I am Kenta. I am Lung! I'd faced the best the Yangban could do to me. I had faced the great monster in Japan. I will not fall to this!
I am Taylor. I am Skitter! I'd seen the end of everything. I had faced the greatest monster of all. I know how this will turn out.
I will not break! I am Lung! I am Khepri!
Cogito Ergo Lung: I Think, Therefore I Am Dragon is a Worm fanfic by The Steve.
This work can be read on Sufficient Velocity.com (here
) and SpaceBattles.com (here).
This story contains examples of:
- Actually Pretty Funny: Kenta can't help laughing when he learns that the reason he gets smarter when he escalates is because his power is trying, with limited understanding but great persistence, to overcome and slay the enemy known as "Paperwork".It had taken me eleven days to conquer the gangs in the prefecture of Japan I was in, and every day after that, for thirteen years, ten months and twenty-nine days it's been trying to murder a swimming pool with a fork.
- Break Them by Talking: Following his merging with Khepri, Lung tends to confront his enemies with words as much as his powers. This results in fewer broken bodies but many broken spirits and revealed secrets.
- Creepy Souvenir: Part of Lung's recruitment pitch to Taylor has him gift her three severed hands in a double-wrapped bag, the hands belong to the Trio, Emma, Sophia, and Madison, who have all been killed off-screen by Oni Lee as a "gift" from Lung to her, and their severed heads kept in a freezer. Taylor ends up vomiting at the realisation and then buries the bag in her yard.
- Exact Words: Lung explains to Taylor that since reputation is important, you should keep your word once given, but choose those words carefully.Lung: For those who have your favor, follow the spirit of the words. For your enemies, follow the letter, nothing more.
- A Father to His Men: Lung presents himself as such when the Protectorate confronts him at Winslow, saying that he came to assess the welfare of the young ABB members when the Trio disappeared. Then he turns the tables on them by asking which of the disappeared kids was the Ward.
- Fusion Dance: The story starts out with post-GM Khepri being shoved into Lung's head at the start of the story. At first, there's separation and interaction but then their personalities, powers and memories bleed into each other.
- Gag Penis: Lung is apparently rather well-endowed, commenting that he has nothing to be ashamed about being naked because of it, and "that's without the Dragon kicking in". Khepri, upon seeing it for the first time, cause Lung to blush to show her embarrassment. And to have the last laugh over Miss Militia(and to make sure he ended his "performance" on the right note, since MM had become amused at the end of it), he asks her about her perfect memory and makes a joke about how "Lung is not just a grower, he is also a show-er." before dismissing the clothes he made with her power. Militia ends up staring for several longs seconds while blushing beyond her American flag's mask ability to conceal, and runs away from a laughing Lung after he finishes with the line "And I'm not even happy to see you yet".
- "Groundhog Day" Loop: How the premise story is explained: Contessa's Shard had apparently been sending future data and memories of Contessa to save the Earths back-in-time to its past Shard self every time the Path is completed/failed, and have done this over five thousand times, all to revise and refine it to make the final results of the Path better than the last iteration. However, it has been getting drastically diminishing results in improvement by the latest one and decides that Contessa isn't enough to get better results. So it decides to send Khepri!Taylor's data back instead, since she was the primary force for victory and more likely to achieve more improvement. However, since it had never done such with a Shard other than itself (and because time-travel is, understandably, not 100% accurate), it was a few minutes too late and a few metres off its target, and ended up implanting that future data, Khepri copy and memories into Lung in the middle of his fight with Taylor (instead of into Taylor just before her fight with Lung).
- Humongous Mecha: Lung turns into a giant robot using Miss Militia's power in the fight at Winslow.
Word of God dubs this Emerald Flash King Lung. However, since it's based off of Lung's memories as a kid watching Flashmen Super Sentai show, it quickly falls apart, as it's just a life-scale replica of the mech but made out of the same regular materials the show's costume prop was made of, and barely(and unsuccessfully) reinforced by Lung's scales. - I Gave My Word: Lung emphasizes to Taylor how important this is, but how you fulfil your word can vary depending on who you give it to: Follow the spirit for those you favor, but you only need Exact Words with your enemies.
- Intentional Engrish for Funny: Lung intentionally mangles his English when he wants to mess with someone and make people think he's dumber than he actually is.
- Meaningful Rename: After Lung renames her, Dragon insists on being called Panlong.
- Polyglot: Lung apparently learns the languages of every Asian group in the ABB. In addition to Chinese, Japanese and English, he also knows eleven others, and takes a weekend to learn a twelfth, Filipino, when a new ethnic group joins.
- Power Copying:
- Sort of; it's more accurate to say "Power Co-opting". Lung, due to Khepri's presence within him, can share control of the powers of any Parahuman he touches, usually forcing said person to be unable to do anything with their powers, or locking their power in the current form they are in that very moment(For example: physical contact with Miss Militia will keep her weapon in whatever it's currently morphed into and prevent her from turning it into another weapon). However, this only works because Khepri during the Golden Morning, using the almost-full power of the QA, was able get Shard permission from every parahuman she controlled, and the copy in Lung has a copy of all those permissions. As such, she(and, subsequently, Lung) cannot affect the powers of any Parahuman that died prior to Khepri's control during the GM, such as Battery or Velocity. In addition, Lung's new tail gifted by his Shard and Khepri can allow him to take full control of a parahuman's power by stabbing them and connecting with their nervous system, allowing Lung's Shard to use it as a bridge to their Shard and use Khepri as a "Key" to take over. However, he can only do so while in physical contact with them and/or his tail connected to their nerves; his tail disconnects from their nerves, he loses full control but can still maintain the power's current manifestation/prevent the parahuman from using their powers if he keeps touching them; he stops touching them, he loses it all until he does it again.
- Challenger's power in this fic is a form of this; any person he fights and keeps in his sight, he will copy their size, strength, durability(including regeneration), and whatever that person's immune to. However, he cannot copy powers themselves; if he fought Alexandria, he'd have her height, strength and durability, but he wouldn't have her flight or Thinker power. His power also does not factor in anything a person is wearing, like powered-armour, that would boost their strength and durability. In the past, when he fought Lung, they just kept growing and growing to match each other, and though Lung had his pyrokinesis while Challenger didn't, Challenger copied his immunity to fire, making it useless. Finally, he cannot copy Endbringers, and he has to be actually be going to fight his target person(so he can't copy one person and then go fight another person with the first one's strength), and cannot stop or look away from them for an instant lest he lose his powers for that brief moment, though he clarifies that blinking doesn't affect it.
