Hybrid

For good fun, imagine this character being introduced by Tommy Wiseau. "O hai, Brid!" Become the dragon. The last time we talked about Fortnite's storyline, we only got you up to Season 5. Let's fix that! During Season 6, a blizzard could be spotted off the southwest cost of the Fortnite island. It grew closer as the weeks went by, eventually revealing an iceberg floating inside it. Season 7 began when the iceberg collided with the island, and players discovered a castle sitting on top (it belonged to the Ice King, a big storyline event villain); as the snow melted, a dungeon was discovered beneath the castle, with someone entombed in ice there, and also a clutch of mysterious eggs. Eventually the ice block melted entirely, releasing the prisoner chained inside, who absconded with the eggs and created a massive volcano in the opposite corner from the iceberg. The Prisoner used his fire magic to turn the eggs into Hybrids. Like Dire or Drift, Hybrid is a skin that evolves as you play it. You start out as a fairly ordinary ninja - red pajamas, total mask over the face, a little bit of armor, all that. At 60,000 points, a few rips appear in the suit and the right sleeve is torn away, revealing that the body beneath is green and scaly, and at 180k, the only clothes remaining are the left sleeve and a strip that's stuck beneath the strap around his chest. (At 340,000 he turns sparkly, but we don't care about that.) As you may expect from someone who was hatched from a dragon egg, Hybrid is some kind of half-dragon. His body is covered in sculpted scales, but the way they fade to smooth skin in a few sections is subtly done. He has three toes on each foot, plus an extra claw on his heel, and wraps around his feet and shins. Around his biceps are wide straps with a single small pouch apiece. One of the bands around his chest is plain, but the other has a large buckle and two sculpted ninja stars. The armor on the forearm has the same kind of curved spikes seen on the bare arm, which is awfully convenient from a symmetry standpoint. This isn't just a scaly human, however. We already talked about his feet, but he's also got a long tail and a head with a long, square snout that makes him look varanine ("like a komodo dragon"). A large pair of bent fins sticks back off his head, with a matching pair on his thick, curving neck and then even more down his back before getting smaller as they extend along the tail. We're back to the usual articulation for this one: a balljointed head and neck, balljointed and swivel/hinge shoulders, swivel biceps, double-hinged elbows, Revoltech-style swivel/hinge/swivel wrists, a balljointed chest, a balljointed waist, swivel/hinge hips, swivel thighs, double-hinged knees, Revoltech ankles, and hinged toes. His tail is mounted on a balljoint (it can pop off easily enough, but goes back on with no trouble at all), and it's bendy rubber. There's a lot you can do with that combo! Hybrid's Harvesting Tool is the Dragon's Claw, a wickedly ornate scythe that comes from the same set as the outfit itself. His gun is the Flint-Knock Pistol, a piratical flintlock that will do knockback on both the wielder and the target. And finally, his Back Bling is the White Fang, which is less about Alaskan wolves, and more about a tiny oni mask strapped to a small black bag. Well, the Asian theme certainly makes sense with a dragon ninja, so it's not a bad choice at all. Even if you're not a Fortnite fan, Hybrid is the kind of character who would fit into any number of collections. Even his 7" scale isn't an impediment, because a dragon man like this seems like he would tower over normal humans - let him team up with Sauron or something. -- 05/15/20

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