Surfer Dude was booking it in the direction of the closest point of the shore. This was a problem because it would force me to break through a one-man defensive line in an environment that favored him as much as it did any other Guardians who happened to be nearby. It would also draw a lot of attention in short order—attention that I didn't want.

Returning to land was the only real option—staying put was the worst choice, and fleeing in the opposite direction wouldn't have been much better. Surfer Dude would retain the advantage and follow me the whole way, and all I would accomplish would be creating the perfect opportunity to call up an army of reinforcements in an area where collateral damage was close to a non-concern.

And sure, I could try to travel sideways up or down the coast—but that wouldn't be much different from going straight after him while once again wasting precious time.

On the matter of wasting time, I hadn't been sitting around this whole time. I put myself into motion the moment I spotted the Tier 3 Guardian and where he was going.

Come on. Faster. Each heavy beat of my bladed wings sent me hurtling through the sky faster than before. Hurtling was a good word for it—my unconventional method of flight was more like infinite videogame double-jumps and midair dashes than true aerodynamic flight.

It took under twenty seconds to cross the shoreline, and in that time, I accelerated to speeds that I didn't doubt could rival civilian aircraft. Immense strength coupled with supernaturally optimal mass flow and extraordinary density tended to do that.

I wasn't going to be outpacing military aircraft like this, though—which was unfortunately a very real possibility in this situation. Regardless, I made no effort to slow myself down yet—but someone else did.

I had no idea what ripped against my left wing and hauled me into a plummeting downward swing, but I was reasonably confident it had something to do with Surfer Dude. The best thing I could do was to stop myself from plunging jaws-first into sand at a couple hundred miles per hour.

I returned to a hover just a dozen or so feet above the ground, twisting midair in an attempt to identify this new form of bullshit with my own eyes. In so doing I realized that it was perhaps the best thing it could have possibly been.

It was a metal wire.

The fuck does that have to do with surfing? I decided not to bother questioning it and seize the advantage. The impossibly strong, spaghetti-thin cable was definitely composed of some kind of metal.

"You know, I really thought it would have been obvious," I growled, amplifying the draconic version of my voice beyond what would be reasonable under most other circumstances, "But metal is kind of my thing."

The metal squirmed and then snapped as I asserted control over it, or at least most of it did. The bit that had wound around part of my wing turned soft and limp, slithering and sliding away like mushy, overcooked noodles.

Then I slurped the whole thing up like a kid with bad table manners.

The wire turned out to not be the only remaining barrier to my escape, however. It soon became apparent that staying suspended above the ground was the right choice. I suppose it made sense in retrospect that a suped-up beach bum could also play with sand.

The moment I realized what was happening, I fought back against the growing sandstorm with my own atmospheric powers—first by sheathing myself with a violent whirlwind that pushed any incoming sand away from me.

I might be made of some tough metal, but I was not going to be caught underestimating the danger posed by superpowered sandblasting. Frankly, the idea of that scared me even more than the water before did—perhaps more than any other attack I'd yet faced.

The moment I was confident I could reasonably protect myself, I pushed at the boundaries of my influence over air. The increasing sandstorm was obscuring everything at this point, even most of the light.

It worked, forcing the raging sands into an unstable, quasi-stillness with neither of us able to properly overpower the other. What surprised me was that our respective power barely even contested the other directly—the weight of my dominance over the winds crushed any pitiful resistance, yet the bulk of this guy's influence seemed to extend over the sand itself.

That made sense, and unfortunately controlling the sand directly was definitely the worse option of the two.

Anticipating the next move, I shifted all of my esoteric weight from fighting against the wider storm to forming a hot and highly compressed protective barrier around myself, just in time to deal with every grain of sand imploding like a dust cloud in reverse.

Likewise, my timing couldn't have been more perfect when I released my grip over the massive amount of air angrily squirming around me. And I even gave it a little extra push, resulting in a pretty nice explosive blast back outward.

The sand rebounded hard enough to eject a large portion of it well beyond what I estimated as the limits of Surfer Dude's range. I made sure to expect that range to be wider than normal, as this guy was proving to be on the extreme upper end of what was still believable for Tier 3.

At this point, I was expecting another attack—but the annoying Guardian was just standing there, staring at me with great intensity. That's definitely worrying. I decided to just try booking it again. I mean this is exactly the chance to—

"You're too clever."

I blinked. The fuck does that even—oh. "Yeah, well, we're not all mindless monsters. Shouldn't you have already known that? I mean you already thought I might be savvy enough to use a fucking boat of all things."

Maybe the smart thing to do would have been to run instead of humoring him, but if this was an unexpected opportunity to not get into a giant feud with someone and completely wreck my identity again—well, I didn't want to pass it up.

Surfer Dude's frown deepened, and his fingers twitched. He's agitated. "The Anathema has consumed your entire body now, but your mind remains intact. How?"

So that's what it is? My hopes continued to rise. He's not some Blue jackass hunting me down for no reason. He thought I was infected.

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It was a bit surprising that I hadn't had any encounters with normal Anathema infections yet. The one time I thought I had, it turned out to be one of my sister experiments, which should have been way less likely.

A conventional Anathema infection could take time to develop to the point where the person became visibly altered and began aggressively attacking people. As it progressed, the person would supposedly become increasingly erratic and unwell, often acting reclusive or aggressive and incrementally developing the Anathema hunger.

He didn't think I was any kind of experiment or uncommonly intelligent Anathema. He thought I was an ordinary infected person. I might actually be able to use this.

"Because I'm lucky," I growled back at him. "I've been like this for years. Some of us find a way to gain control over it, and as long as we have a way to manage the hunger, it's fine. And I wasn't lying about being a Guardian. It's a good cover, and I actually fight in incursions. I thought using the ocean would be a safe way to hunt. I didn't expect some dick with a magic surfboard to show up and ruin everything."

For the first time, the Tier 3 Guardian appeared at a loss for what to say. Looking around, he awkwardly scratched his neck. "Well, shit."

Come on. Are you going to let me fuck off into the ocean or not? I was keenly aware of every second that passed. The exact area of the beach where I'd crashed hadn't had any people, but that was a matter of design. There had been a decent number of people on the shore who ran away after our arrival.

It was also the opposite of a remote location—it butted right against a part of the city that was hot, trendy, and had high property value. Our arrival did not go unnoticed.

It was a matter of minutes at most before we were both swarmed by Civil Guard and random independent Guardians.

Surfer Dude looked back at the water, and then at me. "Well, shit, okay. I think you should—"

I was a bit too busy having my entire truck-sized head slammed into the ground to pay attention to the rest of whatever he said. From my perspective, the attack literally came out of nowhere, and at this point I still had no understanding of the new threat I was facing.

Whatever hit me had hit hard, and it would surely have snapped my neck if I were still in any kind of humanoid form. A snapped neck wouldn't have been fatal, but it still would have been a lot worse.

Regardless—ow.

"Can I not go a single minute without some new asshole attacking me out of nowhere?" Dislodging my head from where it was half-buried in the mushy sand, I shook myself clean like an enormous wet dog. "This is honestly starting to get a bit—"

"—ridiculous." This time, the attack came from the side, hammering my jaw so hard that the Adamantite components which were especially prominent there ripped free from the weaker material where they connected. Fortunately, that did absolutely nothing to impact my speech.

Unfortunately, it was also deeply concerning. My extreme toughness and sheer durability at any rank remained my biggest advantage, followed by raw strength. Any opponent that could do that level of damage with what felt like a single, straightforward, physical hit would probably tear through most other Anathema at my overall power level like they were made of wet bread.

As metal warped and groaned and the pieces of my jaw all slotted back into their proper alignment, I also got my first look at the jackass who was responsible.

He was a moderately young, fair skinned man with an athletic build and stern features. He would have looked quite similar to Surfer Dude had the overall energy of their appearances not been so different.

Where Surfer Dude looked like he could star as the snarky antihero of a blockbuster Hollywood action franchise, this new guy looked better suited to playing the cold, stoic, German villain. The jet black leather outfit hardly helped to counter that impression, and I didn't hesitate to start thinking of him as Von Jackass.

Staring up at me, Von Jackass cracked his neck to the side. "Interesting. I really didn't expect you to be nearly as durable as you looked."

"Yeah, well, I was kind of trying to have a conversation—"

"—here. God, would you please stop doing that?" I glared at him while lifting my frontmost right to help my regeneration bend it back into shape. I hadn't even seen what hit me. I was just talking, and then one of my legs crunched.

What I did see was the tail end of Von Jackass bouncing backwards to land a few feet over from where he was before. So he definitely moved…

God, I hope this is something more specific than just being some kind of combined superstrength speedster.

"No, I won't." He cracked his neck again. "I've been waiting for an opportunity like this."

This time, I had the insight to do anything other than simply stand there when he attacked. I was also correct in my prediction that he would target one of my wings next. It felt like he was starting by testing me, and the wings seemed like the natural next step.

So this time, I was prepared enough that I managed to turn my wings into a pair of angry un-safety razors at the right moment. It was my left wing that took the beating, and yeah, it sure did take a beating.

But I was no longer alone, and it was with great satisfaction that I saw Von Jackass levy a string of profanities while half his dermis stitched itself back together. His edgelord outfit had no such abilities, however.

Yet there was a problem.

Not only was the speed and strength with which he struck completely unreasonable for not having an aura, the potency of his regeneration was too extreme. Surfer Dude may have been on the upper end of what was believable for the casual strength of a Tier 3.

This guy wasn't.

If I hadn't already noted his lack of an aura, I might have simply assumed I was dealing with a higher Tier Guardian now. The problem was that my Anathema senses confirmed that he was the same effective tier.

And he wasn't a typical Guardian.

"I suppose I should have guessed," I snarled, putting as much angry, draconic intimidation into my voice and my movements as I could while advancing to loom over him, "that Mr. Sandcastle over there didn't just happen to discover what I was doing. Much like someone in the AAG didn't just happen to accidentally send people to get me forcibly tested. Fucking porpoise my ass."

Von Jackass smirked. "Wrong, actually. If I knew how to flush one of you out earlier, believe me, I would have." He scowled. "I didn't think the hardest part of this stupid initiation thing would be finding one of you. None of the fucking Blues would even tell me."

Wait, what?

"Wait, what?" Surfer Dude finally chimed in from a good thirty feet away. "What are you guys talking about?"

Good question, actually. I have no idea what's going on anymore either.

"Who—"

The next impact was the hardest yet, sending my entire several hundred ton bulk staggering. A follow-up strike from the other angle was then enough to make me temporarily lose my footing and collapse backwards through a one story shack at the edge between the sand and the pavement.

Several people screamed, and I was proud that I wasn't one of them.

Dragging myself upright, I crawled over the berm, smashing through more shoddy beachfront construction along the way. I might have briefly entertained the idea of slipping away into the ocean, but at this point, I decided my best bet was to plow straight through the city for maximum collateral and confusion.

Soaring through the air with a huge leap, Von Jackass alighted on top of the nearest traffic light pole just half a block ahead of me. He pointed a single dramatic finger.

"Not so fast, Anathy. I need you right where you are."

Yeah, whatever. I opened my jaws wide and unleashed a meter wide pillar of blazing heat and scorching light. The beam melted straight through the pole and continued on to splash against the corner of a several story brick building, shattering windows from the sudden thermal shock.

"Not happening," I muttered as the beam sputtered away and I continued to advance into actual traffic. I prepared to start picking up speed and really tear a path of destruction. "So why do you even care anyway?"

Rolling back to his feet from where he dove to the ground, Von Jackass coughed smoke and snarled. "Because I need to kill one of you to join the Black faction, you bitch."

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