40 Warranted Escalation...

A dusty one-way vent later and I was staring through the grill into a holdout room. It had all the necessities one needed to survive a somewhat prolonged stay, rations, bedding, filled bookshelves... Judging by the sound of running water in the sole other room present, Nishihara was freshening up, hopefully the cunt had shit himself upon hearing my arrival...

I headbutt the grill with strength a regular cat couldn't generate, catching it with a claw as I jump to the free bed. There, I waited, back in my human-ish form for the man to finish. That way he'd likely taste less of shit and soy sauce...

*Click*

Nishihara steps out, a towel over his shoulders revealing his fat, unkempt body for all eyes to see. I'd never seen him look so relaxed, not that it lasted... He spotted me and his body halted, his eyes widened in sheer terror.

Had he realised the panic room now served as his coffin?

...

"Y'know, it's a lot less fun if you aren't raving and screaming. You have no idea how many nights I've dreamt of killing you. Thinking up all the punishments I'd subject you to, tying you to the back of a truck for a ride across the state, see how much of you is left... Cover you in honey and chain you next to an ant nest, like the shit they did in the dark ages... Hell, for irony's sake, I'd considered drugging up the 'biggest' stallion I could find and turning you into its glory hole..." I sigh while swinging my legs off the edge of the bed.

"But, looking at you now..." I glance over his form before locking eyes with him, "Are you even worth the effort?"

"You-" he starts to splutter, face reddening as pride overseeded his fear.

*Bang!*

His body shudders as a bullet rips through the man's neck. I blow the smoke from its barrel and step toward him as he begins to collapse against the wall, my claws dig into the flesh of his chest to hold him up, gripping a rib like it's a handle.

"Some crime lord, whimpering like a dog and crying now that the end's coming. How many people have you hurt like this?" I shake my head as he weakly tries to pry himself away. "To Lung you're just a slave... To me? You're barely even food." I growl before biting deeply into the man's throat, fatty blood streaming down my gullet as if I were trying to swallow a water fountain.

-----------------------

Stepping out of the panic room I found the facility empty, everyone having already fled. I didn't much care though, they'd either be too scared of me to continue working for the ABB, or they'd be my next influx of BP.

Back inside the now ransacked Kodusai Noodles shop, I was confused by the gunfire occurring outside... Stepping out, I'm greeted by the sight of a seven-foot-tall Lung dropping the corpses of ABB grunts. He was still a man, but I could see faint signs of scales peeking out from under his skin.

"Fools, traitors, all of them." the man growls behind his dragon mask, dropping the corpse with a crushed skull to the ground.

The thought of shooting him in the back of the head enters my mind, but I wasn't sure that'd work even on his base form, otherwise the Empire would have done it yet. Plus, If I distracted him for long enough wouldn't he start devolving? He only gets stronger when in combat, so unless his power counts verbal spars as 'combat' it should work...

Nah, he's not stupid enough to fall for that.

*BANG!*

Lung stumbles forward as the 9mm cracks against the back of his skull, the attack clearly taking him off guard. Unfortunately, it appeared that his skull was too thick to breach like that, so instead of wasting time firing more bullets, I drew one of the tanto I'd stolen from Lee's private stash and lunged at him.

"Another traitor!" Lung angrily shouts and swings an arm behind him. I duck under it with ease, not minding the building heat spewing from the man's pores as I deftly stab upwards, trying to go up through his mouth and into his brain.

*Tink!*

...

Did this fucker just catch the blade in between his teeth!?

"You're dead, CAT!" he growls through gritted teeth, raising his arms up and bringing them down on my position. I abandon my blade and slide backwards out of his reach but a gout of flame jumps at me as he hits the ground like a knock-off 'hulk-smash'.

Ignoring the quickly healing burns on my forearms and backup, I circled the steadily growing man, looking for someplace I could actually attack. I was fast, but not fast enough to get a hit in and not get grabbed. If that happened getting hugged and burned to death was the most likely outcome.

"What's wrong Lung? Upset I fucked up your gang of rapists? Killed Nishihara!?" I taunt.

He spits out the tanto and snaps it between his hands, "It is as it will always be. The weak die, the strong survive... You are a delusional ant if you think you can face me." he literally spits fire.

"For a bitch too afraid to show his face, you talk a lotta shit!" I state, taking notice that he wasn't growing anymore...

"You've destroyed assets that will take time to rebuild. Nishihara was a fool for bringing you to us, you were never one of us. Just a weak, white dog that was bound to bite." A scowl marred his face as he began stomping towards me, quickly breaking into an all-out sprint. I reply by doing the same, my claws now extended as I try to work mana through them... Not that it'd be much help given how bad things were going.

"FALL!" his haymaker punch morphs into a kick, forcing me to alter my duck into a front flip, barely avoiding it. I end up yelping as the man catches my tail out of the air and swings me towards the ground.

*Slik!*

Severing the caught appendage much to the man's shock, I twist, kicking a foot into the back of his knee. It wasn't enough to bring him to his knees but I used it as a step to reach his face... My claws index fingers stab into his eyes without resistance, I do my best to scramble his brain but he just roars in anger and tries to pry me off of his back.

Scales form faster up his back and neck as he flails in a fury, my position on his back getting further and further from the ground as I try to dig my claws deeper into his head. "WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO KILL YOU!?" I shout as my shirt catches fire.

"I CANNOT DIE YOU PISSANT!" Lung roars, eyes glowing the same orange as molten metal.

"FUCK YOU, SLAVING SCUM!!" I shout back, burying my teeth into his neck before the scales can cover it. His boiling blood scorched my tongue, but it was like burning your mouth on the most decadent, luxurious chicken soup you can image, albeit with the tang of metal.

In response to my rather undignified attack, he uses his newly grown fangs to bite into my forearm, immediately tearing out half of the muscle and leaving scratches in my radius bone.

*Crash!*

Lung smashes his back into a building, squashing me against it and breaking a few ribs. I endure the pain though and keep biting into the guy's neck, feeling his lifeblood accelerate my body's healing to the extreme. Before he even slams me against the wall again my injuries had healed, though this just allows him to break this again.

Fuck! My claws had gone almost six inches into his brain! How was this cunt not dead yet!? Worse, even his fucking head was growing in size not, making my attempts to kill him via his eyesockets useless. All of his attempts to pry my hands away had just fucked him up more but-

"GET! OFF!" the man screams in a fury unlike any other, tearing my hands away from his face and throwing me across the street and into a wall.

I blink the stars out of my eyes and look down at my hands, still gripping pieces of the man's skull and brain matter I'd ended up taking with me... Serious, how this fair!?

Another shout has me looking up, only for a boot to obscure my vision.

*CRUNCH!*

I'm thrown through the brick wall of what was once a pizza place and into the kitchen, knocking over a fridge with my face and already fractured skull. I groan and find myself sitting inside a sink, dirty kitchenware serving as cushions.

From the hole I'd made in the wall Lung steps in, now eight-foot-tall and almost entirely covered with scales. Every exhale resulted in small wisps of flame, and burning claws longer than my own had sprouted from his hands.

"Time out...?" I groan, prying myself from the sink and enduring the uncomfortable sensation of my skull forcefully piecing itself back together.

Lung doesn't reply, instead attempting to run me through with his claws. Stronger and faster than before, he cuts through my patient gown as I jump out of the way, leaving me only wearing my sheet-diaper...

I grab the nearby fryer and drop the thing on him, but all the smoking oil does as it hits him is burst into flames, achieving nothing but making him more dangerous to approach. As if to emphasize the futility of it Lung lets out a deep, guttural laugh as he continues to slash at me.

The clock on the wall is bisected, the fridge from earlier is thrown at me, and the fucker even tried to smack me with a burning pizza plank!

Having decided this was a lost cause, I sprint out of the kitchen and to the door, running out onto the street where a shitload of police cars were waiting, guns in hand. Not just them, PRT vans were behind them, and I could hear the familiar sound of Armsmaster's bike approaching in the distance.

"FREEZE!"

"Tell that to the fucker on fire!" I shout, dodging to the side just as Lung charges out of the pizza-place, now nine-foot in height with fire jumping from different parts of his body.

"I-IS THAT LUNG!? SHIT!" one of the officers shout, opening fire and prompting the rest to follow.

'Bad idea.' I mentally remark as the bullets bounce off of the guy, only serving to anger him further.

"CAAAT!" he roars, keeping his focus on me and following as I leap over a police cat and sprint down the road.

I throw a glance over my shoulder and pale slightly as the ten-foot Lung charges after me like a bull seeing red.

"Pick on someone your own size you ribbed-fucking-dildo!"

"DIIIE!"

Eleven foot-tall...

Yeah, shit's fucked.