Editing Lung (section)

==Abilities and Powers==
Lung has an enhanced physique, being stronger and more resilent than typical, with pyrokinetic abilites and excellent recovery abilities.<ref name="I22.y e131">His power had granted him additional strength, durability, regeneration and control over fire even in his ordinary form, but the changes to his body had altered his voice. - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/05/21 Excerpt] on [[Interlude 22.y]]</ref> What truly sets him apart is that his power caused him to gradually transform, making his powers more potent the longer he was in a fight. He healed at a superhuman rate, got stronger, got tougher, got bigger, and he grew armor plating complete with blades at each fingertip.<ref name="1.3"/><ref name="II19.1a">I wasn’t sure what his upper limit was, but I knew that when he’d had a good ten or fifteen minutes of growing time, he had been able to take on the entire Brockton Bay Protectorate, plus visitors and guests.  He didn’t get tired, and his regeneration sped up as he escalated.<br>[...]<br>The problem was that that took time. - [https://www.parahumans.net/2019/12/24 Excerpt] from [[Infrared 19.1]]</ref><ref name="II9.10e1>Lung is a changer, with powers hooked into the change [...] Lung changes to the same thing every time, slow progression, but a steady ramp-up the longer he’s in a fight.  Metal armor, pyrokinesis, enhanced senses, physiology, quickness, added parts. - [https://www.parahumans.net/2018/09/25/gleaming-9-10/ excerpt] from [[Gleaming 9.10]]</ref> His scales resembled knives or spades,<ref name="1.5">[[Gestation 1.5]]</ref> and were bulletproof.<ref name=":0">Lung was already partially changed as we sighted him.  He had enough scales that the officers who shot at him weren’t getting through, and he was big enough that the bullets that did make contact seemed to lack stopping power. Each couple of gunshots was answered by Lung throwing out a rolling wave of flames. - [https://www.parahumans.net/2018/09/25/gleaming-9-10/ excerpt] from [[Gleaming 9.10]]</ref>

As a product of his personality and durability he has some resistance to [[Master]] powers, such as emotional manipulation<ref name=9.11IIeE>But Lung was part of the handful I’d fought where I could input fear and get ''anger''.  Dean had run into the same thing, with emotions other than fear returning the same output.<br/><br/>Some people, especially those of a more feral stripe, just processed things in a different way.  The upside was the tactical advantage in it, if I could adjust my expectations fast enough.<br/><br/>The downside was that I had to make that adjustment.  ''Most'' of my costumed fighting experience was that my enemies would hesitate, get sloppy, or back off, but Lung, like Bitch, like the cooler but still dangerous Krieg or the seemingly unflappable Victor who would still act ''differently'' when under the influence of my power, attacking faster and more recklessly.  They were the people who were angry at the world, or those with the natural predisposition to fight rather than fly. - [https://www.parahumans.net/2018/09/29 Excerpt] from [[Gleaming 9.11]]</ref> and pain or pleasure induction,<ref name="RPPS">
He'd recover from the pain faster. He's tough enough that he could probably endure through a few instances of it, and he'd get tougher over time. Chances are good that if she used her power on him, it might work at first, but if she kept trying to use it on him he'd turn around and surprise her, maybe with burns. If he saw she was aggressively trying to close in, he'd probably start fires between herself and him to make getting close harder.<br><br>He'd recover from pleasure faster, for the record. It's an extension of the same process that makes him recover from poisons, blindness, and such much faster than is ordinary.<br><br>His transformation isn't tied to harm taken or anything like that. It would just be a steady thing so long as he's in a fight, with a leap forward in transformation if he's in a critical situation (see him being stabbed through the chest the fight vs. Kaiser), and corresponding acceleration of recovery. - [https://redd.it/cmg2g6 Wildbow on Reddit]</ref>  tending to respond with anger.<ref name="9.11IIeE" /> However some Master effects, like [[Goddess|Goddess']], overpower this trait.<ref name=9.11IIe1/>
===Transformation===
[[File:Worm -- Lung By DerTodesbote.png|left|thumb|320x320px|[http://fav.me/dcwglf9 Image] by [https://www.deviantart.com/dertodesbote dertodesbote] on DeviantArt.]]
Lung's physical transformation began with scales growing over part of his body, providing armor. His fingertips sprouted claws. After a short while, his back would abruptly grow, sprouting scales and making him grow a foot taller.<ref name="1.4"/> A similar tear and subsequent sprouting of scales might come at his shoulder.<ref>Lung marched through knee-high fire, grabbing one of his wrists, hauling on it.  His shoulder came apart almost as if he’d torn it partially off, a gap visible in the flesh over where ball met socket.  Spikes and scales spilled out, stabbing through flesh and filling the gap, layering the surrounding area. - [https://www.parahumans.net/2018/09/29/gleaming-9-11/ excerpt] from [[Gleaming 9.11]]</ref>

At some point before his body was entirely covered in scales, he was sufficiently large and durable that any bullets striking his exposed skin didn't do much to slow him down,<ref name=":0" /> nor did slivers of metal.<ref>Goddess hurled a metal beam at him, and he leaped to the side, where he was struck by a volley of something else.  Slivers or spikes.  Some impaled him, but they didn’t slow him down. [...]  Lung was bright and easy to see.  Where he was covered in metal scales, the metal reflected the flames.  The rest of him was more of a silhouette against the bright flames.  - [https://www.parahumans.net/2018/09/29/gleaming-9-11/ excerpt] from [[Gleaming 9.11]]</ref>

By the time he was seven or eight feet tall, his shoulders were easily three feet across, and he was completely covered in scales. He was still able to speak normally, and he was still vulnerable to pepper spray, although it wore off unusually quickly. He was strong enough to make [[Bitch|Bitch's]] dogs rear back from the impact.<ref name="1.5">[[Gestation 1.5]]</ref> The dogs were able to subdue him, although he was weakened somewhat by the venom from [[Skitter]]'s bugs.<ref name="1.6">[[Gestation 1.6]]</ref>

He grew wings if he fought long enough<ref name="I22.y" />, although this was only a rumor to the public.<ref name="1.3" /> By the time he was nearly fifteen feet tall, spear-like wing-nubs stuck out of his shoulders. His voice was distorted; the shape of his skull and face were more catlike than human, and his nose and mouth were a single X-shaped opening, bristling with pointed teeth that stuck in every direction.<ref name="5.8">[[Hive 5.8]]</ref> His neck alone was nearly as long as [[Taylor]]'s torso and thicker at the base, tapering down to a more or less normal sized head. He could bend his neck in a ‘u’ shape to look behind himself. He was strong enough to leap to the rafters of a warehouse, and to throw one of [[Bitch]]'s dogs across the room. He employed martial-arts-like throws, which Taylor speculated might be a result of enhanced reflexes and flexibility rather than skill. His fingers were tipped with foot-long blades. His armour could be penetrated by [[Kaiser|Kaiser's]] blades, but he was tough enough to survive even serious wounds.<ref name="5.9" /> He was strong enough to overpower [[Victoria Dallon]]'s superhuman strength.<ref>I flew to the beam, grabbing it and trusting the Wretch to grab it on pure reflex.  It was a narrow shield and a deflection that kept the worst of the flames from knocking the Wretch back out of existence.  It was my weapon, to keep Lung at bay, to try and knock him down.  This time we swung.<br>
He caught the beam with both arms, feet skidding in dirt.<br>
Then it was only one foot in dirt.  The other came up, forward, and stomped down on the length of metal.    The Wretch broke, and the end of the metal beam struck the earth with enough force to send dirt pluming over my head, above me and behind me.<br>
His weapon now.  He drew it back, adjusting his grip as he did to account for the lack of traction, ready to swing. - [https://www.parahumans.net/2018/09/29/gleaming-9-11/ excerpt] from [[Gleaming 9.11]]</ref>

Lung's wings then unfurled, batlike with silvery scales where the bat had fur, and dark red flesh that stretched between the ‘fingers’ of the wings. His entire midsection rearranged so he stood another foot or two taller. He was faster, stronger, more maneuverable.<ref name="5.9">[[Hive 5.9]]</ref> His increasingly alien "face" extended down the sides of his neck. He was strong enough to tear or bite through his own limbs. Although Goddess's telekinesis was able to stab numerous metal spears through him, he wasn't stopped by the injuries, nor by tearing off his own arm and hand.<ref>The face with the multiple sections that could pull away or draw in had expanded, and the growth included his neck now, with sections that could pull back, revealing teeth within.  There were spots that looked like they were scales that caught the light really well, but I was suspicious that they were eyes glowing molten.<br>
[...]<br>
As a steel beam slammed into his arm, crushing part of it, driving through flesh and scale, he didn’t look surprised or bothered.   He lunged out of the way of the remainder of the volley, and then he seized his damaged flesh.<br>
Where scales had been parted, he dug in claws, and he tore away the flesh that burned.  Damage that would have killed another man served for Lung to have a handhold in his own altered flesh.  He tore into chest and arm, the chunks burning like crimson rags soaked in gasoline.<br>
I took flight before he could finish.  I saw him tear away fifteen pounds of mass with blade-like scales embedded in skin, in muscle, and in one fragment of bone.  I saw the blood spill to the ground by modest buckets worth, and he barely seemed to care.  His focus was on the hand that he’d used to tear, that now burned.<br>
Goddess was using the weapons she’d already used for her earlier volley.  They were pulled free all as one, then sent out in another volley.  As Lung brought his wrist to his mouth, the volley struck home.  Spikes that were ten feet long impaled his legs and fixed them to the ground.  Others caught him in the chest.  One struck his face and knocked a mouth-part free, and sent the burning hand flying.<br>
At his back, wings unfolded.  He opened the various mouth parts to drool out the last chunks of his hand. - [https://www.parahumans.net/2018/09/29/gleaming-9-11/ excerpt] from [[Gleaming 9.11]]</ref> He was able to recover from having his torso split open in moments without slowing down.<ref>The hit connected, and I saw the spray of blood as one side of his chest cavity opened.  Sternum to lower rib.  Sliced through the lung.<br>
There was no humor in the irony, only a chill, as I saw blood fountain out.<br>
In the midst of smoke, I saw him stagger.  I saw him draw in a deep breath, his chest coming apart in sections, like twenty fragments breaking apart, then coming back together in another configuration.  His back popped, scale scraping against scale as it extended. [...] It hadn’t even slowed him down. - excerpt from [[Gleaming 9.11]]</ref> <ref name=":1">“Goddess!” I shouted.  We needed to coordinate on this.<br>
“She’s gone.  Getting more help,” a woman’s voice cut through the smoke.<br>
Too little, too late.<br>
The Wretch wasn’t enough.<br>
Even if I’d been one hundred percent coordinated, it wouldn’t have been enough.<br>
The purple flames surged, diffuse in the gray-black haze of smoke.  Lung’s eyes were molten white, larger than before.<br>
I heard him chuckle.  He knew.  That we were past the point where we could do it. - [https://www.parahumans.net/2018/09/29/gleaming-9-11/ excerpt] from [[Gleaming 9.11]]</ref>

By the time he was as large as [[Leviathan]] - that is, thirty feet tall - he had four wings, four hands, and two digitigrade feet. He was bristling with layers upon layers of silver scales.<ref>I could see Lung finding his feet.  As large as Leviathan, four wings, four hands, two digitigrade feet.  King of Cup's power had faded, but regeneration had made up for it.  Lung was intact, naked, massive, monstrous and bristling with layers upon layers of silver scales. - [[Venom 29.2]]</ref>

At the most extreme end of his transformation he was larger than Leviathan and capable of trading blows with an Endbringer; four wings extended from his back.<ref name="I22.y" /> There wasn’t a hard upper limit to how strong he could get.<ref name="1.3" /><ref>[https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/05/21/interlude-22-donation-bonus-1/#comment-23797 Comment by Wildbow] on [[Interlude 22.y]]</ref>

Although Taylor believed that Lung "only started returning to normal when there was nobody left to fight",<ref name="1.3" /> his power actually began to leave him during his fight with Leviathan.<ref name="I22.y e78">For that indeterminate period of time, Lung was king of the world.<br /><br />But he began to weaken.  The lesser heroes were gone, washed away or helping others to evacuate, the greater heroes a distance away.<br /><br />And Lung had nothing to fuel his power.  He was engaged in a fight of ten times the scale he’d been in before, and his power was leaving him. - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/05/21 Excerpt] on [[Interlude 22.y]]</ref> His [[passenger]] decided when he could  transform and by how much, enough potential conflict could warrant further transformation and use of its vast, but still limited, power reserve.<ref>Lung doesn't actually run on adrenaline thoug it's very easily confused. Lung has a strong (if conditional) connection to his passenger, which decides when a situation has enough conflict to warrant transformation (and expenditure of the passenger's energy reserve - [https://www.reddit.com/r/Parahumans/comments/2f5ath/_/ck6mceu Comment by Wildbow on Reddit]</ref> He transformed faster against more formidable or numerous opponents.<ref name="29.4" /><ref name="I22.y e78" /><ref>Bulletbrainsurgery: Can't find the exact quote at the moment, but I think it's implied in his interlude that he ramps up faster when there are capes around.<br /><br />Wildbow:<br /> Yep - [https://www.reddit.com/r/Parahumans/comments/6jfn5k/spoilers_lungs_power/djeasqd/?context=3 conversation] with Wildbow on Reddit</ref> Enemies hidden by [[Mantellum]]'s powers didn't provoke Lung's ability, even if he could see them.<ref name="29.4" />

Anticipating a fight, Lung could build up a charge to accelerate the rate of his transformation.<ref name="29.4" /> He could feel the scales and heat building up inside him.<ref name="I22.y" /> When he was on the brink of transforming, his eyes glowed orange and scales stood out under his skin like hives.<ref name="29.4" /><ref name="29.5">[[Venom 29.5]]</ref>
===Pyrokinesis===
Lung could create flame out of thin air, shape it, intensify it, and so on. This ability became stronger as he transformed.<ref name="1.3" /> His flames didn't require fuel, and may not have consumed oxygen.<ref>Surely he was burning up all of the oxygen in his vicinity.  Didn’t he need to breathe?  What the hell was the fuel source for his fire? - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2011/06/21/gestation-1-4/ excerpt] from [[Gestation 1.4]]</ref><ref>Fires, purple and otherwise, spread out across ground that should have been exhausted of all fuel sources. - [https://www.parahumans.net/2018/09/25/gleaming-9-10/ excerpt] from [[Gleaming 9.10]]</ref> He could create a small flame in his hand and hold it,<ref name="29.4" /> or hurl fireballs through the air.<ref name="29.5" />

[[File:Lung by lonsheep-darj8gl.png|thumb|320px|[http://fav.me/darj8gl Image] [https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/tabloid-worm-artfic.455278/ babylonsheep] on SpaceBattles.]]
His power was partially inhibited by tranquilizers, damp, and cold. Even under their effects, without transforming, he was still able to heat a metal strip white-hot.<ref name="I6" /> He could light a flame in his hands without transforming.<ref name="29.4" /> 

Early in a fight, with only a portion of his body covered in armor, he was able to fire jets of fire into the sky and create localized explosions that burned everyone around him.<ref name="1.4">[[Gestation 1.4]]</ref> By the time he was a foot taller, he was capable of keeping himself constantly on fire.<ref name="1.4" /> He could throw out rolling waves of flame.<ref name=":0" /> He could curve and shape the pillars of flame he sent out towards targets,<ref>A column of flame stabbed skyward like an giant’s spear, forged of explosions.  I flew out of the way, and the spear curved, following me.  I tried to fly  back toward the base of the column so that the ‘head’ with the momentum behind it would have a harder time chasing me, saw a light pulse within it, and I put some distance between myself and the column.  The column expanded- regular orange fire, and not purple.  He was holding back on the purple. - [https://www.parahumans.net/2018/09/29/gleaming-9-11/ excerpt] from [[Gleaming 9.11]]</ref> or shape existing flames into curving pillars and spears<ref name=":2">Columns and tapered spikes of fire speared up without much warning or reasoning as to where they came from.  Lung wasn’t near all or even most of them, but he fired, and the orange light illuminated me.  As Teacher’s thralls had done with their anti-air guns, Lung was trying to box me in, caging me.  Five spikes in a couple of seconds, all curving in the air as I changed my direction. [...]  As I fell down, fire spiked up, aimed right for me. [...] As I made my aerial maneuvers around flares that worked like explosions constrained within invisible cylinders, the heat in the air sucked all moisture from my mouth and eyes.  Had I been running, the heat would have knocked the wind out of me, saw me crumpling to my knees. - [https://www.parahumans.net/2018/09/29/gleaming-9-11/ excerpt] from [[Gleaming 9.11]]</ref><ref name=":3">Double fuck, I thought, as fire came down from above, far too close to me.  He’d manipulated the fire of a spear of flame that extended high above me.  The prickle of heat and the wave of it that seemed to soak into my core and take the breath from my lungs and the oxygen from my blood hit me harder than the last time.  It was that staggering, fall-to-my-knees kind of heat, and it hadn’t been a direct hit. - [https://www.parahumans.net/2018/09/29/gleaming-9-11/ excerpt] from [[Gleaming 9.11]]</ref> which resisted attempts to extinguish them with telekinesis.<ref>I saw Lung fire out the long gouts of flame that pierced through the sky, illuminating the scant clouds above and turning them orange.  He placed them all in Goddess’ vicinity, and she used her telekinesis to scatter the flame.  The fires didn’t go out, instead licking through the heavy smoke in the air like slow motion explosions.<br>
Lung was keeping the air aflame using his pyrokinesis.<br>
[...]<br>
While airborne, he slashed with one hand, flames at his fingertips, and fire moved in a similar pattern a dozen feet below and behind him.  The movement of the fire connected one of the columns of fire he’d made near Goddess to a nearby patch of purple flame. - [https://www.parahumans.net/2018/09/29/gleaming-9-11/ excerpt] from [[Gleaming 9.11]]</ref> He could extinguish patches of his flames if he wished.<ref>I used my aura, with an eye on where the purple flames were still burning below.  The purple fire on the ground expanded, touched other flames and spread through them.  It was a domino effect, and one that Lung seemed aware of.  He used his power to extinguish fires around him, a sharp intake of breath’s span before the purple fire spread to that area.  - [https://www.parahumans.net/2018/09/29/gleaming-9-11/ excerpt] from [[Gleaming 9.11]]</ref> 

Past a certain point, his fires were hot enough to weaken anyone near them who wasn't resistant to fire.<ref name=":3" /><ref name=":2" /> With his body fully inhuman, he could cause all fire across a wide area to swell dramatically. [[Victoria Dallon]] speculated that he would reach the point where he could take on [[Goddess]] and her army singlehanded shortly after.<ref name=":4">He was big now, but he was nimble.  A corner of the building hit the ground and rolled through the fires without breaking up.  Lung leaped on top of it, then leaped to another point, the beam that Rain had sliced.  It was just the tip, cut at a diagonal, and left leaning against the fence.  Lung had one foot on the tip, another on the top of the chickenwire fence, barbed wire crumpled underfoot.  No skin showed, his arms, legs, spine and neck were all extended now, and the mass along the length of his body was swelling steadily.  He reached up with claws of steel, seized his mask, and tore it free, casting it off.<br>
The face beneath was even less human.<br>
Lung lifted one claw, moving it through the air.  Fire swelled dramatically.  I could see that the point where he didn’t even need the purple fire anymore wasn’t that far away. - [https://www.parahumans.net/2018/09/29/gleaming-9-11/ excerpt] from [[Gleaming 9.11]]</ref>

When he was fifteen feet tall, his fire was blue-yellow and hot enough to soften steel. At sixteen or seventeen feet tall, his "explosion" was ten times as large and hot as before. He was able to disrupt [[Sundancer]]'s attempts to form her miniature sun, and create a huge torrent of flame large enough to hide his form and engulf her. <ref name="5.9" /> Shortly past this point, [[Victoria Dallon]] and Lung himself estimated that he was singlehandedly the equal of Goddess and her combined army.<ref name=":4" /><ref name=":1" />

When he was thirty feet tall, his power resembled Sundancer's, being more like plasma than fire, and melted sand on contact.<ref name="29.2" /> At the most extreme end of his transformation, when he was larger than [[Leviathan]], he burned so hot that the steel-like flesh just beneath Leviathan’s skin was blackening and charring to ash by proximity alone.<ref name="I22.y" />

Lung was [[Manton Effect|immune to his own fire]], and possibly resistant to fire generally, but this wasn't widely known.<ref name="2.2 e1" /><ref name="1.4" /> However, even combined with his superhuman stamina, this didn't fully protect him from the intense heat produced by [[Sundancer]]'s power.<ref name="5.9" />

===Healing===
Lung could heal almost any injury, given time, provided it didn't kill him outright. It would take him about a month to regrow a limb. By the time he was sixteen feet tall, he could shrug off a spear through his heart.<ref name="5.9" /> His eyes had partly grown back by the time he was tried, taking over a week to heal.<ref name="I6" /> His flesh would decompose without a connection to his brain.<ref>(The eyes would decompose without a connection point to Lung’s brain.) - [http://parahumans.wordpress.com/2012/06/26/plague-12-1/#comment-2731 Comment by Wildbow] on [[Plague 12.1]]</ref><ref name="r1">Brutes (esp. regenerators) and changers often relocate their cores/coronas to the hardest to access part of their body, or adapt to do without. - [https://redd.it/6d99gw Reddit comment] by Wildbow</ref>

When fighting [[Leviathan]], he rapidly recovered from a blow from the [[Endbringer]] that shattered bones and organs, even though he wasn't yet strong enough to hurt the Endbringer. By the time he was half the size of the monster - that is, fifteen feet tall - he was able to trade blows with it, not hitting as hard as Leviathan but recovering faster than the endbringer did.<ref name="I22.y" />

Lung's healing made him resistant, but not totally immune, to toxins.<ref name="1.4" /><ref name="5.9" /> This makes medical care, including dosage, difficult as medicine needs to be calibrated to account for his healing abilities. <ref name="9.11IIe1">“It’s a power nullifying chemical,” the same woman said.  She stepped forward.  Words were tattooed beneath her eyes, so they traced straight lines down to her jaw.  ‘Crock’ and ‘Shit’.  Colorful, for words in black ink.  More ink put scales at her arms and neck.  “Nullifying your influence, Goddess.”<br />[...]<br />Goddess turned her attention to Lung.  “Did you take the drug?”<br /><br />He shook his head.<br /><br />“Truth,” Crock o Shit said.<br /><br />“He regenerates,” I said.  “Drugs have reduced effect.”<br /><br />Lung nodded. - [https://www.parahumans.net/2018/09/29 Excerpt] from [[Gleaming 9.11]]</ref> His system can still be "overloaded" if he overdosed with drugs, overwhelming his healing abilities by forcing them to focus entirely on fighting off the poison. This allowed [[Skitter]]'s poisons to do more damage than they usually would while he was fighting off tinker tranquilizers administered by [[Armsmaster]].<ref>[https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2012/07/26/interlude-12%C2%BD/#comment-3253 Comment by Wildbow] on [[Interlude 12.5]]</ref>
===Senses ===
By the time he had grown a foot taller, Lung had significantly enhanced hearing,<ref name="29.5" /> <ref name="29.6&quot;">[[Venom 29.6]]</ref> and like his other attributes it scaled as he transformed.<ref name="I22.y" /> This aspect of his powers was not widely known to the public,<ref name="2.2 e1" /><ref name="1.4" /> but was known to [[New Wave]].<ref>His senses were improving, going by his ability to track me in the gloom. - [https://www.parahumans.net/2018/09/29/gleaming-9-11/ excerpt] from [[Gleaming 9.11]]</ref>