Sowhere in the real world—Long Island, New York.
Hidden behind the bramble-choked ruins of a forgotten lighthouse east of Montauk, beyond the jagged cliffs where tourists dared not tread, lay a place locals had long pretended didn't exist.
Even satellite maps showed only static.
No na.
No coordinates. But there, in the mouth of a craggy cavern beneath the earth, a vast molten chamber breathed with heat.
Crimson veins of lava glowed through obsidian walls, and in the center of it all—rising from the bubbling pool of magma like a monster from a myth—he appeared.
The lava split.
It ford into him.
A figure shaped from molten fla.
A humanoid mass of bubbling magma, with arms like twin rivers of hellfire, and where one hand should be—there was a scissors. Not a weapon. Not a tool.
A limb.
A lava-ford scissors-hand, fused to his very soul.
He was Lava Scissor.
And he laughed.
The sound echoed with the roar of volcanoes and the shriek of tal being sheared apart.
"HAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! What a waste of ti! Is there anymore?!"
Around him stood a dozen superheroes, most in ill-fitted costus, patchwork armor, half-finished emblems on their chests.
So wore capes made of towels.
Others had cardboard chest plates painted gold. None of them wore the high-tech sheen of the elite E-rankers.
These were F-Rank heroes—bottom-tier, the unwanted.
So were just kids.
Others, burnouts trying to prove they still mattered.
One of them—a bulky man with a blender for a helt—stepped forward, fists crackling with static. Another, a woman in a plastic suit filled with helium, floated gently in place.
Lava Scissor looked them all over.
"Is this what passes for heroes now? You sad excuses can't even reach E-Rank in a whole damn year! A YEAR! Hahahaha!"
He pointed his scissor-hand at a girl who had paper butterflies for wings. "What's your power? Origami dance? Going to fold to death?!"
The girl bristled.
He turned to a skinny boy with huge gloves. "And you! You're using toaster mitts as gauntlets?! Hahahaha!"
His laughter grew louder. More manic. He spun in place, lava flicking off his body and hissing as it touched the cold rock.
"You're all weak! Pitiful! It's no wonder the New League of Superheroes is rising! They'll crush your whole generation of fools! You're a joke! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!"
Suddenly, a blast of light shot forward. A beam of sparkling frost!
Then ca another—a stream of elastic bands. A third launched hot dogs at supersonic speed.
They attacked all at once.
Superpowers clashing in wild, chaotic color.
One hero extended thirty limbs like a spider, each holding a different elental wand.
Another shouted commands into a gaphone that made the ground vibrate.
Yet another summoned balloons that floated into the air before exploding in bursts of purple fire.
BOOM!
ZAP!
SHOOM!
The cavern beca a storm of power.
But Lava Scissor?
He didn't dodge.
He didn't flinch.
The attacks hit him—dead center.
The ice blast struck his chest—and lted into steam.
The fireballs exploded—and were absorbed into his core.
The ribbons tried to bind him—but burned away on contact.
He stood in the middle of the assault and let it happen. And when the dust cleared—
He laughed again.
His chest glowed hotter.
Molten light poured from his eyes.
"You fools."
His voice thundered across the chamber.
"You actually tried to burn ?! FIRE against lava?!"
He raised both arms, lava swirling like whirlpools.
"I'm elental! I'm not so musclehead you can punch! I am lava! I flow through the earth's veins! You can't destroy with parlor tricks!"
One hero tried to rush him from behind—only for Lava Scissor to pivot and slash with his molten scissor-limb.
SHHHINK!
A glowing arc of red energy sliced through the air. The ground lted where it landed.
"THIS IS YOUR DOOM!"
The paper-winged girl cried out, diving behind a boulder.
"We're not strong enough...!" soone yelled.
"We can't hit him!"
"We're F-Rank!"
Lava Scissor's body surged, bubbling higher.
"Exactly! Stay in the dirt where you belong!"
He walked forward slowly. Each step cracked the earth beneath him.
"You should've retired when the system told you to. You'll never surpass —HAHAHAHAHAHA—!"
Then, from the edge of the formation, a voice called out.
"...Hey, lava-head."
Lava Scissor paused.
Turned.
A boy stepped forward from behind a boulder. He had ssy hair. Baggy jeans. A paint-splattered hoodie with a cracked plastic badge on the chest. In his hands—
A tiny, plastic, neon-colored toy gun.
It had a yellow trigger.
Blue plastic chamber.
And a tiny reservoir of liquid barely visible through the translucent side.
Lava Scissor stared at him.
He blinked once.
Then burst out laughing.
"AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!!"
He clutched his molten sides, nearly buckling from how hard he was laughing.
"A TOY GUN?! That's your secret weapon?! What are you going to do—squirt ?! Give a tiout?!" He staggered forward, arms out. "Co on, then! Shoot ! Let bathe in your toy water, little boy!"
The other heroes stared, unsure whether to stop him.
The boy looked up, silent.
Then—
He pulled the trigger.
PSSSSSSHT!
A jet of water fired.
It didn't spray.
It shot.
The stream cut through the air with bullet-speed precision, shaped like a thin, shimring needle of force.
SPLASSSHHHHH!!
It hit Lava Scissor directly in the chest.
SZZZZZZZZZ!!!
Lava Scissor shrieked.
Steam exploded from the impact.
"AAAAARGHHHHH!!"
Everyone blinked.
He—he took damage?!
The boy pulled the trigger again.
PSSSSSSHT!
Another stream. Another wound.
HIS BODY WAS HISSING—
lting at the edges.
"Y-You—WHAT IS THAT?!"
The boy stepped forward, eyes narrowed.
"Water."
Lava Scissor backed up. "N-Normal water doesn't—!"
"It's not normal," the boy replied. "Specially compressed hydro-pulse water. Condensed like bullets. Designed to puncture elental cohesion. Got it from the old janitor at HQ."
Lava Scissor scread.
"NOOOOOO!! YOU CHEATED!! YOU—YOU USED A TOY!!! THIS ISN'T FAIR—!"
PSSSSSHT!
PSSSSSSHT!
PSSSSSSSSSSSHT!!
The final shots hit like thunderclaps.
Each stream slicing into Lava Scissor's body, turning him into steam and mud and screaming pain.
And then—
BOOOOOMMMFFF—
With a final hiss, a crack, and a puff of ash...
Lava Scissor collapsed.
His molten fra cooled and hardened.
Steam rose from his body as it fell to the cavern floor.
Shattered.
Defeated.
The toy gun hero lowered his weapon.
"...Next ti," he said softly, "don't mock the F-Rank."
Suddenly, just as the toy gun hero turned around to celebrate the impossible victory—
Crack.
A sharp, splitting noise echoed across the molten cavern.
CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!
Everyone froze.
Their heads turned slowly toward the source. It was coming from the blackened, crusted heap that was once Lava Scissor's body.
The rock-like shell trembled—vibrating like sothing beneath it was alive... and angry.
Then—
KRRRRAAAAK-KOOOOOOM!!!
The hardened shell EXPLODED in a storm of obsidian shrapnel and molten fla.
A column of fire burst into the ceiling, sending waves of heat radiating through the air so hot the heroes fell to their knees, gasping.
Their skin prickled with heat rashes, their clothes smoked at the edges, and eyes watered from the sheer force of the temperature spike.
A terrible laugh—low, guttural, growing louder and louder—erupted from the heart of the flas.
"...Heh... heheh... HAHAHA... HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!!!"
It grew.
And grew.
Until it filled the entire chamber with the sound of madness.
A silhouette erged.
Taller now.
Twice the size he had been. His torso rose like a cliff wall, arms thick as stone columns, and his head a jagged crown of fire.
Where once stood a man-shaped figure, now towered a lava god.
His molten scissor-arm hissed, fully remade, glowing like liquid sun.
And his eyes—his eyes—they pulsed with pure hatred, twin orbs of burning white staring through the souls of those who dared defy him.
"You think... you won? You think a squirt gun could defeat ?!"
His voice was now deeper, slower, as if the Earth itself were speaking.
"Let tell you a story. Since you all love fairy tales so much... Sit. Listen. Let these be your last monts, bathed in the truth you never knew."
The flas around him pulsed.
"I wasn't born like this. I was... made."
He stepped forward, every step sending tremors through the cavern.
"There was once a boy—just a janitor's son in the Hero Association's waste disposal wing. He cleaned floors while those pompous E-Rankers and D-Rankers looked down on him. They laughed.
"They spat. They dumped their radioactive test waste without care—chemicals, energies, arcane batteries still crackling with dangerous potential. One day... he slipped."
The lava twisted, flaring higher with every word.
"He fell into a recycling chute. Landed in the Hazard Core Chamber. You know what that is? Of course you don't. That's where they toss the failures. The contaminated. The unstable energies. Magic cores from dying worlds. Liquid hellfire. Ethereal entropy. Forbidden nanotech."
He raised his massive molten hand to the ceiling.
"And there—he burned. For seven days. Seven nights. Screaming. lting. Becoming. Until he erged—not a boy. Not a man. But lava itself."
He slamd his foot down.
BOOOOOMMMM!!!
A massive shockwave rippled outward, throwing several heroes off their feet.
"And from that mont, I realized sothing. You can't kill lava. You can bury it. You can cool it. But it always cos back. It flows beneath your cities, sleeps beneath your hos, and when it wakes, it destroys everything."
His body surged with power.
"You thought water could stop ?! A few drops of compressed H2O? Pah! FOOLS!"
He pointed his scissor-hand at the toy gun hero.
"That wasn't even my real body. That was just a shedding. A decoy. A distraction. I'm lava. Elental. You can't kill with liquid—I flow through it!"
The heroes stared in horror as his form doubled again in heat and mass.
"No... I am not defeated. I'm evolving. You only made angrier. Now..."
He spread his arms wide.
"I will show you the depths. The molten womb from which all life sprang—and where you will return!"
He stepped forward again.
And now the heroes attacked.
All of them.
Desperation in their eyes.
The helium girl floated above, dropping mini-teor balloons that exploded in purple sparks.
The rubber band blaster fired like a machine gun, pelting Lava Scissor with a barrage of elastic fury.
The frost user poured out waves of cryogenic mist, aiming for his molten joints.
One hero summoned a spectral vacuum that tried to suck the heat from the air.
Another began hurling bricks that turned into detonating chickens mid-air.
They hit him with everything—EVERYTHING.
BOOM! ZZZZT! CRACKOOOM! WHUMP! BZZZZZAAA!
Light filled the cavern.
Color, sound, explosions.
Even the toy gun hero fired his last round, the water bullet splashing uselessly against Lava Scissor's burning chest, steam rising but doing no damage now.
But Lava Scissor—
He laughed.
He laughed.
He walked through their attacks like they were a sumr breeze.
Flas curled off his body, consuming every projectile.
He grabbed a frost spear and crushed it like sugar.
The brick chickens exploded on contact—and he didn't even flinch.
"You're nothing. NOTHING! You think numbers matter? Pests don't beco predators just because there are more of them!"
One of the heroes tried to form a shield of concrete, only for Lava Scissor to punch through it, shattering it into dust.
"I will take you all into the depths of the Earth! Into the fire where no hope remains! Into the pit where even gods scream in silence!"
He raised both arms.
The ground beneath the heroes cracked.
Lava spiraled upward from below.
The ceiling above began to tremble.
"You want power? I'll show you true power! The power to lt mountains! To boil oceans! To erase history with a single—"
However, he was interrupted.
"—You will do."
A new voice. Cold. Flat. Malevolent.
Suddenly.
Unfathomable.
Everyone turned—except Lava Scissor, who barely had ti to react.
A shadow lood behind him.
A hand—bright gold color—reached out.
GRAB.
Lava Scissor's massive eyes widened. "W-WHAT?! WHO—?!"
The next instant—
SWOOOOOOOSH—
He was gone.
Vanished.
The flas disappeared with him, like soone had sucked the oxygen from the entire chamber.
No flash.
No portal.
No scream.
Just... gone, with the wind.
The heroes stood frozen, their sweat-soaked suits trembling, weapons limp in their hands.
A silence unlike any other filled the cavern.
It was the silence of survival.
They didn't cheer.
They didn't celebrate.
They just stared at the empty space where their deaths had been certain.
And finally...
Soone whispered.
"...What just happened?"
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