Everything went dark for a moment as chaos erupted from beneath. From where I was looking, it was a blur of rubble and fire. Flashes of blood and the silver night sky showed through crashing boulders as the building itself turned to rubble strewn in the wind.

The mighty Kizmet stretched out its body beneath us, long overdue for the free space. She groaned, and it shook the earth as far as the eye could see.

The entire palace had been thrown hundreds of feet into the air as she did so. All structural integrity was lost, and I watched the King's men scatter over the wide landscape, tossed away. But not me. My next great act was yet to come.

Riding in the body I had possessed, I held on to the monster's back and gleefully rose with her to her fullest height. We dwarfed the landscape then, standing almost a thousand feet tall. As big as any Kizmet ever recorded.

Alejandro's own consciousness was lost. I'd oxygen-starved his brain to the point of cellular death. Even as his Power had kicked on in those last moments, it hadn't been enough. He had to lower his shield, and the mutations were already in place to capitalize on that vulnerability. They flowed into his lungs, skin, and eyes, sending armies of parasites to bog down his healing factor until it could no longer keep up. All of that, with one singular purpose.

It only took a moment of unconsciousness for me to leverage my Power for a decisive kill. It hadn't even been in my grasp that he lapsed, but after they pulled the King out from my trap. In just the seconds that he lay limp on the bed, before sputtering out a new breath, his mind faltered. His Power deactivated.

I gained all the time I needed at that moment to make sure his cerebrum never came back online. His healing kept my parasites battling, but it could not stop the flood of cellular conversation against my full versatility. Then, as simple as anything, I had turned to his men and smiled.

When the palace exploded, all of its ambient defenses went offline, bringing the process up to a tremendous crescendo. The titan was no longer slowed, allowing everything to happen with instant finality.

The King's healer seemed to have kept his resolve. He had been blocking me from total cellular assimilation, making me fight just to keep the man's brain scrambled, right up until those last seconds before the crash. But not anymore.

While I stood up on her shoulder, the Kizmet unfolded its wings. She was unmistakably a dragon, to my eyes. A marvel of nature. Covered in bright red scales that vented fire down her chest.

Some of the men on the ground were already casting attacks up at her, but for the moment, she completely ignored them. Her indifference filled me with awe.

As I looked at my bare flesh, a thought passed through my mind. Perhaps I could keep Alejandro's Power? As long as I kept most of his DNA, maybe I could control his abilities?

Alas, as I willed the strength of the Kizmet to flow into me, nothing happened. In my grasp, the great Conquistador was no more or less than a regular man, apparently. His Powers would only listen to the authentic consciousness of its wielder. Perhaps this was not the case for everyone, but it was the case here. "Oh well," I said, shrugging. My own ability was plenty enough for my appetites.

I was already shedding off cells to explore the Kizmet. To probe at its skin and see what kind of immune system stood in my way. She and I needed to work together if we were going to beat the people who wanted to kill us. She simply had to be shown the way.

Conflict was coming, I knew. We just killed one of the Six Kings. Nothing would be the same.

The rubble of the palace had settled into the surrounding jungle, now. People scrambled like ants down on the earth. The cold air of the sky washed over me. All of this drove home the fact that I was alive. I was facing a hostile world, but I was steady and confident. Such satisfaction was what I lived for.

This was why I had never been able to consider returning to the ocean. Hickory had been with me, even then, subtly driving my actions to the disaster needed for my growth and joy. There was an insatiable desire for conflict buried in my subconscious. And now, it had come out to flourish.

Several flying Supers moved up to find me where I waited on the Kizmet's shoulder. It was breathing deeply, recovering from the burst of strength it had used to finally escape.

Those men and women saw me as their King, still. One of them called out to me as he cautiously landed, "Alejandro! We need to get you down from here! The healer is dead. You are unprotected, my Lord."

"It's fine," I said, waving him off. "This is really complicated stuff, so let me concentrate." With my Power unlocked, I had direct control and mediation that allowed me to handle the complexity of biological systems. But only up to a point. It might have been able to simplify for me how they worked, reducing it to a summary of functions. But this did not change the fact that I was simultaneously directing hundreds of individual attacks.

Kizmet biology was novel to me. Each of its systems was mysterious and more magical than physical. It's immune system used acoustic vibrations that tore foreign organisms apart, emanating as if from nowhere. This was difficult to overcome, I found.

The four Supers stood or hovered awkwardly, not sure of what to do with my response. The head of the Kizmet was hanging down, eyes closed. But it would not stay dormant for long.

I could see with my heat vision, as I slowly began to install the usual gamut of improvements. Energy was being leached out of the surrounding air like mad. She was recharging her vitality.

Soon, she could attack. It was the only sensible thing to do in her position. Lay waste to this land and devour what she could, to recapture her future and meaning.

"I'm not really interested in a rampage," I told them, "so if I can get this thing under control, I will. She lacks the higher reasoning to see what she needs to do, here. I'll show her patience."

"You have to drain it, sir," one of the women said, looking increasingly nervous. The dragon's head was rising. A thrumming began in its core which vibrated through our bodies. A strike was brewing,

I just stared at her for a moment. There was really no point in keeping it secret anymore. They needed to know the truth. "You can tell everyone below," I explained, "Alejandro is dead. I took his body in all the chaos. They can stick around if they want, but I'm the Baron now. This is my land, and it may not be safe for a while."

Shock flashed over their faces. They didn't want to believe it, but they had no choice. Denial, anger, and lastly acceptance moved through their minds. Some of them considered attacking, but they knew it was futile.

Though I had taken by far the weakest member of the ranks, I was now officially considered to be Class Zero. Not something to be trifled with.

In the end, all but one of them flew off to warn the others. The remaining woman was frozen with disbelief. "You're the monster he was fighting?" she asked.

"Yes..." I'd solved the problem of the acoustic defense system. Quickly, I moved to hijack the nervous system and convert the cells. If I didn't stop her now, I sensed this Kizmet was loading up an attack that might level the area for miles. She was practically a nuke in waiting.

Slowly, I forced the Kizmet to start moving to the ground and relax. I breathed a sigh of relief.

"How dare you wear him like a suit!" she bellowed, voice cracking. She was unable to strike at me but furious nonetheless. "You piece of shit!"

"Yeah, it's not ideal," I agreed. "So, let's rectify that. You can witness a momentous occasion. This will be the last time I will ever be so vulnerable and small. Mark my words. It's time to move up a size category or two..." Stomping a couple of times, I softened up the cells on my feet. Converting this Kizmet was taking ages. I might as well contribute everything I had, I decided. "Forget Class One," I scoffed. "This is me at my full potential..."

My feet began to sink into the beast's shoulder as my entire body dissolved to join the work.

The last flying Super left in horror. No doubt, most if not all of the camp would flee for their lives. That was fine with me. I didn't really need them. Right now, I only wanted to neutralize this Kizmet so she couldn't do any more damage.

As my consciousness came into possession of her full faculties, I looked around. Her sight was barely functional, I found. So much of her design had been operating on Powers which I could not properly inherit from her. Thus, it all began to break down.

I didn't think I would be able to maintain this form, sadly. Even her flight used supernatural mechanisms to be viable. Her eyes used psychic vision. So many hundreds of Powers formed her amazing strength, rather than one like in a human. Reluctantly, I had no choice but to begin breaking these structures down to a more basic form so that I could make use of them. It was a pity.

No one left on the ground level was bothering to attack my legs, however. Certainly not as they came to understand how bad the situation was becoming for them. My limbs turned to generic brown material as every part of the titan transformed into a mountain of meat.

With my surface area necessarily increasing as well, the last Supers fled.

There were hundreds of them in the surrounding area, I knew. Altogether, they might have done serious damage to this new body of mine. But they were routed. Their spirits were broken along with their King. He had been the man holding together this troupe, by force of Power appealing to selfish desire. No flag or ideology bound them. Just a dead man's will.

Therefore, it was inevitable. The army disbanded as the news spread. The King was dead.

From then on, it was just me. The clear stary sky and its moon began to disappear in favor of cloudy dusk. The process of breaking down the Kizmet caused so much humidity in the air around me that the entire jungle became covered in a thick fog. Time did as it used to for my mutations, flying by.

My roots spread into the Earth, infecting everything they could get their hands on. Every ounce of remaining Crystal found in the wreckage was fuel on my fire. They would be the last reserves in this world. Soon, the surrounding rivers and waterfalls became my drink. The trees made use of dim sunlight to become my source of food. My cells moved to linger in the air, capturing anything which breathed them. The area was blanketed with new and varied constructions.

The hours stretched out into the day, and I felt myself sink happily into the dirt. This was it, I decided. This was the place I would make my home.

Every rock and leaf in this valley of the jungle mountains was mine now. The mass of the Kizmet was taken and used to spread out the area I controlled. She and I were one, and we served our purpose. Bone and blood filled the soil and at its center, in the desolation of the palace, I housed my soul.

There, in a breathing spire of hardened flesh, I started on my greatest designs yet. A heart the size of a whale began to beat, pumping the vessels which crept through the land to share its spoils. My nervous system grew to its apex, deep in the ground there, in the chamber that used to hold the Conquistador's prize.

It was dug five hundred feet below, having been just enough size for the creature to stoop in. It made for a perfect bunker, deeply shrouded by bedrock and concrete. With some work, I took it for my own. It was filled to the brim with my hard shell, building up protection for what lay at the bottom. The grave of the King's empire was to house my mind. It protected my most important organ.

"Let the heroes come," I laughed, sending out quakes. No one would be taking this home from me. This tract of the planet was mine to keep. This was my barony. And it was only just beginning.

Spy planes flew overhead. Soon, Maximal would know just how right he was.