments, four heads became sixteen, and sixteen became thirty two, and the worm had almost become an entire sphere of necks all flying and twisting and turning all over the place.

  The space for Aqua to maneuver was becoming smaller, but the worm's own size and its many heads were starting to become a problem for itself as it began to cannibalize its own heads, biting them off to get through its own many necks and attempt to eat up Aqua.

  It was no use, of course, she continued simply cutting the heads off, over and over again.

  Eventually the mass of the worm was so ridiculous and immense that it could no longer sustain its flight, and it began falling, but with all the excitement, we'd managed to get it out of the way, so as the huge spherical mass of necks crashed to the ground, already well over eighty heads, the number rising as more and more heads split off from the stumps.

  As I chased Aqua and the worm, I floated high above them, and saw Aqua slowly descend towards it, arms raised.

  Many heads rose to meet her, but with a spin and a drop of her arms, ten whips of water erupted from the tips of her fingers, the size and power of her claws in her dragon form, and then she sliced off all the heads at once.

  Aqua was floating just above the 'core' of the worm, the original tail that all of the heads were sprouting out of. Each new head was thinner than the last, and Aqua had sliced them so many times that it was like looking at blades of grass sticking out of a tree stump, except the grass was extremely violent and wriggly.

  I would have shouted advice at her, but my only idea was to just blast it with my breath weapon, using fire to reduce it to ashes, which wasn't an option for her, and moving on to my lightning breath if it survived that.

  So I watched and saw as she decided on her own approach, her entire body was covered in a deepsea blue glow, which grew darker by the second until turning nearly black, as if she was becoming as dark as the depths of the ocean, and then suddenly she grew, many times her size, until she finally reached a size even greater than mine, just about as big as she had been when I first met her.

  And hey, she had her head back, that was nice.

  She still reminded me of one of those super long necked dinosaurs, plesiosaurs I think, but bigger and with a distinctly more terrifying case of halitosis, which she put on display when she reared her head back, long neck twisting, and then unleashed her breath weapon.

  Underwater, it felt like a wave of pressure that distorted the water around it.

  But as she swam across the skies and there was no water, instead it was the air that rippled and cracked, earsplitting noises erupting as the world twisted from the wave of pressure that slammed into the worm's body, every single head exploding into a fine dark brown mist all at once, leaving raw brown meat and a couple of tube-like organs exposed.

  Aqua then followed it up by another, even more powerful wave of pressure, blasting off an even more potent breath weapon that shattered the air and then hit the vulnerable worm monster, its body starting to vibrate so hard it was actually buzzing, as the pressure coursed through it.

  However...

  That didn't seem to do much.

  No, rather, the worm seemed to not just not take damage, but it became incensed and invigorated. Over two hundred heads suddenly grew all at once, and each and every one of them shot off like a million missiles coming out of a really fancy spaceship, twisting, turning and curling as they all speared through the air towards the floating Water Dragon high up in the sky, covering the sun, knocking hundreds of trees down and killing dozens of magical creatures, both mighty and weak.

  I prepared to put an end to the battle myself, but as the many-toothed mouths were just about to reach Aqua's massive draconic body-

  I felt it. The wave of air that came out as the extremely highly compressed air within the monster all decompressed at once.

  I was promptly covered in brown worm guts. I can't even begin to guess just how much it spewed all over the place when it exploded, it smells awful, it tastes even worse, it feels horrendously slick and sticky, it's like a combination of petroleum jelly and burnt rubber. It's like a thousand rotten corpses gathered together and farted all at once. The cloud of stank is so severe it's actually visible, with a brown haze rising from the forest that was positively covered in worm goop.

  I think we've done something unforgivable.

  "This is beyond disgusting..!" Aqua roared, because her voice had become pure roars of disgust, and then suddenly the air shifted, the skies turned dark again, and then all the rain I had dispersed gathered directly above us.

  An absolutely fucking torrential rainstorm blasted down upon everything that had been covered in brown goop, but that only made the problem even worse, because the slimy slop became even slimier and sloppier with the added moisture.

  Deciding if it was gonna be all oily I might as well see if it could be set on fire, I flew up high in the sky to ensure I wouldn't burn the entire forest down, and then I blasted fire right ahead of me, creating a large ball of fire that I then dove right into, it was big enough to cover my entire body if I collected my wings and-

  When I dove in, there was about a fraction of a second, maybe in the hundredths of a second, before I suddenly fucking exploded.

  Okay.

  It was definitely a good thing that I hadn't tried to set the worm on fire because as it turns out, its guts were highly flammable, explosively so. Not the first time I've run into something that's very highly flammable, but actually the first time I've exploded myself.

  It's a new experience.

  Luckily, not a very harmful one, other than suddenly being subjected to unexpected amounts of heat, pressure and realizing that the stench of burnt worm was even WORSE than what its guts already smelled of.

  But good news!

  Everything that was on me was reduced to ash, and as I ascended and broke past the cloud cover summoned by Aqua, I could finally breathe and not be assaulted by the stench.

  Bad news.

  The entire forest is covered in extremely flammable stuff, and there were creatures that could use fire magic.

  As I broke through the cloud cover again, yep, the forest was already on fucking fire. It wasn't even me this time. But hey, at least Aqua's already taking care of it already. I'm sure it'll be fine.

  I came back down through the cloud cover, but Aqua's scaly form had reduced all the way back to her human body. The rain was putting out the fires, even as the blazes managed to catch big lumps and explode, roaring back into full force, only to be smothered by the intense rain once again.

  She seemed upset.

  But the smell was gone.

  And well...

  I did promise.

  I came down upon her. She had enough time to be aware of what was happening as I crashed down to the ground, making a large crater, as the dancing flames illuminated us and the rain covered all the noise. Chaos surrounded us.

  She looked up at me, and for a moment, I could see the smile grow on her face.

  "You know, that was..."

  Incredibly fucking cool. Watching someone do the "stand still as opponent tries one last ditch effort attack only to fail when a delayed effect attack goes off" move in real life was SO MUCH FUCKING COOLER than seeing it from behind a screen! It was amazing! She was like, not today, and the worm exploded all at once and it was so fucking cool!

  I'm practically vibrating with excitement.

  I have absolutely no idea what the fuck I'm doing, but if there's ever been a time to figure it out...

  Well, it better be now.

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