Azura

Water is a note and aquakinesis' a song. You need rhythm, a gentle hum at least, to bend the hydrogen bonds and the almost crystalline structure of water that makes it both malleable and a strong base. When I peel water from the PSU park blocks' grass into sharp razor thin claws, and I do it with flare. A whipping motion of the wrist sends those strings of water out, slicing my assailants rifle to bits. The end tips even catches his face, unfortunately for him.

With him writhing, his partner surprises me by dropping his bag full of unmarked money orders in favor of his side arm. I barely have enough time to cycle my arms and send those whipping waters through a near fire hydrant. All the plant life in Portland couldn't give me enough water to stop bullets, luckily the water lines would do.

This dance requires my full body, twisting along with the cyclone of water wrapping around me. I couldn't build a ice wall thick enough, but the key to stopping a bullet was to catch it, not block it. My hips shake as my amulet burns a bright azure and water circles and wraps around small arms shells popping off against the cyclone.

I sing along, it's the only thing that keeps me focused under the hellish pressure. Every bullet feels like a punch to the throat. Even as it hits merely sheets of liquid, feedback from aquakinesis reverberates in my bones. The whine in my ears isn't helping either, my cyclone doesn't exactly block sound.

Support, my skills are better suited towards support. I should have waited for Corrin, I called her, but I should have waited. Foolish, forgetting my limits, foolish trying to to fight head on while I'm still very weak against bullets. Advanced senses, enhanced strength, power over water and a deep understanding of the arcane, yet I can't handle a few gunmen without Corrin.

Keep focused, sing, she's coming.

And together...

I don't need to theorize any longer. I hear the sound of Corrin before I see her. The bullets stop as the sound of cracking bone and body slamming against pavement replace it. I open the cyclone to see, and I'm not at all surprised to find her, The Silent Dragon, standing on top of the smashed and groaning body of a man dumb enough to shoot at her….whatever I was to her. The unmarked van tries to peel out, but Corrin's prehensile tail wraps right around the spinning wheel. Every limb of that half-ragon could outmatch twenty engines, it is a pitiable showing.

Corrin smiles with rows of sharp canines as she pulls the the van toward her. While her body remains mostly human, thanks to my magic, there is a primal edge to her when she fights. Her wings grow up long and tough, the claws extend into sharp talons longer than one's fingers. Even her boney horns that wrapps back over her jawline and out the back of her head grew with her rich white hair as she crouches close to the ground like a beast.

Of course there was always those magma red eyes, and just how bright they get in a fight.

"Get out of the car and get on the ground, police are coming and I'd really prefer no one hurt themselves," Corrin says knowing full well they won't listen. The engine sputters and rubber from the wheels shred as it groans miserably against the might of her half dragon body. "This isn't going to work the way you think, come on out!"

The van door pops open, the driver reaching out with his half body while he still has his foot slamming on the acceleration. He leans to let out a few shots, but as soon as Corrin sees the black barrel of that handgun, her wings envelope her front making a shield of white scales, each one stronger than a steel plate.

"Corrin!" I shout, seeing another robber, one I had not noticed come around with a shotgun. Without thought, only motion, my voice shifts to calling out a snake. A fluid whip of my arm sends a cobra of water into the man with the force of a riot hose. It sends him skitting into the post office, knocking right out against a bullet proof window.

There is a flash of crimson fire in Corrin's eyes, a draconic rage she keeps in check with will and hyperactive empathy. That doesn't save the poor fugitive reloading his useless firearm.

A sweep kick slams the door on his body and in less than a second he's crumbled onto the floor groaning in pain. Given the massive indent in the door itself, he has at least a few fractured ribs.

"Don't get up." Corrin punctuates her point by slicing through the engine with her extendable claws. No one's escaping, not that the bleeding gunmen seemed capable or willing to give it another go. Truly, the evisceration was likely just cracking open her emotional boiler. Her scales could block bullets, but it wasn't as if she was immune to pain.

"The Silent Dragon, my hero," I giggle as she sighs. Corrin enjoys being a hero, caping with me especially, but me actually being here while gunfire was about always set her on edge. I lack her durability.

"Hi Aqua." My identity as a grey cape, though my veil and attire remains mostly black and gold, as is my spear-staff. However, we were both flashing red and blue. The police were here and the hour approachs for me to very much not be.

"It aches to part so soon," she can't see my smile, but I can see hers, "but it'd do your reputation ill to be seen with a dangerous criminal."

"You don't have to go!" she rushes out despite the approaching footprints of Portland's fine officers of the law. "Or I can go with you? If you wanna hang out for a bit." She hops on the toes of her rather draconic feet. So excitable.

"Aqua, drop the weapon!" an officer, a young man named Takumi who I knew only as Corrin's police handler, shouts at me, utterly ruining the moment.

"My spell doesn't work for two, I'll see you later Corrin."

"Take her down!" Takumi shouts, but The Silent Dragon's busy waving at me, her features turning more human as my body begins to fade into vapours.

"I'm good, bye Aqua!" Corrin answers the same way she did whenever anyone asked her to arrest me, at this point it registers almost as habit. "If it's okay I'll co-"

Then black. For a minute, an unthinkable, unfeelable, minute. I don't exist, just fragments in a wind floating down towards the river.

Coming out of the other side of a transmission by vapor is identical to the feeling of waterboarding. It's not drowning, my lungs are clean when I rise to the surface of my alter pool, but I'm choking and desperate for a gulp of air. Soaking wet, coughing up nothing that feels certainly like something, and soon enough I can add embarrassed to the list of emotions.

I can usually rely on arriving alone in my room. Thankfully considering the spell transports me, my cane, my clothes, all as discrete units to avoid a deadly merger. Added to my list of indignities, my mother picked today to tend to the maternal and bring me the mail.

So we're both red, both coughing to regain composure, and both trying not to look each other's way.

"Darling, you have letters. My apologies for barging in." We're not an expressive or open family. As a line of aquakinetic mages, the prime scions of the art, we're raised to be refined. Arete did her best to enable my lack of refinement in spite of my prestigious uncles, but this was never going to be comfortable for us.

"It's quite alright, from whom are they?" I do my best to ignore my staff and black dress when they bubble their way to the surface.

"Your uncle Iago, I would have burned it, but I thought it improper to do without your say," she turned completely around, talking to my magic mirror, preferring the heckling reflection demon over watching me change. Not that I minded. "Another from Legion Pacifica. I'm sorry." I'd only applied three days prior. The timing itself was evidence of my rejection. I deflate even as I struggle to get my way into the white dresses I prefered while lounging about. Ones Corrin often rib me for, dressing so much like my alter ego at home.

"Thank you mother," I punctuate with the hard slap of a fresh hormone patch to my abdomen. Hard enough that despite my efforts, it was clear I'd traipsed into a dark place.

"It's not uncommon for the best mages to go unappreciated in the benign world. We're not as flashy as a Dreadnought and the problems we solve often seem small to the ignor-"

"I deeply appreciate the consideration mother, but I know why they reject me." Because I have trouble stopping post office heists, because Aqua isn't even a local name. I was a flash in the pan when I transformed the dreaded Kaiju, Anankos, back into a girl, saved Portland and in turn, created my replacement. The Silent Dragon is Portland's hero now.

And I am proud of her.

"Would you like me to call your familiar?" Mother asked, thinking very much of Corrin.

"She's not my familiar," I say taking the letter and collapsing on the couch. "But perhaps."

My mother tries to smile and leaves the way she came. Alone as I am, and I admit as I prefer, at least my room remains as comforting as it is massive. It eclipses Corrin's living room, larger than most studio apartments all on its own thanks to the boundless size of our mansion. The facility managed to completely consume one of the little islands on the columbus river. My room held all I needed, alter pool, bath, open space to practice water dancing, a couch to entertain, a large bed which remained a little too open, and a dark oak desk so old and so soaked in magic that it's very presence replenished my energies. All my walls were bookcases lined with tomes and novels which provided every distraction or study. Everything was dusted to perfection by maids crafted from ice sculptures. Fresh coats of gold and black paint gave the room it's color along with my personal lights that generated a pleasant watery blue.

It's not all uniform, as with the lights much of my personality has touched the ancient hall. Mother helped me embed the ceiling with crystals to gleam like stars. I've grown fond of photos after years of hating them, and my room's become lined with special memories along with magical artifacts. As I lay my head down, hair still wet against the leather of the couch, my eyes line up on a photo of Corrin and I, dressed in our caping outfits, atop KOIN tower, not that Corrin could hide her identity with those wings and horns, and somehow I feel less pitiable.

Feeling a surge in assurance gifted to me by those smiling red yes, I flick my fingers to summon candle light and face this letter alone.

Aqua,

Legion Pacifica is many things to many people, and I'm thrilled it's been inspiring to you, but one thing Legion Pacifica must be to remain the kind of force for good it is, is legal. I don't want to disparage the hard work you do, and I'll be the first to admit we've bent the rules around special cases, but being a gray cape precludes your application from current consideration. If you take anything from this, don't take it as a rejection, but a personal call from me for you to go white, follow the steps, get your license. It's safer for everyone, you especially.

When that happens, and I hope it does, contact me again. I really look forward to seeing you do great things out there in Portland, and maybe then I can give your application a much more fair shake.

Good luck out there and be safe,

Doc Impossible.

I torture myself and read it twice over. Thrice, and then quit mid forth. I sigh, and outwardly let the disappointment wash off me without so much a shift in expression. Inside there is a little girl, who cried over finding out the new Dreadnought was just like her, and cried now believing she'd never stand with her as equals. Either way, the little girl inside did nothing to solve the problem, so I shut my eyes and try to kill her softly.

I couldn't go white. Let go. I'd reveal my entire family to the government. Let go. We'd lose their status among the magical elite. Let. Go.

So I do, I'm steady. I'm stoic. I'm very aware someone's knocking on my window.

"Corrin?" I ask, not expecting sound to really carry through the black curtains and sliding glass of my balcony door, but my answer comes when I pull it open to find her. "You're rather fast."

Pretty too, if sometimes only in a strange, tittering on eldritch, light. With the sliding glass open, the sound of the river and the air from her beating wings smack against the cold dampness of my hair. Her body will never be a typical girl's again, not since she touched the cursed Yato, but my song and dragonstone got her close.

When she forces herself down, her dragon parts simply leave her horns peeling out of that silver hair, wings just barely big enough to fly and tail diminished, but not absent. Her feet are distinctly large, but not obviously inhuman if she's wearing shoes, although I can't imagine how many said shoes she's ruined shifting it into talons. Her hands look human to the untrained eye but if ones notices, her nails end in points and her fingers are distinctly longer than those of anyone I've met. Lastly, seeing me, she smiles brightly, lips peeling and showing off rows almost only canines. I wonder how hard it is to eat the pizza she's holding.

"It took awhile for my handler to let me off, thought we should celebrate with dinner! My treat!" She's serious, Corrin's still in the white and black combat clothes I weaved with magic for her, an outfit that could expand with her as she lets loose more of that dragon power and defend her when dragon skin isn't enough. Then again, she's always loved this outfit.

"How did you manage that fast, my mother could have only just called you?" I take the Laslow's Pizzaria box and with my free hand pull her to the tiled floor of my balcony.

"I don't text and fly, you have no idea how easy it is to drop your phone and watch it explode." She keeps ahold of my hand even after landing. "I just wanted to come by, sorry if you still need time to dry off." Dragon's blush in darker shades of pink than you'd expect for being so pale, and it makes me a little self conscious knowing I'm why. Water mages are use to being perpetually wet, not that my hair ever looked like anything other than thick blue ropes of seaweed.

"I love your company regardless of my state. Please come in. I was just reading a letter." A large cheese and pepperoni, that Corrin will most certainly eat the bulk of, looks so mismatched next to the curios that litter my ornate coffee table, but its one I'm happy to have. Melancholy only dulls an appetite for so long.

"Did the Legion get back to you already?" I turn away from my freshly pulled slice and find a Corrin leaning in so close to me she could take a bit if she wanted. Her own eyes reflect an enthusiasm completely blind to how poorly any early reply to applications are.

"Yes, I've been rejected." I punctuate with a bite, literally swallowing the rest of my words. Corrin expressed them for me, her smile deflating to a flat frown. Her eyes go sharp with anger and brow crunched. Putting down my slice, I smile at her, somehow I feel like I need to cheer her up. "It's quite alright. This time it's signed by Doc Impossible, with Magma's letter previously I'm nearing a complete set."

I force a laugh, but it doesn't work. Corrin understands me too well. Those muscled dragon arms wrap around me and I have to avoid her horns as her face plants into my neck. She ignores my damp hair, ignores how little I let myself feel about it. She's heart broken.

"How do they not get it. You're astounding," she mumbles. Her arms are solid, with biceps that could shatter me, but her embrace is soft against my leaner build. For once I'm glad to be so tall, it lets her fit snuggly against me.

"I'm not legal, nor up to the expected quality. I understand their choice." Too well.

"How many graycapes, hell any capes stopped a kaiju and saved a city? You're one of a kind." Suddenly I find myself holding her too. We both know we like this, though neither of us had yet been willing to admit it.

"You were a special case." I recognized her form from the legends of Yato. I knew Anankos needed a human host, and with an affinity for water my song and stone did the trick. My mother, had she been involved likely could have done the job.

I was happy it was me though. Happy it let us meet. Happy I of all people gave Corrin some of her life back. Makes her pretend I'm special.

"You saved the city, and me."

"You saved me too, I can't believe I'm still having trouble with low life robbers," I can't seem to catch the facade that's falling off me. Corrin, she just makes me feel so… safe. "You're three times the hero I am."

I shutter as Corrin pulls away, hands at my shoulders holding me at a distance. I can see her face and see her eyes have a tear or two dripping from them. She's always been a bit of a crier, but still, she keeps it together. Tears or no, her eyes lock to mine, they don't let me pull away, or hide from whatever she's prepared.

"Everything I do, is an extension of what you've accomplished," her hands shift from my shoulders to my chin, thumbs gently brushing my cheeks. "You're part of everything I do from here on out. Everyone I save, we did it together. You're my hero Azura. Always."

My heart feels like bursting, a feeling that tilts a little more to the flustering side when I see her looking at my lips. We've been skirting this for a while now. Romance is… confusing for me, but in the now, I'm parched for her.

We lean forward. We kiss. Her lips are softer than I thought a dragon would be, but on the third kiss, when tongues start being added to the mix, I find myself almost scared to explore her mouth.

Thirst outstripes fear, and I find her teeth not too sharp for me to enjoy a deeper kiss.

Time...fades. She's on top of me on the couch before realize it, hands pinning mine without argument. My legs happily wrap around her hips shortly there after, pulling our bodies closer together, especially below.

That gets Corrin's attention, and she breaks away with a starved look in her eye.

"Wow," she mumbles.

"Was that too...forward," I say, pretending that it was something other than reflex.

"No...I don't know maybe. God, I want this, but like I feel like we really need to talk more." she stutters, eyes shifting along with her branching thoughts. I'd never seen her so nervous. Corrin is nothing if not courageous. "I mean I don't usually start making out with girls while we're still friends, I think we are still friends or like... but also like how far do we even take it, and like I didn't know you could even-"

"Oh you felt...yes I can still sometimes, but I'd rather not talk about those details," I feel prepared to go the distance, but discussing the mechanics in detail wasn't how I enjoy a good day in this body. "I understand if you're not into that."

"No it's cool, I'm cool with your body. God. That was rude, I'm sorry. Honestly, I don't even know if my body works right anymore-" She blushed and my head tilted, the persona I carried swapping to the one of her, for lack of a better term, doctor. Magic held her body together despite being stuck between dragon and woman and a physician was ill equipped to manage that.

"The stone should have rendered everything there human, if you have problems physically or malformation please tell me. You reported your cycle went as usual-"

"Okay now I'm uncomfortable." That gets me to giggle, her face was already puffy and red, now she won't look at me at all, I prefer her rapidly scanning eyes sucking in some part of me instead of the counter.

"Oh then I suppose we're one for one then." She cracks and collapses in a light fit of laughter right on top of me. The sexually charged moment is gone, replaced by cackling and cuddles.

"Sorry I killed the mood," she whispers into my ears as she wraps her arms around my shoulders. In a very Corrin like way she lets her wings envelope us in a blanket of scales and I find I don't mind at all.

"In another perspective, you've saved the pizza," I feel her giggle even if I don't hear it.

"Oh no, we can't have sex on an empty stomach."

"Truly, a travesty," I smile, earnestly looking forward to another slice, though I wouldn't be the first to break out of this position for that alone.

"So," Corrin cuts into my thoughts, a finger tugging my chin to have me look down into her eyes, our noses a millimeter from touching. "Stuff just happened. What does it mean?"

"It means…. I believe I'm fond of you Corrin."

I try to jest with a mocking shocked expression. Corrin returns with a steady gaze.

"You don't have to be," she says like affections were voluntary. I shouldn't be so shocked. I've often spoken of my general apathy towards love. The romance section of my bookcase, fifty-three novels in total, are all Corrin's.

"In some sense," I offer, "but I am regardless. Are you not fond of me? If so the passionate kisses are sending the wrong message."

"No, I've been totally head over heels. I'm stupidly, utterly, into you. It's kind of much to be completely honest," she gives me that big Corrin grin, and it pulls up my own lips, I feel light and just brush her hair unsure what to do with all this feeling, "But I'm concerned. Azura, you brought me back, but I know what I am. I'm a monster, a monster trying to do right by everyone, but bodily I'm just a mess. I feel woefully...freakish, and I know you feel responsible, which you're not. I don't want you feeling like you have to just because not many others would."

"I may be a mage, but I've used the internet, I think you underestimate desire for dragons." Part of me feels conflicted, does this qualify me as a scalie?

"I'm not really looking for Dragon fetishists on tinder. I'm a romantic remember?" We joke, but I can't avoid the core point of this discussion.

"To be clear, being a dragon doesn't factor in for me," not negatively at least. The horns are a little appealing. I'll tend to this descending train of thought later. "Let me remind you, several people would call me a freak too." That earns me a desperate squeeze and I swear I hear a low dragon's rumble.

"I'd like to pick those people up by my talons and drop them from the upper atmosphere." I'd have liked a Corrin in my school days. "You're human art," defensive and precious.

"You really are a fan of big romantic gestures aren't you."

"Yes, I know I'm a nerd, but I'm…" she stops, rolls her eyes, and looks back at me. I can tell my stallings reach its conclusion. "So what are we?"

"Would you like it if I said 'bound by fate'." I don't know why I struggle to say girlfriends. Maybe because I never thought I'd have one?

"That's so cheesy," she laughs shaking her head against the exposed skin of my shoulder. "But I would."

She's astounding, I've decided. She's wonderous, she gives me joy, and every heavy ounce of jealous I feel towards her is outweighed by the peace she brings to me. Only she could make me truly forget how much that letter hurts even after burying it with the other festering traumas.

"I'd like….Corrin would you let me take you out somewhere? This Thursday, I have it free. Let me take you out on a date. Properly." I find that though romance alludes me conceptually, I want it so long as it is Corrin and I want to do it all just like she dreams in those stories.

"I'd love that." The grin, that smile that defines the cliche of toothy. We lay together and I feel so put together. When she turns, I turn with her, and those beautiful reds I adore, they are staring at pizza.

"Corrin?"

"You make me really hungry."

Our first date ends in a dance as I hoped, though the context was nothing like I planned. My dance partner dwarfs some buildings, her dragon head larger than my body. I sing and spin rainwater from a thunderstorm into a dome that threatens to consume us in it's healing light. She's mesmerized, Corrin's otherworldly jaw hangs open as the dragon stone dances between us, emanating blue.

This is exactly what I did the first time, down to the shattered concrete around us, and the sounds of sirens and fires providing us with a soundtrack. I never thought I'd see Anankos again, but then I wonder if I am at all. Was this the dragon? I could feel Corrin's soul at the helm.

The night of our date had gone so well, she'd taken me out to the park and I to dinner. We'd wanted to go to a club after, though doing anything with a city wide celebrity was a pain. Especially when there was no confusing Corrin, the horned half dragon, with anyone else.

I never got to find out exactly how hard it would have been. When the clock struck ten, like gastly clockwork, a kaiju appeared right from the histories. Garon the mountain beast and caller of storms, and his path tracked right into the city.

Within minutes Corrin and Azura vanished, and from the aether, The Silent Dragon and Aqua came to be. Though tabloids will guess her mysterious date was probably Aqua all along, no one knew my name, or cared, so my identity was likely safe for a time.

Corrin rushed to distract it, though there was no way she alone could destroy Garon, and once again, I did very little. Guiding and protecting civilians trying to escape the path of this walking mountain that trickled with small beats of electricity. This was no dragon I could charm, but an elemental evil.

Then Dreadnought came. It wasn't odd, we were part of Legion Pacifica's territory, the rest would likely follow within the hour, but it was Dreadnought. My hero. She had my mouth agape and dry as a desert as she passed me, and flung herself into the beast and nearly sent its rock body into freefall.

I was nearly floored with her when she fell.

Fangirl as I am, I know her weakness is lightning. The fight with Garon was a one shot chance. And what a shot. Dreadnought slammed into him with enough force, I could feel it shake the concrete below me. Rock burst from the elemental kaiju's body and he roared what likely to him was something a akin to a horrified scream.

The lightning struck them both from the heavens, made worse by the building rain that followed his steps. Dreadnought was down. I got close to my hero for the first time when Corrin flew her right to me. I finally get to meet her, and she's passed out from a excruciating lightning strike.

I was in shock. Enough so I don't know how much time passed before Corrin shook me.

"We have to!" is when I came back.

I knew what was entailed even with the temporary blackout. Turn off the stone. Wake the dragon beneath. Let Anankos return.

We argued. After all what if she lost control? What if I couldn't turn her back? What if, what if? Well we knew what if Garon wasn't stopped. People were crying, screaming, the thunder rolled through the streets, and Corrin could not ignore the suffering.

And neither could I.

We agreed. I turn her back, try to keep only her mind human. I ride her. And lastly. We save lives.

She trusted me, I could tell. She trusted me so utterly when I touched her stone and felt into the heart of the beast, she stared into me with the confidence you see only in the true believers. I unlocked the hatch of her soul, let the stones magic release, and among the wet rain Anankos returned, white and black and slick with a body that reminded you of almost a fantastical horse, though scaled with eldritch and otherworldly structure.

She sang with me in rumbles, and I knew I would live.

Only she could fight the Kaiju, but only I could protect her mind while the dragon dueled her for control. She thrashed against the elementals body, and I thrashed in her mind, my song expunging the curses effects over and over.

Pelted by rain I sang. Showered by rocks I sang. When the roars made my ears sting with ringing pain, I sang.

When Corrin's dragon hands peeled apart the stone and moss mouth of Garon, revealing the tangled magical flesh within, I sang a different song. One that crafted a spear made of ice pulled from the rainstorm above. With Garon's own storm, I sent a spear into his core and the lightning chased it deep inside.

Garon died, as much as an elemental can die, and I sung.

Still do, though my voice is so hoarse I can barely keep a note.

"You are the ocean's gray waves~"

The water circles us, and the great dragon hums with me. As my song closes, her body begins to fate now, peeled apart into water. It horrified me the first time, back when I barely understood what I was doing. Now I was confident as I pulled the body apart into vapour trusting underneath Corrin's mostly human form would emerge. I could see her now at the center glowing with an azure light, her eyes closed, but voice humming away.

When they finally open, red and wide, mine shut and once again, time runs without me for a little while.

"Honestly, even with the best capes I've ever met, we really only have two that can go toe to toe with monsters, we really need someone like you. If Garon comes back, someone's has to punch through lightning, and well you saw how good I am at that."

A voice that sits between the familiar and unknown speaks and my brain fires back to life. I can't move, at first I want to scream, the police finally have me, but I have enough sense to realize I'm not bound. I'm just tired. My soul's been drained by song after song, I need rest.

"You want me to join Legion Pacifica? Really?" Corrin's voice… Legion Pacifica? Suddenly the urge to cry is present. I realize why that voice sounds so familiar.

"Yeah, you're kind of incredible," Dreadnought answers.

There is something richly pathetic about hearing someone else receive your dream while you lay writhing silently on a bed. I can't tell if I feel more humiliated, or dreadfully lonely. I'd both lose to her, and lose her.

Let go. My eyes flutter open but my visions blurred with silent tears. Let go. She can fly. Come down and visit me, tell me tales and stories of the Legion, adventures with Dreadnought and Calamity, how life in the tower is. She wouldn't leave me alone. Let go. I just, wanted it to be me. I have to be happy for her, I have to be. Let. Go. This isn't working.

"No thank you," my lip stops quivering when Corrin answers with all the gravitas of refusing a free drink, "I know this probably seems insane from our relative powers, but without Aqua I'm nothing really. Literally, I needed her for that trick we pulled, and more than literally, I don't know if I have it in me to be half the person I am without her support, guidance, just everything about her. I'm the sidekick."

No you're phenomenal, a changer of fate itself, the greatest hero I've ever known. My mouth moves, but not my voice. My vocal cords too strained right now to let out more than a whisper.

Dreadnought returns Corrin's laugh that's as light and fluttering as my feelings towards both of them, my fangirl crush hyper reactive to the sound and I hope Corrin doesn't begrudge me that.

"No, I know exactly how that feels."

My tears have stopped, I can see the hospital tent I've been left alone in and the shadow of my heroes beyond the white tarp walls. I am no longer jealous.

"Well," Dreadnought continues, "The tower's got room. Maybe both of you can come?" I manage to fall out of my medical cot with a rather undignified thud. "I mean our wizard left so— What was that?"

"I think Aqua's up," I'm mentally screaming at her to just accept the offer and shut up, but I only get out a wheeze as I get up from the floor and onto my knees. Dragon transformation is not an easy magic, "but uh, why don't you let me talk to Aqua about it. You know she's a gray cape, right?"

Corrin, please be silent!

"We've made exceptions before." I weakly, to the sight of no one, raise a triumphant fist and pray.

"Cool, how do I contact you?"

If my dear Corrin manages to get Dreadnoughts phone number I will find a way to scream.

"Call the tower and give them your name, I'll let them know to transfer you."

I lean my head on the frame of the cot. Close.

There's some shuffling and foot steps. When I open my eyes I'm eternally happy to see only Corrin standing above me. Her body has returned to mostly normal. Her hair is frayed and clumped a little in sweat. I imagine Corrin was dragged off to help with crisis rescue and has had quite the workout. I'm just happy to see her alright.

"Hi," my voice gives me that much, even if it feels like sand's been poured down my throat.

"So you're going to freak when I tell you what just happened," Corrin starts off like she wasn't a massive dragon a few hours ago. Her arms lift me up and I'm happy to be at level. I nod to tell her I've heard it all through ineffectual nods, but that message just whiffs past her head, tangled horns and all. "Now, not only did I get the police to back off you, but I think we might be part of the Legion now."

My nods come with extreme gusto, desperate to communicate my immense and, at least by my standards, untamed joy. She can't see the grin behind my black veil, but perhaps she can see it in the golden glow of my eyes.

"Am I, uh, girlfriend material now?"

I kiss her, trusting it made the point even with the thin shield of cloth to stop us from pushing farther. I am developing my own form of communication, even if girlfriend seems to get trapped on its way up my throat. My own expressions of love.

"Thank you," I choke out a whisper into her ear. I hold her, and I will not let go until every drop of the depth of my gratitude become clear to her.

And I adore how she holds me back.

"Anything for my hero."

A/N: First off happy birthday to my dear friend Savvymeme! It's been so many years and somehow we've stuck through it. We're still friends from the original squad and I'm thrilled to have you. She's the one who gave us (TigerLily and Saberin, I'm holding you to it) the prompt of Azurrin or Say'riki crossed with our most recent favorite anime or book, thus fire emblems first Dreadnought crossover is born!

It was super fun to write in that very zanny universe though imo I ended up being a little rushed. I wanted to keep it short and sort of small scale, but the kaiju stuff ended up being pulled in so hey. I also decided to do Trans!Azura cause it feels wrong to have a Dreadnought fic not have a Trans main character.

Also this is a shout out to the whole Nemesis series. Both Dreadnought and Sovereign are amazing and worth reading. (Sovereign is probably the only YA sequel I've read that's better than the original." It's a great little series about a trans-lesbian superhero and it's honestly a great LGBT book, coming of age tale, and especially the second one a great action book. Definitely worth reading.