Nico fought for balance in mid-air.
One moment, the sky was merely bright.
The next, the world turned violet, an expanding tidal wave of dragon fire ripping across the island like a miniature sun going supernova, eviscerating the thousands of homing orbs chasing him along with the halo above.
The heat slammed into him, hard enough to flip him end over end, but it didn't burn.
It felt like a gust of warm wind. Albeit a very strong gust of warm wind.
"Damn, Nom…" Nico blinked, panting as he looked around at the absence of death coming at him from every direction, and the fact that the wave of fire felt rather pleasing than anything.
-Ding!
{It is due to the Familiar Bond you share with her. Her fire cannot harm you.}
"Oh…Cool." He steadied himself, cloak flapping wildly as he finally stabilized above the treeline.
And as he looked down, where Gorran's dome used to be was now nothing but charred earth and blackened tree stumps, still glowing at the edges.
Yet, Team Laps was alive.
Gorran had shielded everyone with his massive enchanted shield, standing between them and oblivion.
His knees were shaking. His shield was melted at the edges. And the man himself looked point five seconds away from faceplanting into the soil.
Nico raised his hands, mana gathering, ready to drop a hailstorm on them while they were still recovering… and froze.
Because in the middle of the ruined clearing stood a kid, clinging desperately to a woman in a white kimono, her blue hair matted with soot, her arms wrapped protectively around him even as she gasped for breath.
"The hell…?" Nico muttered as the mana gathering at his fingertips sputtered and dissipated.
"What's a kid doing out here? And, is that a Kimono she's wearing?"
The question barely had time to exist before the air… shifted.
The clouds lit up in violet hues, and the sky bent inward, as if something enormous inhaled behind him.
Nico turned, and saw her for what she truly was.
Nom-Nom.
Not the girl who poked him mid-air at Mach 2.
But a Greater Dragon.
And for that one breath, Nico forgot the battlefield.
That thing in the sky, that impossibly massive beast, was the same creature who stole pizza off his plate and cheered at the aspect of having fun.
And the realization hit him like gravity flipping inside out:
She wasn't just his Familiar or a new friend he made.
Nom-Nom, or rather Chimera B-41, was a force of nature pretending to be small enough just to sit beside him.
"Nom…" Nico softly whispered as she rose into the sky like a living mountain, her silhouette framed by the dying glow of her own fire.
Her scales glimmered with an amethyst sheen, shifting with each breath like glowing plates of volcanic glass.
Muscle ran under her hide in like power layered over power as though she was sculpted from storms and earthquakes instead of flesh.
Her four colossal black wings unfurled like a cathedral carved from obsidian.
Each wingbeat distorted the air, sending rolling pressure waves across the island.
For a moment, she looked less like a creature and more like an old god someone accidentally woke up.
The air around her warped as violet mana converged into her open maw, gathering into a swelling sphere.
First, the size of a boulder, then a cottage, before increasing in size even more, until it was a purple star hovering between her jaws.
Nico's pupils shrank.
"Nom, maybe don't - " He didn't get to finish.
Because a laugh, loud, unrestrained, almost hysterically triumphant laugh, ripped across the burning forest.
"BEHOLD! This is the weapon of the Heroes!"
Nico's head snapped toward the source.
Luke stood openly on the scorched earth, back straight, coat whipping in the heat.
And in his hands was…
"Is that a shotgun!?" Nico blurted.
-DING!
{Host, you must NOT allow that shot to land! That is the Divine Armament of the Goddess of Heroes!
It will kill Nom-Nom!}
"Ah shit."
Nico didn't think.
He just moved, throwing every ounce of his MP into the cloak.
And the world blurred around him, wind screaming in his ears as he cut through the air, but even at this speed, Nico realised:
He wasn't going to make it in time.
Panic crawled up his spine, and in the last ditch attempt, he stopped and flared Precognition far enough to make his temples throb, forcing the next six seconds of possible futures to slam into him like a truck.
"Come on- Come on- Come on-!!"
Nico charged an Ice Pebble in his palm as the three attacks reached their brink.
Nom-Nom's sun peaked in her mouth.
Luke's finger tightened on the trigger.
And Nico's vision split into futures, and each ended with Nom-Nom's head vaporizing.
Except for one. In that one possibility, he didn't miss, and that pebble connected where he needed it to.
"Got it!" Nico snarled as preignition gave him that future.
-CRACK!-
And he fired.
The Ice Pebble tore through the air at the highest velocity he'd ever managed, leaving a white-blue streak of desperation, and struck the Boomstick's barrel from the side just as Luke fired.
The metal tilted, skewing the shot's vector.
Luke's expression was priceless. Pure betrayal from physics itself as the artefact jerked sideways away from Nom-Nom's head.
And all hell followed.
-BOOOOOOOOOOM—!!!!
Purple flames roared outward like a newborn sun, swallowing the forests, the cliffs, the very sky itself.
The shockwave punched Nico out of the air; he spiraled, ears shrieking with pain, body numb under the force.
And in the chaos, he heard it.
-AAAHHHH!
A sound that didn't belong in any mortal world, a deep, tearing, agonized shriek that rattled bone and soul alike.
"Nom!" he choked, vision spinning as he clawed for balance.
Then-
-CRASH-!!
Something titanic slammed into the earth, sending another quake rolling through the island.
Nico forced his body upright, every muscle screaming as he dumped all of his MP into the cloak before rocketing toward the impact crater.
And as the dust parted, his heart bottomed out.
Nom-Nom lay there unmoving on the shattered ground.
Her eyes shut, and where her upper right wing should've been, there was only a smoking, blood-soaked stump.
"NOM!" Nico screamed, voice cracking as he dove toward her, hoping and praying to whatever gods that were out there.