The Hyper Confrontation Finale – Eruption [Nathalia POV]

Blows shook the earth.

Hypercrush’s and Nathalia’s fists met, knuckle to knuckle, repeatedly. Each was a living earthquake meeting the unshackled might of man. The landscape where they had begun their fight had long since ceased to exist. Earth had been disrupted by tremors, trees and structures toppled, and fire consumed what was flammable.

“OH YEAH!” Hypercrush shouted and went for a sudden straight punch.

Nathalia tilted her head to the side. Knuckles blasted the scales off her cheek, exposing her magma-flesh beneath to the air. It was an unpleasant, cool sensation, growing stronger when she whirled around, slamming her leg into Hypercrush’s side.

The **** mage flew. He skipped like a stone, then did cartwheels. Laughing maniacally he turned himself around in a wide curve. “THE WHEELS ARE SPINNING, THE COLOURS ARE FLASHING!” The Hypercrush wheel headed for Nathalia, picking up speed. The man at the centre turned into a blur, a white mass surrounded by a halo of rainbow light. “I AM THE SPEED!”

Nathalia evaded the racing wheel by stepping to the side. Her wavy, orange hair fluttered in the wind. A draft to her, a hurricane gust to the land. The flames of her making were sucked in, causing a trail of fire and soot to follow her enemy as he repeatedly drove at her.

Hypercrush only got faster, his laughter only louder, yet Nathalia dodged every attempt to strike her. In the gaps, she stomped on the floor, causing the ground to ripple like a membrane over a liquid body. Geysers of molten rock engulfed the wheel repeatedly, but he kept on his ridiculous display.

“You annoy me, mortal,” Nathalia declared and stood her ground. The wheel approached and she readied herself to smack the assailant out of the wheel.

At the last second, Hypercrush turned from cartwheeling to leaping. Fist pulled back, he flew at Nathalia at an unpredicted angle. “HYYYYYYYYYYPERCRUUUUUUUUSHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEER!”

The yell only added insult to injury when his fist crashed into her face. She heard the sound of slot machines and old cash registers ring in her head.

Nathalia, however, refused to be launched. She had planted her feet firmly. Her heel cracked the earth open, the earth bleeding with her when a drop of incandescent blood pearled from her red lips. Her fury burst from the ground, an eruption that **** her enemy to back off. Her claws narrowly missed the broad chest of the huge man.

Growling like a landslide, the goddess charged after him, segmented tail slicing the air and molten wings beating. She leapt, then came back down like a meteor, slamming a crater into the floor. Hypercrush leapt backwards in an arc, leaving yet another rainbow and a weird fragrance of battery acid and peanuts.

“I am the master of the mushrooms, the devil of speed, I can hear the holy voice of cocaine calling to me!” Hypercrush spread out his arms in a wide pose. “I am the one who liberates this world from sense and allows us all endless indulgence! Join me, Nathalia, I can feel it in your soul! You vibe with consumption, you yearn for the ecstasy, you could be the hottest and highest of all!”

Nathalia regarded him with a disgusted stare, looking down at him despite their full torso of height difference. “Who do you think you are to make an offer to me, whelp?”

“Hypercrush!” He clapped his hands together, dancing and excessively hip thrusting as he talked. “I am on the top of the world! I am the top of the world! I am the climax, baby, and I could show you the entire world of pleasure, beyond that of the flesh that you have already explored. I am the bad boy, the bringer of the substances, the-“

“You are unworthy,” Nathalia cut him off with a growl. The rage she had felt in this fight so far was a far cry from what she felt now. “You think you are even a fraction of what my mate is?! Your borrowed power, your arrogance, you have no right to even think about seducing me, mortal! Whatever pleasures you wish to show me will be of the hollow kind and I have no use for it!” The gaps between her scales wept molten stone. “I am Nathalia, the Flame of Destruction, and you are a coked up fiend that has hurt the one I care most about. That is all to this fight.”

“So disappointing! I thought I saw the truth of indulgence in you!” Hypercrush charged at her again.

Nathalia ripped her arm up. A spike of obsidian tore from the ground, catching Hypercrush in the neck. The black spire rammed through the soft underside of his jaw and penetrated all the way up, emerging from the tip of white-rainbow hair.

It could have been expected that the loss of his brain was a minor inconvenience to Hypercrush. He continued forwards, snapping the spike, and swung wildly at Nathalia. One blow was easy to deflect, two she could deal with, three, four, five, all of that was no issue, but they kept on coming. At some point, it was clear that the **** mage no longer hurled just two fists, but six, all coming at her at an accelerated pace.

One blow stuck Nathalia in the chest, another in the jaw, the forehead, then the nose. She was finally **** to take a step back, hissing as she snapped the centre of her gorgeous face back into position. The claws of her right arm extended into blades of her molten fury, slicing deep grooves into Hypercrush’s chest before scattering into liquid orbs.

Nathalia took hold of all of them with her magic, consolidated them, then wielded them like a hammer. The sphere of molten stone and metal slammed into Hypercrush’s cheek. Dazed, he did not react when she grabbed his neck with one hand, his biceps with the other and ripped.

The arm did not come off. Skin and cartilage tore, blood gushed, but the extremity remained attached by sinew and muscle.

Hypercrush retaliated with a quick jab to Nathalia’s midriff. The small motion had a surprising amount of power to it. Nathalia was thrown backwards. Just a few metres and she refused to land on anything but her feet. “You are strong, mortal,” she growled a **** compliment, as scales regrew to cover her voluptuous form. “Annoyingly strong.”

“Offer still on the table, right next to the line of enlightening coke!” Hypercrush declared.

“Keep it there,” she stated haughtily. “Your inability to die is not to your credit. It just means you waste more of my time!”

“Then let’s up…” he twirled around his own axis, “…the pace! Let me tell you how all of this started! Back when I was little, I liked this sweet that came in a colourful bag! It had the best slogan, the greatest slogan, and years later I understood. I live it right now!” He shouted at the sky, “I was enlightened by the high, embraced by its radiant glory!” Only now did hypercrush bother pulling the spike from his brain. The wounds all over his body sealed up. “The voices in my head told me! The cabin in the woods, the loneliness of crows, all of that could be avoided! All you gotta do… is to TASTE!”

Nathalia had been content preparing the magma chamber under their feet while he was ranting and raving, but the beginning of a Babel Phrase changed that completely. She snapped forwards, tearing chunks out of his stomach with her claws.

“THE!”

Even with most of his midriff turned to mincemeat, he kept on chanting.

“RAINBOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW!”

The **** mage’s body exploded into a wave of colour. Nathalia’s senses went through a tumble. She was falling and flying, smiling and frowning, and on her lips was a sweet, sugary taste of colours. She could see the stars through the blue sky and hear the radio waves of the channel of the gods in her ears. For a moment, she knew absolute bliss, incomparable to anything in its height. No orgasm could compare, no food, no drink, no other elevated state of being.

It was so easy to lean into that. She could have just taken that moment, let it control her, have the impulse of joy be all that she wanted. She knew she would have, not too long ago, taken it without thinking. Whatever mattered after this moment?

His hands. His fingers, interlocked with hers. That was what mattered.

Nathalia burned the seduction of pleasure out of her mind. The moment it started to diminish, it left a chemical aftertaste in her very soul. Like sugar replacements, artificial flavours, and everything else that was too good in the first moment, she felt dirty a second later.

Even as swiftly as she had broken through it, she had been stunned for long enough that Hypercrush was ready to swing at her again. “YOU REJECT THE HIGH, SO THE HIGH REJECTS YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!” he screamed, enraged, and slammed his fist into her midriff – worse – he slammed her right in the womb. Even if she was still a ways away from having use of that organ, her human form these days possessed it in all of its details, including the vulnerability.

It hurt.

A lot.

Nathalia could not stay on her feet at that. She was catapulted back, flew across the broken and blackened land of her making, and slammed into a mountainside over a hundred metres away from where she had started. The stone cracked, shattered and gave, stopping her flight only when she was embedded deep into the slope.

‘Just when I thought I could not get angrier,’ the dragoness thought. It was a strange calm, a smooth and temporary state that she herself tore to shreds, summoning every bit of rage that had accumulated in her. Her lower body ached from the impact. He had dared to strike her there. Daring to strike her this many times in general and living was bad enough, but to hit her there? Where her mate and she would conceive that which would matter most in the world?

It was time to dispense with the pretence of humility.

Nathalia grabbed the edge of her temporary tomb. Fingers curled as she dragged herself out of the depression. The slope shattered. A series of explosions began where she was and continued along the side of the mountain until a flood of lava cascaded down. She grabbed the other edge and parted the mountain around her.

Screaming, her head surfaced first. The skin on her black skeleton liquified, turning into crossing streams of magma and volcanic glass. Her jaw extended, canine teeth turning even sharper and uniform in shape and size. Exposed fangs in a semi-draconic jaw. Venting steam rose from her nostrils, her elongated neck swiftly followed by the shoulders of digitigrade frontal legs.

The world around the Flame of Destruction melted. Stone, dirt, wood, it did not matter, all was fire and liquid before her overwhelming heat. Her form was that of a dragon, of a human, of a goddess, fused into a mass of scales, fury and lava. She was pyroclastic flow given will and desire and her scream liquified the mountain entirely.

All over the battlefield, the ground erupted. Where it was not incandescent rock that splattered, it was boiling water. Until recently, by her standards anyway, the goddess had considered herself one of fire and fury alone. She knew better now, that the destruction brought by her Faith was more manifold than simple heat.

She set her eyes on Hypercrush.

The **** mage still stood there with a grin on his face, but Nathalia could smell it. It was just about to dawn on him what, exactly, he had dared to anger here and it roused fear that not even the most potent of substances could smother.

Good. He should die afraid.

Nathalia lowered herself on all fours. Molten wings broke out of the ocean of orange and red that was her slender back. Their beat accelerated a sprint into a supersonic dive.

Hypercrush barely managed to leap aside. Their size difference was lesser than Nathalia was used to from unleashing her true form. No longer was she a moving mountain range. This form was smaller, less awe-inspiring to behold, and yet more powerful. She was condensed, refined, and had never burned brighter.

Hypercrush swung his fist at her. He struck. The arm sank to the elbow into liquid stone. He screamed when her heat scorched him. She delighted in his misery for a moment, before slicing the arm off with a swipe of her claw.

The stump did not bleed. The scent of cooked flesh filled the air. It stank of pig. Nathalia did not care for it and sent Hypercrush flying with a backhanded swing. The limb stuck inside her, she turned into ashes with a mere thought, then gave chase.

Hypercrush had nowhere to land that was safe. He rode on a rainbow cloud in an attempt to reach an island between the molten streams. Nathalia raised her left front claw and the landmass exploded into a geyser. Ash spewed into the air, a glorious black plume that decorated this land, consuming what lived to make room for new life. All would burn, all would grow, all would burn again, such was the cycle.

Hypercrush emerged from the heated ashes, his form dulled. His regeneration was starting to take effect, growing a new arm bit by bit, but he had limitations. Everything had limitations and at some point even the mightiest creature would run out of mana.

Nathalia galloped once more. Her claws treated the surface of molten streams as if they were solid. Catching up with the cloud was a minor inconvenience. She did it all the same, catching Hypercrush by the leg and thrashing around, ultimately sending him flying into the lava rivers below.

He disappeared under the surface. He remained down there after Nathalia had landed again. She could sense the mouse squirm within the trap, fighting to get to the surface. An amusing struggle, one she followed while gathering power within her jaws. Tendrils of power flowed between her parted teeth, the heat within rising. From the glowing orange of burning coals, the temperature rose to the white heat of a magnesium flame. A sphere of consolidated energy rested within, hidden from the world when her maw snapped shut like the lid of a furnace.

Hypercrush burst from the surface of the lake. He was singed, his hair robbed of its lustre, his bodysuit remarkably still intact in some places, and all the same it did not matter. The moment he appeared before Nathalia, the goddess of volcanoes directed at him a breath attack like a mountaintop’s eruption.

It was no prolonged stream of flame, no simple incineration, but an explosion of matter, solid and liquid, and heat. It was a singular moment, so destructive it scattered even the lava stream on the landscape, leaving only barren rock behind, as shrapnels of metal and stone shaved anything that protruded down to a smooth surface.

It was magnificent in its annihilation. A second of kinetic **** and pyroclastic supremacy. If there was anything about her new form that Nathalia truly adored, it was this ability to properly emulate the bottled up might of that part of the natural world she deemed most inspiring.

As for Hypercrush, he had been undone. Caught right in front of her, his flesh and bone had been reduced to nothing. A few atoms of his were perhaps still around. His boots were there, annoying, with the cooked feet inside. A gesture of the dragon goddess made the molten landscape swallow them.

‘He might regenerate,’ she thought to herself and settled down on the warmth of the river. If she had to wait to verify, she might as well get comfortable. Like a cat, she closed her eyes and waited.

“…Seems like you had to get serious?”

Minutes had passed and Nathalia opened her eyes again, to give Lee a bored look. The genius Fateweaver and youngest among the hoard of nymphomaniacs spoke through a window opened in space. That her hair did not move spoke to this being a window truly and not one of her tunnels. “A little serious,” Nathalia answered with dismay. “He was stronger than most of you. Somewhere north of Lydia, I would say, but an arrogant idiot and easily destroyed. How did the others fare?”

“Victory on all fronts, You didn’t write, so I checked on you.”

“I do not yet know if this victory is complete. I lack the skill to find his aura.”

“I could send Ehtra?”

“...You could send Ehtra,” Nathalia answered slowly, refusing to admit that she had not thought of that. Lorelei had entered her mind. The seer was too easily broken to be deployed on a battlefield without additional contingencies. The grey anger was different. “Then do send her.”

“Roger that.” Lee gave a thumb’s up. A few seconds later, a tunnel into the space opened. Ehtra stepped outside and scanned it all.

“I sense only one sinner in this space and she is repentant,” the Metracana said.

“I see.” Nathalia’s divine form shrunk back down, losing the intricacies of dragonhood and godliness for the leisure of soft curves and delightful jiggles. “You give me too much credit.”

“Maybe.” Ehtra shrugged. “I do not think so. Shall we?”

“A return to the good life.” the orange-haired woman nodded to her fellow haremette.

This whole ugly affair could be left behind without another thought.