- Location
- Somewhere in Space
Krouse you Ziz bombed moron! This is why he should always be shot early on...
Abaddon Born(e) - (Worm CYOA)
- Thread starter PublicLee S.
- Start date
- Status
Ah teenagers... wait i too am teenarger, damn it. Well, at least i am NOT a FUCKIN KROUSE!
(But where is her name in the kill count? Oh my eldritch lord, i still have hope)
(But where is her name in the kill count? Oh my eldritch lord, i still have hope)
- Location
- Pennsylvania
Yea. Thats the good and bad of worm fanfiction. The Endbringers, and Scion, are so stupidly OP that the vast majority of anything you try to throw at them are uselss unless you hit their weakenesses. On the other hand, moat of the time any OC ands up knowing those weaknesses, or 'Accidently' finding them out. Or they just so happen to have a sting equivilent.
It is quite refreshing to actually see the Endbringer scaling up to match the threat like they were implied to. At least I think that was canon.
It is quite painful to watch so many people die here, including many we feel we know. Most fanfiction isn't willing to do that, even when canon was. Regent, Kaiser, and many others, but both jump to mind.
merv
You may already be a winner!
Wow! The Leviathan thingy seriously stopped holding back.
Worm power scales are utterly ridiculous!
Like, if the Leviathan was able to affect all the oceans of all Earth-like planets in a globular cluster (which is probably a low-end estimate of its capabilities given WoG), then this fight would be at someething like 1e-12 /percent of its total capacity!
Worm power scales are utterly ridiculous!
Like, if the Leviathan was able to affect all the oceans of all Earth-like planets in a globular cluster (which is probably a low-end estimate of its capabilities given WoG), then this fight would be at someething like 1e-12 /percent of its total capacity!
- Location
- Wonderland
I think I speak for all of us when I write, "Fucking Krouse."
individuals'
Right you are, brother
- Location
- Pennsylvania
Half of that is how we actually GET numbers, instead of just getting "invulnerable, except when not" or other similar things. Admittedly, the numbers given might be BS, given our primary source was a thinker trying to analyze an endbringer, known to disrupt thinker effects.
Still, given how there are enough parallel universe to compare with number of atoms in the universe, those numbers aren't nearly as absurd. Sure, that mass is enough to collapse into a black hole, but most of it is not just hidden, but actually spread between probably millions or billions of alternates.
Shame about Sundancer. I can't really hate Krouse, given he is being mind controlled, however subtle.
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merv
You may already be a winner!
Sure you can hate Krouse, it's just not the same Krouse who used to live on Earth Aleph.
Deadline 12.8
- Location
- United States of America
Deadline 12.8
"Can you repeat that?" I asked, hoping I'd heard wrong.
"The Simurgh is coming here," Theo repeated, dashing said hopes.
". . . . Fuck," I sighed, looking around. Leviathan was nowhere to be seen, but his assault on the city was still going strong, water clones in every direction attacking what groups of heroes still survived. A condensed spear of water shot straight at me, from above, but it was deflected into the torn-up street next to me with barely a thought, punching a hole through the bit of turn up asphalt it hit. "What about Behemoth?"
"What?" the kid, far out of his element, asked. "Um, I don't know. How do I check?"
I sighed, throwing reading the sensor manual on the giant list of things I needed to do. The damn thing was at least three-hundred pages long and full of terms I'd need to go look up, since while I knew the basics of radar theory, I had not the slightest idea what a 'Root Mean Square Error' was. "I've got no fucking clue. Eta on the Warrior?"
There was a long pause as I sensed a water clone form nearby. It barely started its leap before I riddled it with air blades and detonated them, splattering it to mist. "Who?" Theo asked.
"Scion. How long till fuckin' Goldenrod shows up?" I repeated, failing to keep the edge out of my voice. I was getting more options and powers, but it wasn't enough. I couldn't assume I'd get any more, but it seemed like I would, so I needed to make two plans for what I needed to do next. Actually making the plans was easier said than done, however. "And how long do we have before Ziz touches down?"
"Um," there was the sound of typing, "The PRT say he'll be here in twenty minutes, probably." More typing. "Sensors say The Simurgh will be here in fifteen minutes."
"Fuck," I swore again.
"She won't be here long enough to do that much," Theo offered, misunderstanding my statement.
Not having the time to explain, especially where I could theoretically be overheard, that it was Scion's coming that I objected to, I looked at what I had, what my team could do, and what Leviathan had already done.
"Is this an open line, or are you just talking to me?" I asked him, wondering why no-one had said anything. Glory Girl never hesitated to add her two cents in.
"Um, just you. I didn't want to panic everyone if I was wrong," he replied, sounding like he was worried he'd done something wrong.
"Good call, kid. I'm gonna take a sec to plan, sit tight. Eeem." Dispersing another two clones as they tried to sneak up on me, I had to make the same decision I had before: run or fight.
Run was overly simplistic, as it could be pulling back to wait it out or it could just be continuing as I was, holding back as more and more people died but I wasn't revealed. From the sound of constant fighting all around me, I knew that if I still had my armband it'd be reading off more and more names. They aren't your responsibility, part of me argued. You don't owe them anything. They knew what they were getting into.
Except they didn't. They thought this would be a bog-standard Endbringer fight, if such things existed. They thought they were fighting together against a foe they knew the measure of, not one that had been holding back to an insane degree. If I hadn't warned Cauldron of this attack, things wouldn't be that bad.
You don't know that. It could've been just as bad, and even if it is worse, it's Cauldron's fault, that part of me argued back. You've fought Leviathan today, Charlie likely has, and if Herb hasn't that's on him. We'll just help him prepare for next time. You're all in the clear, and you can get back to the bigger picture of planning to kill an Entity. You don't have to do this.
Again, that inner devil's advocate was technically right, except it wasn't. Yes, I didn't have to do this, but I didn't have to try and help Taylor or the Undersiders either. Amelia was objectively an incredible asset, but getting involved with Taylor, even going out and fighting the ABB, were things I didn't have to do. My father would bring out that 'great power, great responsibility' argument, but he wasn't exactly here helping either. I didn't have to save them, I didn't have to go with the option to fight instead of hide.
But, there was a large difference between have to and should.
Vejovis had fought, he'd flown the flag and shown that he was willing to stand and fight but Vejovis wasn't me, not really. I'd sunk into the mentality, like I always did, but Vejovis didn't fight with dozens of powers at once. Maybe that's why I had so much trouble, maybe that's why I'd been such an idiot. Maybe not, and I just hadn't been ready, despite everything I'd done.
I tried to think of a persona that'd work the best for this situation: Hopeless fight against an overwhelming foe, maximizing damage while saving lives, and not giving two shits about the collateral. Normally making these things took hours to do correctly, getting everything in place so I could slip into it like a tailored suit. I didn't have time to make a new one, and I ignored a man of Wealth and Taste offering his services in the back of my mind. He'd do better than Vejovis had, but it wouldn't be enough. He acknowledged the point, but that fragment of my own core personality brought up a counter-point: Did I need one? While a man might wear a dozen masks, that didn't mean he lacked a face, after all.
My costume flowed and changed, interlocking grey plates covering me from head to toe. Orichalcum tendrils extended out between them, completely flush with them and sealing me inside as they darkened, turning to shadows along with the rest of me. As they extended, they interweaved themselves into the facsimile of a man, thirty feet tall, with me at the center.
My guns were shifted to thigh holsters, so I wouldn't forget them, and three dozen tentacles extended from my back, then from the giant's back, forming the outline of unnatural wings. The ends of half of them lit up, royal purple suns forming taloned tips, the metal able to handle the heat, even if barely. The ends of the other half shimmered, the rain revealing long, thin, razor sharp, and otherwise invisible blades made of compressed air.
Rising up, the forearms of my giant smoothed out, azure blue fields of energy forming that quickly darkened to match the fiery tips of my wings, rippling from my hands down to my elbows. A similar process happened to the soles of my feet, from toe to heel, and a third occurred across my back, around the 'wings', extending straight out.
Spikes of real metal grew and detached themselves in the interior space where I hung, projected metal pressing the created metal against grooves that rippled and appeared in my armor, the foot long orichalcum needles primed and already starting to fill with Momentum, ready to be fired at anything that I wanted gone.
Placing two blood-red suns in the giant's head for 'eyes', I opened up the chest slightly to see my reflection in one of the few unbroken pieces of glass around me. I looked god-damned terrifying. Good. If I was doing this as me, I needed every advantage I could get.
"Zilla, broadcast what I'm saying to everyone, if you can't reach them then queue it up and play it for them when you can," I instructed.
"Recording," was the entirety of the Virtual Intelligence's response.
I let out a long sigh, "Okay guys, we're at the endgame. Levi's taken the worst pounding he'd had, ever, and he's still here. Hell, Purity, the Triumvirate, and I cut off his god-damned tail, and it's just made him pissed. I know some of you might be upset by me saying this, as you've been fighting as hard as you can, but for the rest, it's time go full-bore. Break, you and your cousins should go mythical. Æonic, I know you've got a dozen tricks under your sleeves, time to use them. You'll come up with more in a week anyways. Glory Girl, if you aren't already, pull out the sword, and if anyone else has got something they think will work, use it."
"We've got company incoming in fifteen, and while I can handle her, she's known for her multitasking," I revealed. They'd either get the reference, or they wouldn't, and either way they couldn't do anything about it. "Then, five minutes after that, we've got more trouble, and if we haven't convinced Leviathan to turn what's left of his tail and run, there might not be a Brockton Bay anymore. Smoke 'em if ya got 'em guys, because you might not get another chance to if you don't."
I let that statement hang, Zilla's, "Message sent," coming through my headset. Nodding to myself, I looked around the empty, abandoned street. Two clones rushed me from opposite direction, my wings lashing out at them.
The suns burned so hot that they vaporized the water they touched, my Aerokinesis kicking in automatically and forcing the steam to expand outwards, blowing off their top halves completely. The lower halves started to reform, but they were cut to pieces by the air bladed tentacles, not reforming. Water spears shot down from above, but they passed through my insubstantial form harmlessly.
I wasn't sure if the armbands collected any kind of biological data, they probably did if they could tell when someone was 'down' versus 'dead', so putting another one on was out of the question if I wanted to keep this form separate from my other identities. That meant I just needed to head towards the fighting, save them, and ask for directions.
The Speed Zone on my back was lightly pushing me forward, even only having the air and rain to press against, my flight keeping me stationary, but I started moving with it instead, picking up speed as I dropped down to the street. I was heavy enough that I dropped through the five feet of flooding easily, starting to move faster as water was sprayed out in dual plumes behind me. Then my feet hit the ground, and I had to struggle to stay upright.
While the Speed Zones were denser than I'd ever used to move myself, I'd assumed my increased mass and weight would offset it, but I'd forgotten that while my power did seem to count inertia, I was currently almost entirely wreathed in shadow, only the sections attached to the Speed Zones were real. However, more than that, Speed Zones cared about force, which my short fall had given it in spades. My downwards momentum was directed forward, then multiplied.
Blasting down the street, I went from zero to a hundred, or even faster, in less than a second, only the fact that I immediately started hydroplaning keeping me from accelerating even more. Shifting mental gears, I leaned into the movement, closing in on the nearest fighting. Trying to turn a corner, I had to use my flight to slow myself down slightly, twisting mid-air and landing on the walls of the buildings on the far side of the street as I closed on a group of fifty or more heroes. The large group, with more capes than were in the entirety of Brockton Bay before I showed up, was fighting more than their number of Levi clones on top of a wrecked parking garage. It was only the clones' size that were keeping them from overwhelming the defenders, who were fighting within a glowing shield that deflected incoming projectiles but allowed them to fire outwards.
Coming up behind the clones, I turned the outermost layer of my armor completely substantial as I slammed into the first one with enough force to splatter it, my wings moving semi-autonomously to vaporize and cut any clone within range. My giant's hands glowed as gauntlets of purple plasma formed around them, allowing me to reach out and instantly destroy any within reach as I tore through them like a hot knife through water.
The Levi Clones on the other sides were gaining ground, forcing their way into the bubble shield to slash, stab, and drown the defenders. Opening two holes in the giant's chest, I let the primed orichalcum spikes go, alternating arms, firing out the momentum infused projectiles in an expanding V pattern with the heroes' shield at the center. Using them like this didn't let me take advantage of the momentum amplifying properties of the metal, but I wasn't using them for that. I was using them because they were incredibly tough, decently heavy, and I didn't think people would take it kindly if I used depleted uranium.
The spikes, formed into drills by the firing process, tore through the liquid constructs with enough force to splatter them outward. It wasn't enough to disperse them completely, but it delayed them as they reconstituted their forms, the projectiles blowing holes in the building further down the street.
Not missing a beat, the defenders pushed back, forcing the reforming clones out or destroying them outright. The Levi-clones around me shifted targets trying to swarm me with numbers. That just brought them in range.
Extending another dozen 'wing' tentacles, and arming them, I leapt into the tide, pressurized metal claws punching through my outer layer to grope uselessly at my giant's insubstantial innards. One clone reached so far they pierced the other side, the Speed Zones grabbing and dragging the entire thing through my body and out my back, impacting another clone that had tried to attack me from behind, only to be pushed away by the very same Speed Zones that through its ally into it with enough force to partially splatter them both.
A few more clones were made nearby, but they were being destroyed far faster than they were being replaced, the air around me a steambath that would've cooked a normal person in seconds. As they continued to press in, I created a fall back point above another rooftop, where I was constructing a rapidly spreading, thickening platform of condensed air.
I flew towards it, and the clones followed, jumping up onto the invisible platform as if they could see it clearly, surrounding me, clawing for me, as I 'stood' a few feet above the hardened gasses. Dispatching another few with almost contemptuous ease, I waited until the bulk were on me, the heroes fighting the last few around the shield and turning to help me.
When the last Levi-clone jumped on top of the enormous platform, easily several hundred feet square, I snapped in place the walls I'd primed surrounding it, making a rectangular prism with an open top. The clones barely paused as I dropped all of myself into Shadow, except for a single, blazingly hot, tendril. Several water claws and tails pierced my insubstantial form, doing nothing but giving me a slightly uncomfortable feeling.
Shooting the single, solid, blazingly hot wing tendril towards a clone, it dodged easily. I didn't care about the miss, as it hadn't been my target. The taloned tip of the tentacle burned through the water, which had already started to fill the chamber, and touched the hardened air. The first time I'd done this had been an accident, but I learned from my mistakes, at least in this respect.
The cage exploded into a conflagration, burning and blasting everything inside it as the gasses burned off, the force of which broke apart the next layer of solid air, which went off, breaking the next, furthering the cycle. The prism's contained, continuous explosions created a pillar of fire that extended hundreds of feet into the air, only expanding slightly as the flames reached the other end of the walls of air, the slight blast not harming the defenders. I floated out of the fading inferno, tentacle wings slowly flapping for effect, the damaged tendrils that had been tipped with air blades repairing themselves as they were replaced with more suns, as they'd exploded when everything else did, Shadowform not protecting them from the heat.
Water spears rained down from above, all focused on me, but most were deflected, and my wingtips met the once that weren't, vaporizing them before they could do more than push the tendrils back. I dismissed the stellar gauntlets, not wanting to burn those I approached.
The heroes before me were a motley group, looking tired, wary, relieved and-is that fucking Armsmaster? It was, standing there, bold as brass, looking angry. Fuck him, he didn't matter, and even if I'd known he was here I still would've tried to save everyone. By the way that some of them were looking towards a man in armored tan bodysuit with two long batons on his back, he was in charge.
The man teleported forward, to the edge of roof, and waved to me. "Thanks for the save. Name's Jumper, yours is?"
Fuck, I didn't think of a name.
"Not important," I boomed over the rain. He could probably tell I was making my voice deeper than normal, but the nice part about an obvious lie is that, while it was obviously a lie, it rarely gave you the truth. "Where's Leviathan?"
Jumper didn't bat an eye at my declaration and checked his armband, shaking his head. "I don't know. Maybe you could try tal-"
He cut himself off as the rain stopped, the movement of the water going unnaturally still once more. The hero disappeared, reappearing next to the shield he quickly stepped into. Their position was such that there was no water on the ground, and it looked like they had their bases covered. I floated there, still 'flapping' my wings as I looked for the next attack vector.
If I could catch another glimpse of Leviathan, that would help immensely, but the flickering Liquid of his power was nowhere in sight. The ocean surged against the warped space wall I was still providing power to, but it then retreated completely. I didn't drop the power, not believing for a second that the ocean was no longer a threat, and luckily neither did Missy, who maintained the construct as well.
Staring out at the ocean, the indistinct chiming of the newest deaths from the armbands of the gathered heroes went quiet, and I saw that something was happening over the water. Long tendrils of water, each easily forty feet across, started reaching up from the sea, twisting and turning as they rose higher and higher. They rotated in on themselves, looking to be giant waterspouts, but forming in reverse, not spreading out but gathering together as they started to move towards the city in an enormous, surging, mid-air river, almost looking like a giant, mal-formed hand, the individual streams twisted, spiraling fingers.
I tried to think of what it would be. Was he going to turn the water into a pressurized beam, striking at whatever he didn't like? Was he going to use the water to start spewing out clones by the thousands? He probably had enough water in the city to do so already, why would he need the ocean? Whatever he threw at me, I could ignore it as long as he wasn't there, but there were probably only a couple dozen other heroes here that could do so, and none of them were a part of the Penumbral Defenders.
The water flowed towards the city, up over the warped space, almost lazily. Lightning strikes from above, explosions that came from nowhere, projectiles of all kinds, and other effects attacked the stream, but it continued, inevitable. Reaching over the center point of the city, high over downtown, it stopped and started to gather into an enormous sphere, rapidly expanding.
I tensed, waiting for the attack. I could put myself between the group I'd just saved and this attack, but that would only give them an extra few seconds of protection. Instead of blasting down, possibly in a stream or machine gun barrage of water spears, the sphere spun, stretching out as it did so. As it stretched, the edges started to drop making a concave shape, a giant swirling bowl that grew larger and larger as more water was fed into it.
It thinned out, until whatever Levi was doing only a few feet thick, but it continued to expand, stretching further and further out and down. Flying up I saw that, if it continued, it'd make landfall half a mile outside of the city, encapsulating the railyard to the north, the slums to the south, the medivac point to the west, and the Warped Space wall to the east. It was only then that I understood what Levi was doing. It wasn't a bowl, it was a dome, one that covered the entire city, and I'd be surprised if it didn't extend underground as well. It'd cut stop any non-teleporter from escaping, locking us all inside. With it in place, Levi could contract it slowly, crushing everyone inside. Something this big, this complex, and this complete meant one thing.
Levi was done being subtle.
Others had already reached this conclusion and had started to flee, points of light streaking in every direction to try and outpace the walls of water coming in and trapping them, but the slowness, if you could call it that, of the dome's construction wasn't done out of need, but for intimidation. As the first heroes started to escape, the dome jerked downwards, five times as fast as it'd been moving before.
Some escaped, most did not.
I watched as the Light of their powers winked out, their bodies caught in the water like flies in amber, straining as death came in waves across the dome, crushing them. Those that could, broke off, but the others that couldn't stop themselves in time were trapped as well, held until their Lights, too, were extinguished in a wave of pressure that sped from one side of the dome to the other.
I watched, having to push down the horror of seeing that many people who'd just wanted to help die as they fled a foe they had no hope of winning against, surprised that I could still feel such horror after what I'd seen today, only distantly noticing as it started to rain again. Looking upwards, I opened my helmet and stuck out my tongue as I brought myself partially out of Shadow. Immune to poisons, I had nothing to fear as I tasted the rain that dripped through my construct. It was salty, but not overpoweringly so. Like tears.
Closing my armor back up, I turned the those nearby. "Ask Dragon where the fighting is heaviest," I commanded.
Jumper reappeared at the edge of the rooftop, pressing the buttons, interrupting the death toll, and did just so. "DC-3. You are to stay in position, Jumper, and maintain a fallback point."
"Wasn't asking for me," he told the AI, but the armband had already started to list the dead once more. I made the giant give him a single nod before folding up my wings and dropping like a stone, hitting the ground and moving for the center of downtown.
As I sped down the wrecked streets, a plow of hardened air blasting debris, wrecked cars, and anything else aside in front of me, I glanced back towards the beach. Seawater was continuing to be pulled from the ocean, slowly thickening the dome that encapsulated the city. Muted thunder rattled as lightning, normal and unnatural, struck the dome from both sides, flickering as it all dispersed throughout the water construct.
Clipping a building, digging out part of a wall, I focused on my task and centered myself on the road. As soon as Levi showed, everyone would jump him, but as long as he continued attacking like this, we'd have to track him down. With him able to easily move through the ground, that wasn't going to happen in time. Instead, I guessed, and I wasn't even sure if this was going to work, that if his attacks stopped being effective then he'd come personally, and we'd end this.
I didn't have any open slots, the next major one nowhere near ready and the minor one still several minutes out, but I had four top-tier moves I could use with my loadout. If I could get Leviathan away from the heroes, that is. They both took a bit of set-up, as all of the best moves did, but I could call in Herb, Curtis, and possibly Purity to keep the Endbringer occupied while I did so. I could see flickers of light and the sounds of fighting now, though they sounded. . . off. Turning a corner, I had to dismiss the plow and jump, slamming into a building as a green and black glowing tank barreled down the road, over a dozen clones in hot pursuit.
It only came up to my thigh, but I didn't want to hurt someone by accident, which turned out to be a smart move. A blast of aquamarine fire blasted where I would've been, had I not jumped. A woman in a similarly colored costume was poking out of the top of the tank and turned to fire at me again, realized I wasn't a clone, and then joined the man who was unleashing streams of energy that tore perfectly spherical chunks out of the clones behind them, destroying one and slowing a few others at the leading edge of the pack as they shrank and reformed.
Righting myself, I dropped down into the middle of pursuing clones, wingtips blasting them to steam as I sped towards the fighting, the sounds faint and distorted. Turning another corner, I came face to face with a wall of water, a hole in the bottom quickly closing. Somehow sensing my presence, the gap slammed shut and a hundred spikes shot out, ready to impale me.
Turning to Shadow completely, I passed through it as the spikes blindly sought me out, finding the street packed with fully formed, thirty-foot tall Leviathan clones. On the other side, the sound of desperate combat pounded in my ears, the closest clones turning to strike at me as I dropped back to reality. Re-igniting the suns on my hands, I plunged forward, stripping off the Speed Zones on my feet so I wouldn't overshoot the defenders, and flew into the clones.
The force of the steam they created as they burned away slowed me down quickly as I pressed down the street towards the center, my 'wings' flailing independently as I tore through their ranks. A clone made from Leviathan's 'blood' struck at me and I moved to burn through it like I had all the others. It caught the blow, the water in its fingers burning off and leaving a gauntlet of steaming, compacted, crystalline endbringer flesh behind.
The other clones around us closed in for the kill, but were ripped apart by my wings as I caught the blood-clone's other hand with one of my own, its clawed appendage burning and shrinking down as well. When the water burned off, it packed the hardened substance together, holding it together from the back as the heat slowly burned off the water underneath, but not fast enough. It was a good counter to anyone with fire abilities, but I was not so limited.
As its black-blue tail snaked out and pierced the giant's head, burning itself on my creation's eyes, I grabbed the desiccation pistol from its thigh sheath as I forced the giant to pull the construct towards me. As I opened the giant's chest to fire, dark tendrils of fluid shot out, ready to pierce, crush, and drown me. The weapon in my hands turned substantial for a moment and fired, turning the center of the construct to dust, as well as completely destroying part of the normal clone behind it.
With the center of mass gone, the blood clone fell apart, hardened plates that'd made up its shrunken claws splashing into the water below, carried past me as the flooding was unnaturally directed towards the water wall behind me.
The water Leviathans, all my size, jumped me from every direction but without another fighter made from Leviathan's blood they burned to nothingness. Forcing my way through the tides of animated water, a beam of purple light blew through a clone I was fighting, piercing the shoulder of my giant. Breaking through the lines, I found over a hundred people on a raised, glowing, bluish-purple platform, forcefields of several different colors flashing into being to block attacks from the clones surrounding them.
The buildings around them were collapsed, or about to be, barely visible through the sheer mass of Leviathan clones that crowded in from every direction. I caught the glimpse of a familiar set of powers, but there wasn't time to talk, the attacks coming in every direction. The heroes near me faltered, the clones taking the opportunity to strike, and I leapt forward.
A solid blue shield sprung up between myself and the group, intended to stop me, but working just as well to stop the clones as they slammed into it, sliding off slightly as my wings extended forward past me, piercing and exploding the clones into steam, air control forcing the superheated vapor up and away from the heroes. Landing just outside of the shield, I planted my feet and twisted in a way that normal hips would never allow, turning my back to the heroes.
I could see the swath I'd cut through the Leviathan clones, a gap that was quickly closing as more rushed forward, and I stood at the ready. Dropping everything but my real body out of Shadow, growing out the plates of my body into proper orichalcum armor, I sent out another dozen tendrils, hitting the edge of the point where my power would force them into some other form, and held my ground under the onslaught. The blue shield behind me flickered out, but I yelled, "Keep it up!" over my shoulder, and it sprang back to life.
Blocking an entire street, I could sense most of those behind me turning to focus on the other three. Hands covered in solar gauntlets, I stopped all comers, using my desiccation gun to handle any blood clones that tried to attack me, counting down the shots left: 17, 16, 15, 14. As many as there were, there were far less than there'd been when I'd stood with Chubster, and for that I was grateful.
For the others, I had an entire street to work with, and even if my powers were limited, I still had quite a few tricks I'd thought of but never used. I had an audience, but they knew I had fire powers, so they'd be explained easy enough. Fighting, I reached out and prepped a latticework of hardened air to appear. When it did so, the clones all the way down the street staggered for a moment before moving through it, watery bodies flowing around it like it didn't exist. That was fine for me, reaching out with a free hand and grabbing the closest edge of the fractal web with an enormous solar gauntleted hand, and set the entire thing alight.
Explosions raced down the hardened air, creating waves of pressure I had to fight to keep from blowing past me. The fiery web blew through the clones who started to pull backwads, only for the latticework to shoot out spikes, the tips just enough to catch on their solidified forms for a moment. The foot-wide strands lit up like blazing lightning as the cores started to explode, building up pressure as they burned outwards faster and faster, blowing everything they ran through, and everything around them, to mist, dust, and ashes.
In less than two seconds, I'd completely cleared half my street, blowing out remaining windows of everything near me and causing one building to buckle, falling down on the clones which rushed forward as the remaining clones attacked with renewed vigor. It needed work, but as a proof of concept?
Shatterbird eat your heart out.
Attacks came from above as well, more than they had before, the shield above the group behind me held, my wings reaching out and intercepting a trio of clones that tried to come down on it at once, having seen that trick before. Firing a pair of Orichalcum needles down the street as the clones closed, more appearing to replace the ones I'd exploded, I splattered a dozen clones, but they were replaced as fast as I could kill them. The clones were faster, more accurate, more varied, and more deadly. It started to push my ability to hold them off, not letting me set up another air-lattice bomb, but it meant that Levi was personally directing these clones. Come on you bastard, I thought. We're holding out against whatever you can throw, come for us yourself!
Once Leviathan showed, the rest of the Triumvirate would follow, and we could take care of this once and for all, but the guest of honor was not in attendance. There were no larger than average clones watching from a distance, no shifting of earth as he tried to come up between buildings, nothing.
I could theoretically keep going for hours, the only limiting factor my pistol, but thankfully the Blood clones were showing up less and less. One dropped down from above, hiding above a normal clone to screen itself from sight if I'd been looking through the Giant's eyes, 9, but no others appeared, even far away. The heroes behind me weren't doing so well, a few more having been injured badly, and the ones directly behind me starting to flag, gasping as they fought.
Three clones rushed me at once, and I let my wings take one while I dispatched the others, as I realized why. The heat. While I barely noticed it, and was trying to deflect the steam upwards, I still had over thirty arm-sized suns darting back and forth, two car-sized pieces of shaped plasma on my arms adding to the problem. Without Stellar Negation, my powers were starting to effect those I was trying to defend.
I dropped a sun from a wingtip, replacing it with hardened air, but the long cut I made across a clone's chest was ignored, the clone slipping past me to hit the blue shield behind me. Sparking a sun back on the tip of the tentacle, the hardened air exploded, splattering the clone I'd stuck it in. That had. . . possibilities.
Unfortunately, while I could move dozens of tentacles at once, or my power could, we couldn't create the explosions fast enough to hold them back in time, another three clones getting hits in before I could detonate them. Damn. People were dying, and I didn't have enough power to-
My thoughts were interrupted as I felt a minor slot complete, the surprise enough to make me miss another clone. Okay, but what do I slot? I wondered, grabbing it and crushing it to steam, the person it'd been about to kill flinching away from the heat. I had dozens, maybe even a hundred powers that could slot in there, but I had no idea what most of them did, and while I could try to split my attention between fighting and looking them over, as soon as I tried to look at the list and read Anarchic Structure Inducement more clones slipped by me.
I needed something I knew would work, I needed something I had practice with, and most of all I needed something that would blow these things the fuck up. I had a dozen top-tier moves I'd worked out, and I'd thankfully been able to scale down one enough to help, but most of them were pretty god-damned indiscriminate in their destruction. I needed something with the force of a bomb but the precision of a knife.
Fighting more, the heroes flagging, another eight down, dead or dying, I picked one of my first, one I'd spent time every single day of the last week training, even if by proxy. It was distinctive, but I'd deal with the consequence after. I slotted it, getting a sense of vertigo, of twisting, of co̕n͜҉n҉͡e̶͢c̀t̶i̵̸o͟ń̛, and stumbled, wings flailing wildly at everything in front of me.
Shaking as I was forced into reality, I lit up, blindingly white, a pure radiance which ran down my limbs, down my metal, until I was a pure being, existing in two planes at once. A clone rushed me, dodging my wings, only to explode as it touched me with a harsh, familiar sizzle. As I got control of my powers, I darkened, the light shifting through the spectrum until it was a riotous collection of colors. No longer blinding, but as harsh as a neon sign at midnight, I didn't know what happened, but I knew that I had a full tank of Light and I was ready to go.
If there were any heroes in the air around me, I'd never try this, nor if there were civilians, but fuck it, the PRT already hated Boardwalk, this didn't matter. Dropping the suns from my hands, I gathered Light around them, shining brighter and brighter, pressure building until it was a dam ready to burst. I sent metal tendrils deep into the ground, rooting my giant to the spot to help me deal with the thrust I was about to create. I needed to aim this carefully or I'd kill everyone behind me. Sensing something was about to happen, the clones moved as one, those out of reach jumping upwards until they blotted out the sky, all coming for us at once.
Reaching deep, I threw open the floodgates of my power as I stretched outwards, hundreds of Light filled tendrils coming out of my hands and shooting down the giant's arms, spiraling as the reached its palms and opened up in a blinding lotus of power. LIGHT poured out of me in a rushing torrent, blasting through the clones on either side of me, the clones behind them, and the clones behind them.
I started to spin the giant's upper body like a top, tendrils twisting around and around as I unleashed a rainbow river of destruction on everything more than twenty feet off the ground. Picking up speed, I raised my giant's arms, twisting my palms to send arcing prismatic streams spiraling across the sky. I hoped I'd missed any flyers in the air high up across the city, taking respite in the fact that the Light was moving slow enough to be dodged.
These were not the double-helixed rocket blasts of Purity, these were twin floods of shining destruction that I'd unleashed against an endless tide of Oni Li's, and then some. I kept going, draining my entire reserve of Light in seconds, an entire battle's full of attacks unleashed in half a minute. The thunderous explosions stacked up on one another rattled through the metal, and the heroes I'd saved would need their eardrums healed, but they would survive. Nothing else did.
Hundreds of clones were blasted to mist, buildings in every direction were destroyed, and the twisting arcs rose higher and higher into the air. As they struck the dome it rippled, exploding outwards from the impact, losing form and creating wide gaps in its structure. I could see the powers of dozens of parahumans making a break for it, flitting through rapidly closing bands of open air, many escaping, most of the ones too slow pulling back in time. Another dozen died, but easily six times that number made it to safety.
Slowing my spin, I internally retracted and re-extended the twisted tendrils of projected metal holding together the plates which covered my legs, looking around. Every building within four hundred feet was rubble, the ones past that had giant pieces torn out of them. While I could see some clones in the distance, climbing up buildings and jumping off them to land on heroes in the streets below, none of them were nearby. Ungrounding myself, I turned around to look at the gathered parahumans, many of whom were staring at me in undisguised shock.
I recognized New Wave, and was surprised to see Brandish, but Laserdream was nowhere to be seen. I hoped she was still alive, but I didn't have time for that right now. "Where's Leviathan?" I asked them, metal projection forming a cone to amplify my voice over the storm.
A few of them kept staring, while others shook themselves, looking for other avenues of attack by the Endbringer in question. Several, mostly the smaller parahumans, sank down, sitting or on their knees, on the raised platform made of forcefields. A group of less than a dozen moved towards me, only for the rain to stop. Some cried out in anger, fear, frustration, or despair, but most raised shields, engaged powers, and got ready to fight. I constructed air-shields above the group, ready to spring another around the sides if need be. It'd mess with the acoustics something fierce and give away its presence, otherwise I would've done so already.
However, nothing happened. Nothing continued to happen as we all waited, taut as bowstrings. Simurgh arrival in four minutes," Zilla informed me. The armbands of all present, which had gone quite, shouted as one, Leviathan spotted, CD-1.
The rain slammed down with penetrating force, blasting the air-shields to pieces, but protecting those that'd left the protection of the force-field bunker as they ran for cover. The rain continued to fall with that force for several seconds before fading back down to an unnaturally heavy downpour, the dome above us slightly thinner from the water used in the attack, though slowly restocking from its connection to the sea. Leaving the heroes behind, I took to the air, metal wings flapping, to get a bead on Leviathan.
He wasn't hard to spot.
A dark, hunched shape, close to fifty feet tall and growing, was rising up from the center of downtown. Light blasts rained into it, seeming to do no damage at all as it continued to swell upwards, and outwards. It was an inky, greenish black, the same color as the blood clones, but on a scale that dwarfed even Behemoth. The water construct slowly unfurled, rising high above the wrecked buildings, was Leviathan. From the dim glowing in the creature's chest, I knew, or at least hoped, that Leviathan was inside the construct, which was easily over a hundred feet tall.
There were no more water clones, no more water spears coming down from above, only the briny downpour, and a foe unlike any this world had faced before.
You wanted him to show up, he did, my mind pointed out. Now what?
Other heroes weren't stopped, stunned like I was, and sprang into action. Attacks flew out from across the city, blasts of light, arcs of lightning, and fireballs of every color arced up towards the giant's form. The enormous endbringer construct blurred to the left, dodging all but the ones that changed direction midair, and dashed forward, reaching down to slam a watery fist down, its enormous tail striking out at another group two blocks over. When it dodged backwards from the constant stream of fire, no more attacks came from where he struck.
Godzilla, only with super-speed instead of fire-breath, darted to the side, killing another group while his tail struck out and killed a fourth. I started to fly towards it, but I was slow, ponderous, and watched as the first defenders reached it, Eidolon making a giant fist construct and punching it in the face. It looked at him, arm blurring to strike him and, if the suddenly collapsing building half a mile away was any indication, bitch-slapped him into a department store.
Attacks struck into the construct, seeming to do no damage, but Leviathan still dodged the constant attack where he could, trying to kill everyone around him. A giant blue eagle, with a wingspan close to a hundred feet tall, appeared above me, reaching its claws down. I dropped my speed zones so it could hook its enormous talon's into my back, the heat of my suns not bothering Mike in the slightest as the replicant burst forward with a prodigious flap of its storm-colored wings.
"Chest!" I cried out as the world blurred, hoping he heard me. Suffusing my body with Light to deal with the G-forces, we both rocketed towards Leviathan who twisted around, dodging a beam of piercing light from Legend, and thrust his tail towards us. Bigger than a train, it arrowed up as Mike twisted, the replicant almost skimming it as he rolled around the appendage, small, razor-sharp tendrils extending outwards to try to catch the thunderbird's wings.
He dropped me, flapping and blowing by the Endbringer's head, claws racking it's enormous shoulder as I barreled towards its chest, hoping the real Leviathan was there. Extending out a thin, metallic tail and using the air to push me faster, I held out a giant hand, clad in star, and prepared for impact.
I struck the construct dead on, burning and blasting into it's chest as the entire thing was rocked backward for a moment. Through seeing it's profile in the air I could tell it took a few steps to right itself, burned blood not having enough time to fully form into plates. I, however, stopped, momentum spent, deep inside its chest, and saw a flicker of light. Leviathan was in there, but I'd guessed wrong. I was inside it, about where it's heart would be, and I could barely see the light from its glowing eyes through the darkness, it's body dead center in the construct, hiding behind where the sternum would be in a person.
The dark water all around me crushed down, ready to kill me, but down here, away from anyone else, I could pull out another of my kill moves, though without nearly the strength I'd like. As soon as I'd stopped firing, my reserves of Light had started to replenish themselves. I was only up to a tiny fraction of my reserves, but it'd work, and I was as desperate as this attack had been dumb. I'd expected to blast some water off the giant construct, or knock it back, not that I'd end up inside it. Channeling all of the Light I'd regained, I forced it out of every pore, creating an indiscriminate explosion that blasted everything around me, streaming out of every tendril of my giant.
While not enough to blow apart the construct, it forced the fluid back as it exploded outwards, which left me a choice, fight or run? This close to Leviathan I could do damage, but if I didn't get out now, I might never get the chance, only having two more cards left to play. Then again, why not both?
Grabbing the desiccation gun with my right hand, I fired it towards Leviathan, eliminating the water between us. 8. Turning it I fired out the back of Leviathan as well, the side I was closest to, 7 while pointing my left gauntlet at Leviathan and letting fly with the full compliment of momentum infused orichalcum spikes.
A water wall formed to stop them, but they punched through easily embedding themselves in Leviathan's flesh. As the water around me started to close in, I tried to lay a Speed Zone down on the Endbringer's side, only for the power to not engage. Suspecting that would happen, I laid it down on the spikes instead, growing them deeper into the crystalline flesh they'd embedded themselves into with metal creation.
Firing my pistol behind at my own chest at point blank range, 6, I destroyed the tendril of water that was about to strike me and flew out towards the back, firing again to clear the way and open up a hole out of there, 5. The gun had started to flash when I shot myself, telling me it only had five shots left, so I only had 4 shots instead, having miscounted.
Escaping out the back, the construct's tail came down at me, and I holstered the gun, needing those last few shots. Pointing my right gauntlet up, I changed the shape of the momentum that had accrued in the needles stored within, forcing the long, thin drill to compress until it looked more like a carnival tent. Letting them go, the metal didn't come apart as I'd hoped, but was forced into thin disks instead.
I was blasted backwards when one of them suddenly accelerated, blasting into the dark, bloody tail before the others and exploded in a crackling, lightning wreathed explosion. The hell? I wondered as the others just blasted through what little water they hit, sending it splattering in every direction like I'd expected.
The giant Leviathan whirled around, dark claw coming straight for me when a large, round shape blasted past me and slammed into the limb, blasting it backwards. The shape unfurled and Herb turned into a pterodactyl, flapping away and joining me as I retreated. He turned back to himself and flew, seemingly unaided, next to me.
"Asshole in there?" he asked through our comms, the sounds of the storm and fight drowning out everything else, all business. I nodded. "That was really fucking stupid," he added.
"Had four ways to get out, including Theo's pistol," I shot back, focusing on distant feelings of the Speed Zones I'd left behind. Normally, they weren't useful to aim, but at the size of the thing we were fighting, it was enough.
"You still have yours?" my teammate asked in disbelief. "Why the fuck didn't you-"
"He's there," I interrupted, starting to point where I'd seen Leviathan, but the Speed Zones weren't there, they were exactly where I punched through. "Motherfucker."
"What?" Herb demanded as we started to come around far enough away that we'd have a second of warning before Leviathan struck.
"Either he's moving around, or he got all my tracers," I told him. I couldn't tell, but it felt like they were all in the same formation they'd been in when I'd left, but that might just mean he'd held them all in place together. That seemed like it might be beyond Levi's capabilities, but I had no idea what was beyond Levi's capabilities anymore.
Herb laughed, "No shit he's moving. Everyone watched you go straight through him there, no one thinks that's where he is." Leviathan struck out at Legend with his reformed tail, the hero turning into a streak of lightning that bounced back and forth off nothing at all before forming behind the Endbringer and blasting, moving before the Endbringer started to move to retaliate and barely dodging the strike. Purity bombed it from a distance, carving out divots that slowly regrew.
"Need to get close, then I might fuck up the big guy," Herb mused. "Shit," he added, looking up. I followed his gaze and a stream of water reached down from the top of the dome to Leviathan's back. All the damage that'd been inflicted grew back in a second, the chunks taken out by Purity's continuous barrage now filling back out before the light had even fully faded.
With the powerset I had now, I wasn't sure I could get Herb close. I considered trying to form a giant construct of my own, with air instead of water, to cut a hole in the constructs chest, but trying to match an Endbringer strength for strength didn't work. I needed to get in, I needed to hold it open, and I had to do so without dying. If I had access to another power, I might be able to make it work better, but I didn't have one available. The progress on the next Major slot had barely moved since I'd left the hospital, meaning it might be hours, and I wasn't even a tenth of the way there for another Minor slot. I was building up momentum for another set of orichalcum needles, but what I'd accidentally done before scared me. While I didn't care about fire, and explosions could be avoided by going insubstantial, the lightning contained within that blast looked like it could've killed me.
That left my Speed Zone enhanced pistol, which would do nothing right now, and my desiccation pistol, which had four shots left. While a single shot wouldn't get me to Leviathan, two might, assuming I had his position correct. From there, it'd be a measure of keeping the passage open. Light glimmered in my palm, and I was reminded of the time Boardwalk, the time I'd, broken out of the Rig. Working along that theme. . .
Leviathan continued to move killing people as I planned, but rushing wouldn't help and the Triumvirate were keeping him off balance, only striking out at a group once every ten seconds or so, and even then, not always effectively. I was glad that Herb had gotten rid of his armband, hearing those that died because I wasn't thinking fast enough wouldn't help. Herb himself was quiet as we slowly flew, and I put together mental models. It'd have to be in self-contained, layered pockets, but this could work.
"Ya got something?" he asked, somehow knowing I'd figured out an approach despite not being able to see my face, buried as I was in my armor.
My giant nodded as I reconfigured it's shape. Still humanoid, to keep my power armor, but smoother, sleeker, in some ways more like Leviathan, thickening the tail as I grew segmented plates out of it, in some ways not at all, eschewing thicker arms for more streamlined ones, covering it from head to toe with Speed Zones that all would move me forward, and anything that I touched backwards. Pulling in my 'wings', I shifted the suns to cover my hands, feet, and the tip of my tail. It was awkward having one, and I could feel that my power didn't really like it, but I needed it and added to the ever-growing list of things I needed to train.
"I'll get close and call you. You start in, and I'll open up a hole to Levi and do my best to keep it open," I told him, our comms carrying the conversation easily. Over the storm, the sounds of death and destruction only matched by the constant hammering of the salty, punishing rain. "Go for the bright spot, I'll make sure you have a path inside. That's where Levi is. Don't miss, I can only do this twice. Maybe."
He nodded, and took off in the opposite direction of Levi, while I dropped down towards the street. Pushing my flight to move, I touched down and blasted forwards, everything I touched just moving me faster. Grabbing onto the middle of my tail with Aerokinesis, the only part of me not covered in suns or Speed Zones, I forced myself to go even faster.
I blasted by a group of heroes still running, moving so fast they barely had time to register me, and past another, the same group I'd given Rune to, still trying to save survivors. Leviathan's gigantic construct loomed above me, his tail striking down at me from above, like a solid column of death dropped by god himself.
I moved to dodge, and the tail moved to intercept me. Dropping down to all fours, tail pointed straight out, I contorted my frame to lie my knees and arms along the ground, moving so fast that I could barely dodge obstacles, outpacing the construct's tail. It started to come down the street and follow me, but Alexandria punched through it, splattering it as it reformed, giving me enough time to open up a lead and for Leviathan to go after Eidolon instead, who'd returned and shot a pale red beam that struck the construct's flesh and seemed to just stick there, before it all went off in a giant explosion that blasted the Endbringer backwards.
Eidolon blasted again, but the Endbringer dodged, the beam missing and blowing up a string of buildings in the northeast of town, near where Taylor lived. As Eidolon prepped another beam the Endbringer leapt forward, taking the beam to the hand and shoving it in the parahumans face as it exploded, sending Eidolon flying off across the city as the Endbringer grew back his hand in seconds.
Following the Endbringer, I reached its foot and flipped myself upward, flying up the creature's body. "Now Herb!" I yelled over the comms as I streaked past its knees. Dark tendrils of endbringer blood reached out, but found no purchase, sliding off or outright burning off as I followed it to where it'd fled, hiding out in the construct's stomach.
I fired my desiccation pistol, 3, but Leviathan moved upwards, once more hiding behind the creature's sternum. I followed it, firing again, 2, As I formed a drill of air and pressed it into the depression, spinning it in a miniature tornado that ripped into the healing hole in the construct. I fed what little Light I'd regained into the vortex, letting it out in small packets that detonated as the water tried to push close, keeping the target zone clear. I looked back, and almost started to dodge as Herb seemed right behind me, until I saw the remains of a skyscraper between us, half a mile away.
My friend had turned into a giant serpent, purple and gold, easily over a mile long, with two sets of deep seated, glowing green eyes, the same color as Leviathan's own. It had coiled in on itself, but was rapidly flying in my direction, picking up speed as it did so. Looking from its enormous head, to the hole I'd made, I redoubled the power I was putting into the wind, pushing the gap wider, shoving a bit of my own power into it. I still hadn't fully recharged from when I'd supercharged Panacea, but Leviathan wasn't fighting me now, as it looked at the oncoming threat.
Water spears rained down Break's scale-covered hide, sometimes piercing but never deep enough to matter. A wall of water surged up, hardening until it was stronger than steel, and Herb broke through it easily. Water gathered at the top of the dome and shot down in a car-sized cutting stream as my partner passed Alexandria, and the attack that would punch through a fallout shelter did little more than press him down slightly as he continued to come, as inexorable as the tides.
Barreling towards me, I shot my desiccation pistol one more time, 1 shot left, and moved to body-slam the water construct, which hardened before impact. Grateful for the Endbringer's cooperation, I used the hardened water to rocket myself up and off it, gaining height as Leviathan, the Endbringer, was struck by Leviathan, the mythical, mile long serpent as I watched in awe, seeing what I'd overlooked. I'd seen animal transformation and looked at the lower limit. Herb had looked in the opposite direction.
I inverted the light packages in the vortex in the construct's chest, blowing it open even wider, as Break's head impacted the two-hundred-foot-tall construct, punching clear through the blood-powered creation and out the other side, Leviathan caught within Break's enormous jaws. Muscles strained as Herb's teeth sunk in, but not through, the Endbringer who flailed, sending water everywhere to try to strike the monster that'd caught it.
Herb's power flared, running the length of his body, and Leviathan's construct, which was trying to dig its claws into the serpent moving through it, fell to pieces, the dome above coming down as well. Literal tons of sea water came down on the city, some of it moving to avoid the medical area, but most falling in punishing waves.
I flew after Leviathan, dropping down onto Break's body and riding down his length as he continued to drag the Endbringer through the gravel, slamming him down into the ground over and over again as the Endbringer flailed, shooting blasts of condensed water that turned to harmless mist after a few feet.
Closing in on Herb's head, my teammate reared back to slam Leviathan down again, the Ednbringer's attacks suddenly were effective, tearing out large pieces of my friend's jaw. In great spurts of blood and scales Leviathan ripped itself free, dropping toward the ground. Herb turned to follow, as did I, but as soon as the Endbringer got thirty feet away the water around him condensed and Leviathan shot down into a whirlpool of churning dirt, before disappearing.
The rain didn't stop, and five waterspouts once again started to form out at sea.
Herb's form shrank, in an instant his normal self, a small part of his cheek torn and bloody. "FUCK!" he roared. "WHAT DOES IT FUCKING TAKE TO KILL THIS MOTHERFUCKER?"
I moved down towards the buildings, gesturing Herb to follow. We landed, and I hoped the rain would slack off, but no such luck. Retracting my current armor, Herb still swearing up a storm, I grabbed his arm, his suit torn and bloody, healing him quickly.
"We spread out," I told my friend, not sure what to do. Herb had nearly bitten him in half, the Endbringer's chest sporting a long series of gouges before he'd disappeared, "He shows up again, don't carry him off, bring him to Eidolon. We can do this again, we're so close. I'll track down Flechette, even if it outs me, I can figure out a way to buy her silence, and we'll end this."
Part of me, a part that didn't really feel like me, really didn't want to do that, for no reason I could think of, but what choice did I have? I hadn't heard her die, but I hadn't had an armband for the last twenty minutes, and even then, she might've been evacuated. It's what I would've done if I was in command and didn't understand what her power was. Herb nodded and leapt up into the air so hard the roof caved in, and I flew up as well, trying to find a good vantage point.
While it wasn't exactly a skyscraper, I found a building tall enough to give me a view of most of the city, the skyscrapers that would've gotten in my way no longer standing. "Eecee, someone with an Armband, I need the location of a Hero named Flechette. She might have a way we can kill Leviathan, and we're running out of options."
"Thank God you're okay," Taylor said, relief vibrating through her voice. "Sure, I can check. Oh, Panacea says she's. . . says she's. . . what's that?" she asked curiously.
"Lady Bug, I need the info now!" I snapped. "I don't know how much time we have!"
"Huh?" my teammate said. "Sorry, it's just, what is that? It's. . . huge."
What was going on? Being distracted in the middle of a fight was not like Taylor. Taylor was many things, prone to escalation, likely to bite off more than she could chew, but she was always tactical and never vague about anything related to fighting. "What's huge?" I prompted, trying to find out what was going on. The Leviathan clones were back, and there was fighting throughout the city. No, there was fighting in half the city. The other half was completely silent, and I could barely make out Leviathan clones streaming over rooftops, down streets, past where the distant glow marked out a group with powers, but they weren't fighting.
"It's a giant. . . snake?" she asked more than told, sounding worse than she had when she'd been concussed by Bakuda.
"Taylor, that's Break. What's going on?" I pressed. When she'd talked, I thought I heard gunfire, and could see distant flashes in the medical area, which no longer seemed alive with motion.
"Break's in space?" she asked, unsure. "I. . . I don't think that's Break, Lee."
There was definitely gunfire, and yelling, and screaming. The Leviathan clones had reached the medical area, and they looked to be besieging it, attacking everyone there, but almost no-one was fighting back. There's a Master, I thought. Someone had seen this, and they had decided now was a good chance to strike. Was it the CUI? Some stupid, misguided Cauldron plot? I didn't know who'd done this, but they were going to die.
"Fuck. Anyone still around and lucid, check in," I ordered, straining to look for Leviathan. Some of the storm seemed to be clearing, so were the clones a rear-guard action, to give him time to escape.
"I'm good, Vista's hurt but Robin's looking after her," Theo responded.
He was the only one who did.
Break was probably in another form, as was Mike, but where was everyone else.
A circle of clouds opened up, perfectly circular and allowing the light of early afternoon to pierce the near twilight of the city. Down from it emerged a winged figure. Feminine, almost angelic, were it not for the fact that she had far too many wings, and I could see her powers reaching out like Crystalline questing tentacles into the city.
The Simurgh was here.
Could she've taken out everyone below? Stunned them so they couldn't defend themselves? I looked around at the roof, taking stock of what powers I possessed. I had everything I needed for a long range 'will get you Birdcaged' level of power use, and the time to implement it. Lifting a hand, metal plates grew out of the ragged top of the roof, growing into supports from which more pieces rose, starting to curl together.
I SAW The Simurgh's power, though I could barely scratch the surface. Pre- and post-cognition I knew about, as I did the telekinesis, but she had six others, none of which felt like they meant everything they seemed to, in words that were hard to make out. I could push it, as I did before, but if I managed to incapacitate myself this time, everyone died. What I did know was that, whatever had rendered my team insensate, Taylor now mumbling about rainbow wells, it wasn't her. That didn't mean I wasn't going to take the bitch out.
Metal continued to form, twisting, Speed Zones starting to appear and layer themselves into interlocking patterns, Orichalcum forming and stars spreading.
One Crystalline tendril of The Simurgh's power wasn't moving blindly, it had a purpose, and reached down towards a target, a moving target that was on its way to the medical area. I wanted to be wrong, but I saw a flash of movement, the Liquid of Leviathan's power flashing into being for a moment as he directed all of his clones throughout the city, and the rising streams of seawater which had connected and were starting to flow high above the city once more.
It was obvious where he was going; he was heading for the medical area. For the sick, the injured, the ones he hadn't managed to kill the first time.
Leviathan was heading for Taylor and Amy.
Growing out the base of my construct some more, I changed the vector of initiation, prepping a new corridor of vacuum with Aerokinesis.
"Got your message, you find the bastard?" Herb demanded.
I checked what I'd built, what I'd prepped, made sure all the parts would function as I hoped. I hadn't tested this, couldn't have tested this, especially the way I was about to use it, but there was no way I could make it across the city in time to save them. This was the only way.
"He's heading for Amy and Taylor," I told him. Speaking over his "Fuck!" I instructed, "Simurgh's above the city. If I can't do it myself, get me to safety and tell Æonic to kill the bitch, we'll deal with the fallout afterwards. Scion's here in five, but I might get his attention. See you on the other side. Eeem."
What I was doing was stupid, it was suicidal, it was going to get me yelled at by everyone.
But they'd be alive to do it, and that's what mattered.
"Can you repeat that?" I asked, hoping I'd heard wrong.
"The Simurgh is coming here," Theo repeated, dashing said hopes.
". . . . Fuck," I sighed, looking around. Leviathan was nowhere to be seen, but his assault on the city was still going strong, water clones in every direction attacking what groups of heroes still survived. A condensed spear of water shot straight at me, from above, but it was deflected into the torn-up street next to me with barely a thought, punching a hole through the bit of turn up asphalt it hit. "What about Behemoth?"
"What?" the kid, far out of his element, asked. "Um, I don't know. How do I check?"
I sighed, throwing reading the sensor manual on the giant list of things I needed to do. The damn thing was at least three-hundred pages long and full of terms I'd need to go look up, since while I knew the basics of radar theory, I had not the slightest idea what a 'Root Mean Square Error' was. "I've got no fucking clue. Eta on the Warrior?"
There was a long pause as I sensed a water clone form nearby. It barely started its leap before I riddled it with air blades and detonated them, splattering it to mist. "Who?" Theo asked.
"Scion. How long till fuckin' Goldenrod shows up?" I repeated, failing to keep the edge out of my voice. I was getting more options and powers, but it wasn't enough. I couldn't assume I'd get any more, but it seemed like I would, so I needed to make two plans for what I needed to do next. Actually making the plans was easier said than done, however. "And how long do we have before Ziz touches down?"
"Um," there was the sound of typing, "The PRT say he'll be here in twenty minutes, probably." More typing. "Sensors say The Simurgh will be here in fifteen minutes."
"Fuck," I swore again.
"She won't be here long enough to do that much," Theo offered, misunderstanding my statement.
Not having the time to explain, especially where I could theoretically be overheard, that it was Scion's coming that I objected to, I looked at what I had, what my team could do, and what Leviathan had already done.
"Is this an open line, or are you just talking to me?" I asked him, wondering why no-one had said anything. Glory Girl never hesitated to add her two cents in.
"Um, just you. I didn't want to panic everyone if I was wrong," he replied, sounding like he was worried he'd done something wrong.
"Good call, kid. I'm gonna take a sec to plan, sit tight. Eeem." Dispersing another two clones as they tried to sneak up on me, I had to make the same decision I had before: run or fight.
Run was overly simplistic, as it could be pulling back to wait it out or it could just be continuing as I was, holding back as more and more people died but I wasn't revealed. From the sound of constant fighting all around me, I knew that if I still had my armband it'd be reading off more and more names. They aren't your responsibility, part of me argued. You don't owe them anything. They knew what they were getting into.
Except they didn't. They thought this would be a bog-standard Endbringer fight, if such things existed. They thought they were fighting together against a foe they knew the measure of, not one that had been holding back to an insane degree. If I hadn't warned Cauldron of this attack, things wouldn't be that bad.
You don't know that. It could've been just as bad, and even if it is worse, it's Cauldron's fault, that part of me argued back. You've fought Leviathan today, Charlie likely has, and if Herb hasn't that's on him. We'll just help him prepare for next time. You're all in the clear, and you can get back to the bigger picture of planning to kill an Entity. You don't have to do this.
Again, that inner devil's advocate was technically right, except it wasn't. Yes, I didn't have to do this, but I didn't have to try and help Taylor or the Undersiders either. Amelia was objectively an incredible asset, but getting involved with Taylor, even going out and fighting the ABB, were things I didn't have to do. My father would bring out that 'great power, great responsibility' argument, but he wasn't exactly here helping either. I didn't have to save them, I didn't have to go with the option to fight instead of hide.
But, there was a large difference between have to and should.
Vejovis had fought, he'd flown the flag and shown that he was willing to stand and fight but Vejovis wasn't me, not really. I'd sunk into the mentality, like I always did, but Vejovis didn't fight with dozens of powers at once. Maybe that's why I had so much trouble, maybe that's why I'd been such an idiot. Maybe not, and I just hadn't been ready, despite everything I'd done.
I tried to think of a persona that'd work the best for this situation: Hopeless fight against an overwhelming foe, maximizing damage while saving lives, and not giving two shits about the collateral. Normally making these things took hours to do correctly, getting everything in place so I could slip into it like a tailored suit. I didn't have time to make a new one, and I ignored a man of Wealth and Taste offering his services in the back of my mind. He'd do better than Vejovis had, but it wouldn't be enough. He acknowledged the point, but that fragment of my own core personality brought up a counter-point: Did I need one? While a man might wear a dozen masks, that didn't mean he lacked a face, after all.
My costume flowed and changed, interlocking grey plates covering me from head to toe. Orichalcum tendrils extended out between them, completely flush with them and sealing me inside as they darkened, turning to shadows along with the rest of me. As they extended, they interweaved themselves into the facsimile of a man, thirty feet tall, with me at the center.
My guns were shifted to thigh holsters, so I wouldn't forget them, and three dozen tentacles extended from my back, then from the giant's back, forming the outline of unnatural wings. The ends of half of them lit up, royal purple suns forming taloned tips, the metal able to handle the heat, even if barely. The ends of the other half shimmered, the rain revealing long, thin, razor sharp, and otherwise invisible blades made of compressed air.
Rising up, the forearms of my giant smoothed out, azure blue fields of energy forming that quickly darkened to match the fiery tips of my wings, rippling from my hands down to my elbows. A similar process happened to the soles of my feet, from toe to heel, and a third occurred across my back, around the 'wings', extending straight out.
Spikes of real metal grew and detached themselves in the interior space where I hung, projected metal pressing the created metal against grooves that rippled and appeared in my armor, the foot long orichalcum needles primed and already starting to fill with Momentum, ready to be fired at anything that I wanted gone.
Placing two blood-red suns in the giant's head for 'eyes', I opened up the chest slightly to see my reflection in one of the few unbroken pieces of glass around me. I looked god-damned terrifying. Good. If I was doing this as me, I needed every advantage I could get.
"Zilla, broadcast what I'm saying to everyone, if you can't reach them then queue it up and play it for them when you can," I instructed.
"Recording," was the entirety of the Virtual Intelligence's response.
I let out a long sigh, "Okay guys, we're at the endgame. Levi's taken the worst pounding he'd had, ever, and he's still here. Hell, Purity, the Triumvirate, and I cut off his god-damned tail, and it's just made him pissed. I know some of you might be upset by me saying this, as you've been fighting as hard as you can, but for the rest, it's time go full-bore. Break, you and your cousins should go mythical. Æonic, I know you've got a dozen tricks under your sleeves, time to use them. You'll come up with more in a week anyways. Glory Girl, if you aren't already, pull out the sword, and if anyone else has got something they think will work, use it."
"We've got company incoming in fifteen, and while I can handle her, she's known for her multitasking," I revealed. They'd either get the reference, or they wouldn't, and either way they couldn't do anything about it. "Then, five minutes after that, we've got more trouble, and if we haven't convinced Leviathan to turn what's left of his tail and run, there might not be a Brockton Bay anymore. Smoke 'em if ya got 'em guys, because you might not get another chance to if you don't."
I let that statement hang, Zilla's, "Message sent," coming through my headset. Nodding to myself, I looked around the empty, abandoned street. Two clones rushed me from opposite direction, my wings lashing out at them.
The suns burned so hot that they vaporized the water they touched, my Aerokinesis kicking in automatically and forcing the steam to expand outwards, blowing off their top halves completely. The lower halves started to reform, but they were cut to pieces by the air bladed tentacles, not reforming. Water spears shot down from above, but they passed through my insubstantial form harmlessly.
I wasn't sure if the armbands collected any kind of biological data, they probably did if they could tell when someone was 'down' versus 'dead', so putting another one on was out of the question if I wanted to keep this form separate from my other identities. That meant I just needed to head towards the fighting, save them, and ask for directions.
The Speed Zone on my back was lightly pushing me forward, even only having the air and rain to press against, my flight keeping me stationary, but I started moving with it instead, picking up speed as I dropped down to the street. I was heavy enough that I dropped through the five feet of flooding easily, starting to move faster as water was sprayed out in dual plumes behind me. Then my feet hit the ground, and I had to struggle to stay upright.
While the Speed Zones were denser than I'd ever used to move myself, I'd assumed my increased mass and weight would offset it, but I'd forgotten that while my power did seem to count inertia, I was currently almost entirely wreathed in shadow, only the sections attached to the Speed Zones were real. However, more than that, Speed Zones cared about force, which my short fall had given it in spades. My downwards momentum was directed forward, then multiplied.
Blasting down the street, I went from zero to a hundred, or even faster, in less than a second, only the fact that I immediately started hydroplaning keeping me from accelerating even more. Shifting mental gears, I leaned into the movement, closing in on the nearest fighting. Trying to turn a corner, I had to use my flight to slow myself down slightly, twisting mid-air and landing on the walls of the buildings on the far side of the street as I closed on a group of fifty or more heroes. The large group, with more capes than were in the entirety of Brockton Bay before I showed up, was fighting more than their number of Levi clones on top of a wrecked parking garage. It was only the clones' size that were keeping them from overwhelming the defenders, who were fighting within a glowing shield that deflected incoming projectiles but allowed them to fire outwards.
Coming up behind the clones, I turned the outermost layer of my armor completely substantial as I slammed into the first one with enough force to splatter it, my wings moving semi-autonomously to vaporize and cut any clone within range. My giant's hands glowed as gauntlets of purple plasma formed around them, allowing me to reach out and instantly destroy any within reach as I tore through them like a hot knife through water.
The Levi Clones on the other sides were gaining ground, forcing their way into the bubble shield to slash, stab, and drown the defenders. Opening two holes in the giant's chest, I let the primed orichalcum spikes go, alternating arms, firing out the momentum infused projectiles in an expanding V pattern with the heroes' shield at the center. Using them like this didn't let me take advantage of the momentum amplifying properties of the metal, but I wasn't using them for that. I was using them because they were incredibly tough, decently heavy, and I didn't think people would take it kindly if I used depleted uranium.
The spikes, formed into drills by the firing process, tore through the liquid constructs with enough force to splatter them outward. It wasn't enough to disperse them completely, but it delayed them as they reconstituted their forms, the projectiles blowing holes in the building further down the street.
Not missing a beat, the defenders pushed back, forcing the reforming clones out or destroying them outright. The Levi-clones around me shifted targets trying to swarm me with numbers. That just brought them in range.
Extending another dozen 'wing' tentacles, and arming them, I leapt into the tide, pressurized metal claws punching through my outer layer to grope uselessly at my giant's insubstantial innards. One clone reached so far they pierced the other side, the Speed Zones grabbing and dragging the entire thing through my body and out my back, impacting another clone that had tried to attack me from behind, only to be pushed away by the very same Speed Zones that through its ally into it with enough force to partially splatter them both.
A few more clones were made nearby, but they were being destroyed far faster than they were being replaced, the air around me a steambath that would've cooked a normal person in seconds. As they continued to press in, I created a fall back point above another rooftop, where I was constructing a rapidly spreading, thickening platform of condensed air.
I flew towards it, and the clones followed, jumping up onto the invisible platform as if they could see it clearly, surrounding me, clawing for me, as I 'stood' a few feet above the hardened gasses. Dispatching another few with almost contemptuous ease, I waited until the bulk were on me, the heroes fighting the last few around the shield and turning to help me.
When the last Levi-clone jumped on top of the enormous platform, easily several hundred feet square, I snapped in place the walls I'd primed surrounding it, making a rectangular prism with an open top. The clones barely paused as I dropped all of myself into Shadow, except for a single, blazingly hot, tendril. Several water claws and tails pierced my insubstantial form, doing nothing but giving me a slightly uncomfortable feeling.
Shooting the single, solid, blazingly hot wing tendril towards a clone, it dodged easily. I didn't care about the miss, as it hadn't been my target. The taloned tip of the tentacle burned through the water, which had already started to fill the chamber, and touched the hardened air. The first time I'd done this had been an accident, but I learned from my mistakes, at least in this respect.
The cage exploded into a conflagration, burning and blasting everything inside it as the gasses burned off, the force of which broke apart the next layer of solid air, which went off, breaking the next, furthering the cycle. The prism's contained, continuous explosions created a pillar of fire that extended hundreds of feet into the air, only expanding slightly as the flames reached the other end of the walls of air, the slight blast not harming the defenders. I floated out of the fading inferno, tentacle wings slowly flapping for effect, the damaged tendrils that had been tipped with air blades repairing themselves as they were replaced with more suns, as they'd exploded when everything else did, Shadowform not protecting them from the heat.
Water spears rained down from above, all focused on me, but most were deflected, and my wingtips met the once that weren't, vaporizing them before they could do more than push the tendrils back. I dismissed the stellar gauntlets, not wanting to burn those I approached.
The heroes before me were a motley group, looking tired, wary, relieved and-is that fucking Armsmaster? It was, standing there, bold as brass, looking angry. Fuck him, he didn't matter, and even if I'd known he was here I still would've tried to save everyone. By the way that some of them were looking towards a man in armored tan bodysuit with two long batons on his back, he was in charge.
The man teleported forward, to the edge of roof, and waved to me. "Thanks for the save. Name's Jumper, yours is?"
Fuck, I didn't think of a name.
"Not important," I boomed over the rain. He could probably tell I was making my voice deeper than normal, but the nice part about an obvious lie is that, while it was obviously a lie, it rarely gave you the truth. "Where's Leviathan?"
Jumper didn't bat an eye at my declaration and checked his armband, shaking his head. "I don't know. Maybe you could try tal-"
He cut himself off as the rain stopped, the movement of the water going unnaturally still once more. The hero disappeared, reappearing next to the shield he quickly stepped into. Their position was such that there was no water on the ground, and it looked like they had their bases covered. I floated there, still 'flapping' my wings as I looked for the next attack vector.
If I could catch another glimpse of Leviathan, that would help immensely, but the flickering Liquid of his power was nowhere in sight. The ocean surged against the warped space wall I was still providing power to, but it then retreated completely. I didn't drop the power, not believing for a second that the ocean was no longer a threat, and luckily neither did Missy, who maintained the construct as well.
Staring out at the ocean, the indistinct chiming of the newest deaths from the armbands of the gathered heroes went quiet, and I saw that something was happening over the water. Long tendrils of water, each easily forty feet across, started reaching up from the sea, twisting and turning as they rose higher and higher. They rotated in on themselves, looking to be giant waterspouts, but forming in reverse, not spreading out but gathering together as they started to move towards the city in an enormous, surging, mid-air river, almost looking like a giant, mal-formed hand, the individual streams twisted, spiraling fingers.
I tried to think of what it would be. Was he going to turn the water into a pressurized beam, striking at whatever he didn't like? Was he going to use the water to start spewing out clones by the thousands? He probably had enough water in the city to do so already, why would he need the ocean? Whatever he threw at me, I could ignore it as long as he wasn't there, but there were probably only a couple dozen other heroes here that could do so, and none of them were a part of the Penumbral Defenders.
The water flowed towards the city, up over the warped space, almost lazily. Lightning strikes from above, explosions that came from nowhere, projectiles of all kinds, and other effects attacked the stream, but it continued, inevitable. Reaching over the center point of the city, high over downtown, it stopped and started to gather into an enormous sphere, rapidly expanding.
I tensed, waiting for the attack. I could put myself between the group I'd just saved and this attack, but that would only give them an extra few seconds of protection. Instead of blasting down, possibly in a stream or machine gun barrage of water spears, the sphere spun, stretching out as it did so. As it stretched, the edges started to drop making a concave shape, a giant swirling bowl that grew larger and larger as more water was fed into it.
It thinned out, until whatever Levi was doing only a few feet thick, but it continued to expand, stretching further and further out and down. Flying up I saw that, if it continued, it'd make landfall half a mile outside of the city, encapsulating the railyard to the north, the slums to the south, the medivac point to the west, and the Warped Space wall to the east. It was only then that I understood what Levi was doing. It wasn't a bowl, it was a dome, one that covered the entire city, and I'd be surprised if it didn't extend underground as well. It'd cut stop any non-teleporter from escaping, locking us all inside. With it in place, Levi could contract it slowly, crushing everyone inside. Something this big, this complex, and this complete meant one thing.
Levi was done being subtle.
Others had already reached this conclusion and had started to flee, points of light streaking in every direction to try and outpace the walls of water coming in and trapping them, but the slowness, if you could call it that, of the dome's construction wasn't done out of need, but for intimidation. As the first heroes started to escape, the dome jerked downwards, five times as fast as it'd been moving before.
Some escaped, most did not.
I watched as the Light of their powers winked out, their bodies caught in the water like flies in amber, straining as death came in waves across the dome, crushing them. Those that could, broke off, but the others that couldn't stop themselves in time were trapped as well, held until their Lights, too, were extinguished in a wave of pressure that sped from one side of the dome to the other.
I watched, having to push down the horror of seeing that many people who'd just wanted to help die as they fled a foe they had no hope of winning against, surprised that I could still feel such horror after what I'd seen today, only distantly noticing as it started to rain again. Looking upwards, I opened my helmet and stuck out my tongue as I brought myself partially out of Shadow. Immune to poisons, I had nothing to fear as I tasted the rain that dripped through my construct. It was salty, but not overpoweringly so. Like tears.
Closing my armor back up, I turned the those nearby. "Ask Dragon where the fighting is heaviest," I commanded.
Jumper reappeared at the edge of the rooftop, pressing the buttons, interrupting the death toll, and did just so. "DC-3. You are to stay in position, Jumper, and maintain a fallback point."
"Wasn't asking for me," he told the AI, but the armband had already started to list the dead once more. I made the giant give him a single nod before folding up my wings and dropping like a stone, hitting the ground and moving for the center of downtown.
As I sped down the wrecked streets, a plow of hardened air blasting debris, wrecked cars, and anything else aside in front of me, I glanced back towards the beach. Seawater was continuing to be pulled from the ocean, slowly thickening the dome that encapsulated the city. Muted thunder rattled as lightning, normal and unnatural, struck the dome from both sides, flickering as it all dispersed throughout the water construct.
Clipping a building, digging out part of a wall, I focused on my task and centered myself on the road. As soon as Levi showed, everyone would jump him, but as long as he continued attacking like this, we'd have to track him down. With him able to easily move through the ground, that wasn't going to happen in time. Instead, I guessed, and I wasn't even sure if this was going to work, that if his attacks stopped being effective then he'd come personally, and we'd end this.
I didn't have any open slots, the next major one nowhere near ready and the minor one still several minutes out, but I had four top-tier moves I could use with my loadout. If I could get Leviathan away from the heroes, that is. They both took a bit of set-up, as all of the best moves did, but I could call in Herb, Curtis, and possibly Purity to keep the Endbringer occupied while I did so. I could see flickers of light and the sounds of fighting now, though they sounded. . . off. Turning a corner, I had to dismiss the plow and jump, slamming into a building as a green and black glowing tank barreled down the road, over a dozen clones in hot pursuit.
It only came up to my thigh, but I didn't want to hurt someone by accident, which turned out to be a smart move. A blast of aquamarine fire blasted where I would've been, had I not jumped. A woman in a similarly colored costume was poking out of the top of the tank and turned to fire at me again, realized I wasn't a clone, and then joined the man who was unleashing streams of energy that tore perfectly spherical chunks out of the clones behind them, destroying one and slowing a few others at the leading edge of the pack as they shrank and reformed.
Righting myself, I dropped down into the middle of pursuing clones, wingtips blasting them to steam as I sped towards the fighting, the sounds faint and distorted. Turning another corner, I came face to face with a wall of water, a hole in the bottom quickly closing. Somehow sensing my presence, the gap slammed shut and a hundred spikes shot out, ready to impale me.
Turning to Shadow completely, I passed through it as the spikes blindly sought me out, finding the street packed with fully formed, thirty-foot tall Leviathan clones. On the other side, the sound of desperate combat pounded in my ears, the closest clones turning to strike at me as I dropped back to reality. Re-igniting the suns on my hands, I plunged forward, stripping off the Speed Zones on my feet so I wouldn't overshoot the defenders, and flew into the clones.
The force of the steam they created as they burned away slowed me down quickly as I pressed down the street towards the center, my 'wings' flailing independently as I tore through their ranks. A clone made from Leviathan's 'blood' struck at me and I moved to burn through it like I had all the others. It caught the blow, the water in its fingers burning off and leaving a gauntlet of steaming, compacted, crystalline endbringer flesh behind.
The other clones around us closed in for the kill, but were ripped apart by my wings as I caught the blood-clone's other hand with one of my own, its clawed appendage burning and shrinking down as well. When the water burned off, it packed the hardened substance together, holding it together from the back as the heat slowly burned off the water underneath, but not fast enough. It was a good counter to anyone with fire abilities, but I was not so limited.
As its black-blue tail snaked out and pierced the giant's head, burning itself on my creation's eyes, I grabbed the desiccation pistol from its thigh sheath as I forced the giant to pull the construct towards me. As I opened the giant's chest to fire, dark tendrils of fluid shot out, ready to pierce, crush, and drown me. The weapon in my hands turned substantial for a moment and fired, turning the center of the construct to dust, as well as completely destroying part of the normal clone behind it.
With the center of mass gone, the blood clone fell apart, hardened plates that'd made up its shrunken claws splashing into the water below, carried past me as the flooding was unnaturally directed towards the water wall behind me.
The water Leviathans, all my size, jumped me from every direction but without another fighter made from Leviathan's blood they burned to nothingness. Forcing my way through the tides of animated water, a beam of purple light blew through a clone I was fighting, piercing the shoulder of my giant. Breaking through the lines, I found over a hundred people on a raised, glowing, bluish-purple platform, forcefields of several different colors flashing into being to block attacks from the clones surrounding them.
The buildings around them were collapsed, or about to be, barely visible through the sheer mass of Leviathan clones that crowded in from every direction. I caught the glimpse of a familiar set of powers, but there wasn't time to talk, the attacks coming in every direction. The heroes near me faltered, the clones taking the opportunity to strike, and I leapt forward.
A solid blue shield sprung up between myself and the group, intended to stop me, but working just as well to stop the clones as they slammed into it, sliding off slightly as my wings extended forward past me, piercing and exploding the clones into steam, air control forcing the superheated vapor up and away from the heroes. Landing just outside of the shield, I planted my feet and twisted in a way that normal hips would never allow, turning my back to the heroes.
I could see the swath I'd cut through the Leviathan clones, a gap that was quickly closing as more rushed forward, and I stood at the ready. Dropping everything but my real body out of Shadow, growing out the plates of my body into proper orichalcum armor, I sent out another dozen tendrils, hitting the edge of the point where my power would force them into some other form, and held my ground under the onslaught. The blue shield behind me flickered out, but I yelled, "Keep it up!" over my shoulder, and it sprang back to life.
Blocking an entire street, I could sense most of those behind me turning to focus on the other three. Hands covered in solar gauntlets, I stopped all comers, using my desiccation gun to handle any blood clones that tried to attack me, counting down the shots left: 17, 16, 15, 14. As many as there were, there were far less than there'd been when I'd stood with Chubster, and for that I was grateful.
For the others, I had an entire street to work with, and even if my powers were limited, I still had quite a few tricks I'd thought of but never used. I had an audience, but they knew I had fire powers, so they'd be explained easy enough. Fighting, I reached out and prepped a latticework of hardened air to appear. When it did so, the clones all the way down the street staggered for a moment before moving through it, watery bodies flowing around it like it didn't exist. That was fine for me, reaching out with a free hand and grabbing the closest edge of the fractal web with an enormous solar gauntleted hand, and set the entire thing alight.
Explosions raced down the hardened air, creating waves of pressure I had to fight to keep from blowing past me. The fiery web blew through the clones who started to pull backwads, only for the latticework to shoot out spikes, the tips just enough to catch on their solidified forms for a moment. The foot-wide strands lit up like blazing lightning as the cores started to explode, building up pressure as they burned outwards faster and faster, blowing everything they ran through, and everything around them, to mist, dust, and ashes.
In less than two seconds, I'd completely cleared half my street, blowing out remaining windows of everything near me and causing one building to buckle, falling down on the clones which rushed forward as the remaining clones attacked with renewed vigor. It needed work, but as a proof of concept?
Shatterbird eat your heart out.
Attacks came from above as well, more than they had before, the shield above the group behind me held, my wings reaching out and intercepting a trio of clones that tried to come down on it at once, having seen that trick before. Firing a pair of Orichalcum needles down the street as the clones closed, more appearing to replace the ones I'd exploded, I splattered a dozen clones, but they were replaced as fast as I could kill them. The clones were faster, more accurate, more varied, and more deadly. It started to push my ability to hold them off, not letting me set up another air-lattice bomb, but it meant that Levi was personally directing these clones. Come on you bastard, I thought. We're holding out against whatever you can throw, come for us yourself!
Once Leviathan showed, the rest of the Triumvirate would follow, and we could take care of this once and for all, but the guest of honor was not in attendance. There were no larger than average clones watching from a distance, no shifting of earth as he tried to come up between buildings, nothing.
I could theoretically keep going for hours, the only limiting factor my pistol, but thankfully the Blood clones were showing up less and less. One dropped down from above, hiding above a normal clone to screen itself from sight if I'd been looking through the Giant's eyes, 9, but no others appeared, even far away. The heroes behind me weren't doing so well, a few more having been injured badly, and the ones directly behind me starting to flag, gasping as they fought.
Three clones rushed me at once, and I let my wings take one while I dispatched the others, as I realized why. The heat. While I barely noticed it, and was trying to deflect the steam upwards, I still had over thirty arm-sized suns darting back and forth, two car-sized pieces of shaped plasma on my arms adding to the problem. Without Stellar Negation, my powers were starting to effect those I was trying to defend.
I dropped a sun from a wingtip, replacing it with hardened air, but the long cut I made across a clone's chest was ignored, the clone slipping past me to hit the blue shield behind me. Sparking a sun back on the tip of the tentacle, the hardened air exploded, splattering the clone I'd stuck it in. That had. . . possibilities.
Unfortunately, while I could move dozens of tentacles at once, or my power could, we couldn't create the explosions fast enough to hold them back in time, another three clones getting hits in before I could detonate them. Damn. People were dying, and I didn't have enough power to-
My thoughts were interrupted as I felt a minor slot complete, the surprise enough to make me miss another clone. Okay, but what do I slot? I wondered, grabbing it and crushing it to steam, the person it'd been about to kill flinching away from the heat. I had dozens, maybe even a hundred powers that could slot in there, but I had no idea what most of them did, and while I could try to split my attention between fighting and looking them over, as soon as I tried to look at the list and read Anarchic Structure Inducement more clones slipped by me.
I needed something I knew would work, I needed something I had practice with, and most of all I needed something that would blow these things the fuck up. I had a dozen top-tier moves I'd worked out, and I'd thankfully been able to scale down one enough to help, but most of them were pretty god-damned indiscriminate in their destruction. I needed something with the force of a bomb but the precision of a knife.
Fighting more, the heroes flagging, another eight down, dead or dying, I picked one of my first, one I'd spent time every single day of the last week training, even if by proxy. It was distinctive, but I'd deal with the consequence after. I slotted it, getting a sense of vertigo, of twisting, of co̕n͜҉n҉͡e̶͢c̀t̶i̵̸o͟ń̛, and stumbled, wings flailing wildly at everything in front of me.
Shaking as I was forced into reality, I lit up, blindingly white, a pure radiance which ran down my limbs, down my metal, until I was a pure being, existing in two planes at once. A clone rushed me, dodging my wings, only to explode as it touched me with a harsh, familiar sizzle. As I got control of my powers, I darkened, the light shifting through the spectrum until it was a riotous collection of colors. No longer blinding, but as harsh as a neon sign at midnight, I didn't know what happened, but I knew that I had a full tank of Light and I was ready to go.
If there were any heroes in the air around me, I'd never try this, nor if there were civilians, but fuck it, the PRT already hated Boardwalk, this didn't matter. Dropping the suns from my hands, I gathered Light around them, shining brighter and brighter, pressure building until it was a dam ready to burst. I sent metal tendrils deep into the ground, rooting my giant to the spot to help me deal with the thrust I was about to create. I needed to aim this carefully or I'd kill everyone behind me. Sensing something was about to happen, the clones moved as one, those out of reach jumping upwards until they blotted out the sky, all coming for us at once.
Reaching deep, I threw open the floodgates of my power as I stretched outwards, hundreds of Light filled tendrils coming out of my hands and shooting down the giant's arms, spiraling as the reached its palms and opened up in a blinding lotus of power. LIGHT poured out of me in a rushing torrent, blasting through the clones on either side of me, the clones behind them, and the clones behind them.
I started to spin the giant's upper body like a top, tendrils twisting around and around as I unleashed a rainbow river of destruction on everything more than twenty feet off the ground. Picking up speed, I raised my giant's arms, twisting my palms to send arcing prismatic streams spiraling across the sky. I hoped I'd missed any flyers in the air high up across the city, taking respite in the fact that the Light was moving slow enough to be dodged.
These were not the double-helixed rocket blasts of Purity, these were twin floods of shining destruction that I'd unleashed against an endless tide of Oni Li's, and then some. I kept going, draining my entire reserve of Light in seconds, an entire battle's full of attacks unleashed in half a minute. The thunderous explosions stacked up on one another rattled through the metal, and the heroes I'd saved would need their eardrums healed, but they would survive. Nothing else did.
Hundreds of clones were blasted to mist, buildings in every direction were destroyed, and the twisting arcs rose higher and higher into the air. As they struck the dome it rippled, exploding outwards from the impact, losing form and creating wide gaps in its structure. I could see the powers of dozens of parahumans making a break for it, flitting through rapidly closing bands of open air, many escaping, most of the ones too slow pulling back in time. Another dozen died, but easily six times that number made it to safety.
Slowing my spin, I internally retracted and re-extended the twisted tendrils of projected metal holding together the plates which covered my legs, looking around. Every building within four hundred feet was rubble, the ones past that had giant pieces torn out of them. While I could see some clones in the distance, climbing up buildings and jumping off them to land on heroes in the streets below, none of them were nearby. Ungrounding myself, I turned around to look at the gathered parahumans, many of whom were staring at me in undisguised shock.
I recognized New Wave, and was surprised to see Brandish, but Laserdream was nowhere to be seen. I hoped she was still alive, but I didn't have time for that right now. "Where's Leviathan?" I asked them, metal projection forming a cone to amplify my voice over the storm.
A few of them kept staring, while others shook themselves, looking for other avenues of attack by the Endbringer in question. Several, mostly the smaller parahumans, sank down, sitting or on their knees, on the raised platform made of forcefields. A group of less than a dozen moved towards me, only for the rain to stop. Some cried out in anger, fear, frustration, or despair, but most raised shields, engaged powers, and got ready to fight. I constructed air-shields above the group, ready to spring another around the sides if need be. It'd mess with the acoustics something fierce and give away its presence, otherwise I would've done so already.
However, nothing happened. Nothing continued to happen as we all waited, taut as bowstrings. Simurgh arrival in four minutes," Zilla informed me. The armbands of all present, which had gone quite, shouted as one, Leviathan spotted, CD-1.
The rain slammed down with penetrating force, blasting the air-shields to pieces, but protecting those that'd left the protection of the force-field bunker as they ran for cover. The rain continued to fall with that force for several seconds before fading back down to an unnaturally heavy downpour, the dome above us slightly thinner from the water used in the attack, though slowly restocking from its connection to the sea. Leaving the heroes behind, I took to the air, metal wings flapping, to get a bead on Leviathan.
He wasn't hard to spot.
A dark, hunched shape, close to fifty feet tall and growing, was rising up from the center of downtown. Light blasts rained into it, seeming to do no damage at all as it continued to swell upwards, and outwards. It was an inky, greenish black, the same color as the blood clones, but on a scale that dwarfed even Behemoth. The water construct slowly unfurled, rising high above the wrecked buildings, was Leviathan. From the dim glowing in the creature's chest, I knew, or at least hoped, that Leviathan was inside the construct, which was easily over a hundred feet tall.
There were no more water clones, no more water spears coming down from above, only the briny downpour, and a foe unlike any this world had faced before.
You wanted him to show up, he did, my mind pointed out. Now what?
Other heroes weren't stopped, stunned like I was, and sprang into action. Attacks flew out from across the city, blasts of light, arcs of lightning, and fireballs of every color arced up towards the giant's form. The enormous endbringer construct blurred to the left, dodging all but the ones that changed direction midair, and dashed forward, reaching down to slam a watery fist down, its enormous tail striking out at another group two blocks over. When it dodged backwards from the constant stream of fire, no more attacks came from where he struck.
Godzilla, only with super-speed instead of fire-breath, darted to the side, killing another group while his tail struck out and killed a fourth. I started to fly towards it, but I was slow, ponderous, and watched as the first defenders reached it, Eidolon making a giant fist construct and punching it in the face. It looked at him, arm blurring to strike him and, if the suddenly collapsing building half a mile away was any indication, bitch-slapped him into a department store.
Attacks struck into the construct, seeming to do no damage, but Leviathan still dodged the constant attack where he could, trying to kill everyone around him. A giant blue eagle, with a wingspan close to a hundred feet tall, appeared above me, reaching its claws down. I dropped my speed zones so it could hook its enormous talon's into my back, the heat of my suns not bothering Mike in the slightest as the replicant burst forward with a prodigious flap of its storm-colored wings.
"Chest!" I cried out as the world blurred, hoping he heard me. Suffusing my body with Light to deal with the G-forces, we both rocketed towards Leviathan who twisted around, dodging a beam of piercing light from Legend, and thrust his tail towards us. Bigger than a train, it arrowed up as Mike twisted, the replicant almost skimming it as he rolled around the appendage, small, razor-sharp tendrils extending outwards to try to catch the thunderbird's wings.
He dropped me, flapping and blowing by the Endbringer's head, claws racking it's enormous shoulder as I barreled towards its chest, hoping the real Leviathan was there. Extending out a thin, metallic tail and using the air to push me faster, I held out a giant hand, clad in star, and prepared for impact.
I struck the construct dead on, burning and blasting into it's chest as the entire thing was rocked backward for a moment. Through seeing it's profile in the air I could tell it took a few steps to right itself, burned blood not having enough time to fully form into plates. I, however, stopped, momentum spent, deep inside its chest, and saw a flicker of light. Leviathan was in there, but I'd guessed wrong. I was inside it, about where it's heart would be, and I could barely see the light from its glowing eyes through the darkness, it's body dead center in the construct, hiding behind where the sternum would be in a person.
The dark water all around me crushed down, ready to kill me, but down here, away from anyone else, I could pull out another of my kill moves, though without nearly the strength I'd like. As soon as I'd stopped firing, my reserves of Light had started to replenish themselves. I was only up to a tiny fraction of my reserves, but it'd work, and I was as desperate as this attack had been dumb. I'd expected to blast some water off the giant construct, or knock it back, not that I'd end up inside it. Channeling all of the Light I'd regained, I forced it out of every pore, creating an indiscriminate explosion that blasted everything around me, streaming out of every tendril of my giant.
While not enough to blow apart the construct, it forced the fluid back as it exploded outwards, which left me a choice, fight or run? This close to Leviathan I could do damage, but if I didn't get out now, I might never get the chance, only having two more cards left to play. Then again, why not both?
Grabbing the desiccation gun with my right hand, I fired it towards Leviathan, eliminating the water between us. 8. Turning it I fired out the back of Leviathan as well, the side I was closest to, 7 while pointing my left gauntlet at Leviathan and letting fly with the full compliment of momentum infused orichalcum spikes.
A water wall formed to stop them, but they punched through easily embedding themselves in Leviathan's flesh. As the water around me started to close in, I tried to lay a Speed Zone down on the Endbringer's side, only for the power to not engage. Suspecting that would happen, I laid it down on the spikes instead, growing them deeper into the crystalline flesh they'd embedded themselves into with metal creation.
Firing my pistol behind at my own chest at point blank range, 6, I destroyed the tendril of water that was about to strike me and flew out towards the back, firing again to clear the way and open up a hole out of there, 5. The gun had started to flash when I shot myself, telling me it only had five shots left, so I only had 4 shots instead, having miscounted.
Escaping out the back, the construct's tail came down at me, and I holstered the gun, needing those last few shots. Pointing my right gauntlet up, I changed the shape of the momentum that had accrued in the needles stored within, forcing the long, thin drill to compress until it looked more like a carnival tent. Letting them go, the metal didn't come apart as I'd hoped, but was forced into thin disks instead.
I was blasted backwards when one of them suddenly accelerated, blasting into the dark, bloody tail before the others and exploded in a crackling, lightning wreathed explosion. The hell? I wondered as the others just blasted through what little water they hit, sending it splattering in every direction like I'd expected.
The giant Leviathan whirled around, dark claw coming straight for me when a large, round shape blasted past me and slammed into the limb, blasting it backwards. The shape unfurled and Herb turned into a pterodactyl, flapping away and joining me as I retreated. He turned back to himself and flew, seemingly unaided, next to me.
"Asshole in there?" he asked through our comms, the sounds of the storm and fight drowning out everything else, all business. I nodded. "That was really fucking stupid," he added.
"Had four ways to get out, including Theo's pistol," I shot back, focusing on distant feelings of the Speed Zones I'd left behind. Normally, they weren't useful to aim, but at the size of the thing we were fighting, it was enough.
"You still have yours?" my teammate asked in disbelief. "Why the fuck didn't you-"
"He's there," I interrupted, starting to point where I'd seen Leviathan, but the Speed Zones weren't there, they were exactly where I punched through. "Motherfucker."
"What?" Herb demanded as we started to come around far enough away that we'd have a second of warning before Leviathan struck.
"Either he's moving around, or he got all my tracers," I told him. I couldn't tell, but it felt like they were all in the same formation they'd been in when I'd left, but that might just mean he'd held them all in place together. That seemed like it might be beyond Levi's capabilities, but I had no idea what was beyond Levi's capabilities anymore.
Herb laughed, "No shit he's moving. Everyone watched you go straight through him there, no one thinks that's where he is." Leviathan struck out at Legend with his reformed tail, the hero turning into a streak of lightning that bounced back and forth off nothing at all before forming behind the Endbringer and blasting, moving before the Endbringer started to move to retaliate and barely dodging the strike. Purity bombed it from a distance, carving out divots that slowly regrew.
"Need to get close, then I might fuck up the big guy," Herb mused. "Shit," he added, looking up. I followed his gaze and a stream of water reached down from the top of the dome to Leviathan's back. All the damage that'd been inflicted grew back in a second, the chunks taken out by Purity's continuous barrage now filling back out before the light had even fully faded.
With the powerset I had now, I wasn't sure I could get Herb close. I considered trying to form a giant construct of my own, with air instead of water, to cut a hole in the constructs chest, but trying to match an Endbringer strength for strength didn't work. I needed to get in, I needed to hold it open, and I had to do so without dying. If I had access to another power, I might be able to make it work better, but I didn't have one available. The progress on the next Major slot had barely moved since I'd left the hospital, meaning it might be hours, and I wasn't even a tenth of the way there for another Minor slot. I was building up momentum for another set of orichalcum needles, but what I'd accidentally done before scared me. While I didn't care about fire, and explosions could be avoided by going insubstantial, the lightning contained within that blast looked like it could've killed me.
That left my Speed Zone enhanced pistol, which would do nothing right now, and my desiccation pistol, which had four shots left. While a single shot wouldn't get me to Leviathan, two might, assuming I had his position correct. From there, it'd be a measure of keeping the passage open. Light glimmered in my palm, and I was reminded of the time Boardwalk, the time I'd, broken out of the Rig. Working along that theme. . .
Leviathan continued to move killing people as I planned, but rushing wouldn't help and the Triumvirate were keeping him off balance, only striking out at a group once every ten seconds or so, and even then, not always effectively. I was glad that Herb had gotten rid of his armband, hearing those that died because I wasn't thinking fast enough wouldn't help. Herb himself was quiet as we slowly flew, and I put together mental models. It'd have to be in self-contained, layered pockets, but this could work.
"Ya got something?" he asked, somehow knowing I'd figured out an approach despite not being able to see my face, buried as I was in my armor.
My giant nodded as I reconfigured it's shape. Still humanoid, to keep my power armor, but smoother, sleeker, in some ways more like Leviathan, thickening the tail as I grew segmented plates out of it, in some ways not at all, eschewing thicker arms for more streamlined ones, covering it from head to toe with Speed Zones that all would move me forward, and anything that I touched backwards. Pulling in my 'wings', I shifted the suns to cover my hands, feet, and the tip of my tail. It was awkward having one, and I could feel that my power didn't really like it, but I needed it and added to the ever-growing list of things I needed to train.
"I'll get close and call you. You start in, and I'll open up a hole to Levi and do my best to keep it open," I told him, our comms carrying the conversation easily. Over the storm, the sounds of death and destruction only matched by the constant hammering of the salty, punishing rain. "Go for the bright spot, I'll make sure you have a path inside. That's where Levi is. Don't miss, I can only do this twice. Maybe."
He nodded, and took off in the opposite direction of Levi, while I dropped down towards the street. Pushing my flight to move, I touched down and blasted forwards, everything I touched just moving me faster. Grabbing onto the middle of my tail with Aerokinesis, the only part of me not covered in suns or Speed Zones, I forced myself to go even faster.
I blasted by a group of heroes still running, moving so fast they barely had time to register me, and past another, the same group I'd given Rune to, still trying to save survivors. Leviathan's gigantic construct loomed above me, his tail striking down at me from above, like a solid column of death dropped by god himself.
I moved to dodge, and the tail moved to intercept me. Dropping down to all fours, tail pointed straight out, I contorted my frame to lie my knees and arms along the ground, moving so fast that I could barely dodge obstacles, outpacing the construct's tail. It started to come down the street and follow me, but Alexandria punched through it, splattering it as it reformed, giving me enough time to open up a lead and for Leviathan to go after Eidolon instead, who'd returned and shot a pale red beam that struck the construct's flesh and seemed to just stick there, before it all went off in a giant explosion that blasted the Endbringer backwards.
Eidolon blasted again, but the Endbringer dodged, the beam missing and blowing up a string of buildings in the northeast of town, near where Taylor lived. As Eidolon prepped another beam the Endbringer leapt forward, taking the beam to the hand and shoving it in the parahumans face as it exploded, sending Eidolon flying off across the city as the Endbringer grew back his hand in seconds.
Following the Endbringer, I reached its foot and flipped myself upward, flying up the creature's body. "Now Herb!" I yelled over the comms as I streaked past its knees. Dark tendrils of endbringer blood reached out, but found no purchase, sliding off or outright burning off as I followed it to where it'd fled, hiding out in the construct's stomach.
I fired my desiccation pistol, 3, but Leviathan moved upwards, once more hiding behind the creature's sternum. I followed it, firing again, 2, As I formed a drill of air and pressed it into the depression, spinning it in a miniature tornado that ripped into the healing hole in the construct. I fed what little Light I'd regained into the vortex, letting it out in small packets that detonated as the water tried to push close, keeping the target zone clear. I looked back, and almost started to dodge as Herb seemed right behind me, until I saw the remains of a skyscraper between us, half a mile away.
My friend had turned into a giant serpent, purple and gold, easily over a mile long, with two sets of deep seated, glowing green eyes, the same color as Leviathan's own. It had coiled in on itself, but was rapidly flying in my direction, picking up speed as it did so. Looking from its enormous head, to the hole I'd made, I redoubled the power I was putting into the wind, pushing the gap wider, shoving a bit of my own power into it. I still hadn't fully recharged from when I'd supercharged Panacea, but Leviathan wasn't fighting me now, as it looked at the oncoming threat.
Water spears rained down Break's scale-covered hide, sometimes piercing but never deep enough to matter. A wall of water surged up, hardening until it was stronger than steel, and Herb broke through it easily. Water gathered at the top of the dome and shot down in a car-sized cutting stream as my partner passed Alexandria, and the attack that would punch through a fallout shelter did little more than press him down slightly as he continued to come, as inexorable as the tides.
Barreling towards me, I shot my desiccation pistol one more time, 1 shot left, and moved to body-slam the water construct, which hardened before impact. Grateful for the Endbringer's cooperation, I used the hardened water to rocket myself up and off it, gaining height as Leviathan, the Endbringer, was struck by Leviathan, the mythical, mile long serpent as I watched in awe, seeing what I'd overlooked. I'd seen animal transformation and looked at the lower limit. Herb had looked in the opposite direction.
I inverted the light packages in the vortex in the construct's chest, blowing it open even wider, as Break's head impacted the two-hundred-foot-tall construct, punching clear through the blood-powered creation and out the other side, Leviathan caught within Break's enormous jaws. Muscles strained as Herb's teeth sunk in, but not through, the Endbringer who flailed, sending water everywhere to try to strike the monster that'd caught it.
Herb's power flared, running the length of his body, and Leviathan's construct, which was trying to dig its claws into the serpent moving through it, fell to pieces, the dome above coming down as well. Literal tons of sea water came down on the city, some of it moving to avoid the medical area, but most falling in punishing waves.
I flew after Leviathan, dropping down onto Break's body and riding down his length as he continued to drag the Endbringer through the gravel, slamming him down into the ground over and over again as the Endbringer flailed, shooting blasts of condensed water that turned to harmless mist after a few feet.
Closing in on Herb's head, my teammate reared back to slam Leviathan down again, the Ednbringer's attacks suddenly were effective, tearing out large pieces of my friend's jaw. In great spurts of blood and scales Leviathan ripped itself free, dropping toward the ground. Herb turned to follow, as did I, but as soon as the Endbringer got thirty feet away the water around him condensed and Leviathan shot down into a whirlpool of churning dirt, before disappearing.
The rain didn't stop, and five waterspouts once again started to form out at sea.
Herb's form shrank, in an instant his normal self, a small part of his cheek torn and bloody. "FUCK!" he roared. "WHAT DOES IT FUCKING TAKE TO KILL THIS MOTHERFUCKER?"
I moved down towards the buildings, gesturing Herb to follow. We landed, and I hoped the rain would slack off, but no such luck. Retracting my current armor, Herb still swearing up a storm, I grabbed his arm, his suit torn and bloody, healing him quickly.
"We spread out," I told my friend, not sure what to do. Herb had nearly bitten him in half, the Endbringer's chest sporting a long series of gouges before he'd disappeared, "He shows up again, don't carry him off, bring him to Eidolon. We can do this again, we're so close. I'll track down Flechette, even if it outs me, I can figure out a way to buy her silence, and we'll end this."
Part of me, a part that didn't really feel like me, really didn't want to do that, for no reason I could think of, but what choice did I have? I hadn't heard her die, but I hadn't had an armband for the last twenty minutes, and even then, she might've been evacuated. It's what I would've done if I was in command and didn't understand what her power was. Herb nodded and leapt up into the air so hard the roof caved in, and I flew up as well, trying to find a good vantage point.
While it wasn't exactly a skyscraper, I found a building tall enough to give me a view of most of the city, the skyscrapers that would've gotten in my way no longer standing. "Eecee, someone with an Armband, I need the location of a Hero named Flechette. She might have a way we can kill Leviathan, and we're running out of options."
"Thank God you're okay," Taylor said, relief vibrating through her voice. "Sure, I can check. Oh, Panacea says she's. . . says she's. . . what's that?" she asked curiously.
"Lady Bug, I need the info now!" I snapped. "I don't know how much time we have!"
"Huh?" my teammate said. "Sorry, it's just, what is that? It's. . . huge."
What was going on? Being distracted in the middle of a fight was not like Taylor. Taylor was many things, prone to escalation, likely to bite off more than she could chew, but she was always tactical and never vague about anything related to fighting. "What's huge?" I prompted, trying to find out what was going on. The Leviathan clones were back, and there was fighting throughout the city. No, there was fighting in half the city. The other half was completely silent, and I could barely make out Leviathan clones streaming over rooftops, down streets, past where the distant glow marked out a group with powers, but they weren't fighting.
"It's a giant. . . snake?" she asked more than told, sounding worse than she had when she'd been concussed by Bakuda.
"Taylor, that's Break. What's going on?" I pressed. When she'd talked, I thought I heard gunfire, and could see distant flashes in the medical area, which no longer seemed alive with motion.
"Break's in space?" she asked, unsure. "I. . . I don't think that's Break, Lee."
There was definitely gunfire, and yelling, and screaming. The Leviathan clones had reached the medical area, and they looked to be besieging it, attacking everyone there, but almost no-one was fighting back. There's a Master, I thought. Someone had seen this, and they had decided now was a good chance to strike. Was it the CUI? Some stupid, misguided Cauldron plot? I didn't know who'd done this, but they were going to die.
"Fuck. Anyone still around and lucid, check in," I ordered, straining to look for Leviathan. Some of the storm seemed to be clearing, so were the clones a rear-guard action, to give him time to escape.
"I'm good, Vista's hurt but Robin's looking after her," Theo responded.
He was the only one who did.
Break was probably in another form, as was Mike, but where was everyone else.
A circle of clouds opened up, perfectly circular and allowing the light of early afternoon to pierce the near twilight of the city. Down from it emerged a winged figure. Feminine, almost angelic, were it not for the fact that she had far too many wings, and I could see her powers reaching out like Crystalline questing tentacles into the city.
The Simurgh was here.
Could she've taken out everyone below? Stunned them so they couldn't defend themselves? I looked around at the roof, taking stock of what powers I possessed. I had everything I needed for a long range 'will get you Birdcaged' level of power use, and the time to implement it. Lifting a hand, metal plates grew out of the ragged top of the roof, growing into supports from which more pieces rose, starting to curl together.
I SAW The Simurgh's power, though I could barely scratch the surface. Pre- and post-cognition I knew about, as I did the telekinesis, but she had six others, none of which felt like they meant everything they seemed to, in words that were hard to make out. I could push it, as I did before, but if I managed to incapacitate myself this time, everyone died. What I did know was that, whatever had rendered my team insensate, Taylor now mumbling about rainbow wells, it wasn't her. That didn't mean I wasn't going to take the bitch out.
Metal continued to form, twisting, Speed Zones starting to appear and layer themselves into interlocking patterns, Orichalcum forming and stars spreading.
One Crystalline tendril of The Simurgh's power wasn't moving blindly, it had a purpose, and reached down towards a target, a moving target that was on its way to the medical area. I wanted to be wrong, but I saw a flash of movement, the Liquid of Leviathan's power flashing into being for a moment as he directed all of his clones throughout the city, and the rising streams of seawater which had connected and were starting to flow high above the city once more.
It was obvious where he was going; he was heading for the medical area. For the sick, the injured, the ones he hadn't managed to kill the first time.
Leviathan was heading for Taylor and Amy.
Growing out the base of my construct some more, I changed the vector of initiation, prepping a new corridor of vacuum with Aerokinesis.
"Got your message, you find the bastard?" Herb demanded.
I checked what I'd built, what I'd prepped, made sure all the parts would function as I hoped. I hadn't tested this, couldn't have tested this, especially the way I was about to use it, but there was no way I could make it across the city in time to save them. This was the only way.
"He's heading for Amy and Taylor," I told him. Speaking over his "Fuck!" I instructed, "Simurgh's above the city. If I can't do it myself, get me to safety and tell Æonic to kill the bitch, we'll deal with the fallout afterwards. Scion's here in five, but I might get his attention. See you on the other side. Eeem."
What I was doing was stupid, it was suicidal, it was going to get me yelled at by everyone.
But they'd be alive to do it, and that's what mattered.
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Tentacle wings & Leviathan
- Location
- United States of America
For reference, this is the kind of 'tentacle wing' described in the last chapter, except golden, not luminescent white, 2-4 times as many (though proportionally thinner), and with glowing purple sun taloned tips:
And this is what Herb turned into, though he was ~half the size and with gold instead of red:
I'd post images of the two 'Robot' forms, but I can't find anything that's particularly close. Not sure if that's a good or bad thing.
And this is what Herb turned into, though he was ~half the size and with gold instead of red:
I'd post images of the two 'Robot' forms, but I can't find anything that's particularly close. Not sure if that's a good or bad thing.
Holly molly! Now things are going actually biblical. We already had two Misses Egypt Plague, The Enemy!Lee and now Leviathan[TRUE]
On the other side, Levy going Moises on them and the "guardian" Angel helping in his task on killing the hereti- i mean, hosts
By the way, Lee going to do Shirou Emiya levels of saving? If yes, will i have to expect a Reality Marble?
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- Location
- Wonderland
Pity Lee can't do non-physically-obvious powers like Endbringer Control.
replicant
hearing who died
construct's
- Location
- Oregon, USA
He might be able to bargain with The Simurgh though with the information about Eidelon's death.
Deadline 12.END
- Location
- United States of America
Deadline 12.END
Taylor felt useless. She was stuck with Amy, Panacea, she reminded herself, and was glad she'd combed the city of bugs on her way here. She'd hidden them in the vents and corners of the storage buildings the PRT had turned into a hospital complex just outside of the city and was slowly pulling them out for Panacea to use to heal people, but even then, she was starting to run low.
She followed the healer, and the capes who'd been assigned to guard them, to yet another bed. It was a woman, maybe Lee's age, who had her legs broken and was missing most of the fingers on her right hand. Amy put her mesh-covered palm on the woman's bare neck, reaching with the other into the metal box Taylor carried.
She felt the connection to the insects inside snap, as their bodies were turned to goo, directing more to fly down into the contraption and wait for the slaughter. She wondered if she should feel bad about sacrificing their lives, but she couldn't bring herself to care. She could always get more bugs; she couldn't make more heroes. Then again, technically she wasn't helping at all, it was all Amelia.
The healer placed the goop on the woman's legs, which twisted and shifted, limbs turning until they turned the right way. The woman let out a shuttering breath and relaxed, not passing out, but not in as much pain either. "Legs are fixed, as is the internal bleeding. You're good for now," Panacea told the woman, already moving on, full of purpose and energy. Taylor, unable to do more than keep the 'device' full and in arm's reach, followed along behind her.
Amy had been starting to flag, tiring from using her power constantly, until Lee'd done something to her. The healer's eyes had burned, and no-one else had commented on it, but her power had exploded in speed while it happened.
Taylor had been following Amelia for half an hour before then, watching her heal as fast as she could, and had gotten a sense of how quickly the girl worked. Internal misalignments were fast fixes, but anything that required her to regrow things took a bit, and Lee. . . Lee'd been nothing but regrowing parts.
She shuttered, the image of what she'd seen when Lee'd opened his costume. There wasn't anything left. His armor had been the only think keeping his insides inside, Hookwolf's copied power the only thing that'd given him the ability to move. With what she'd seen. . . she wasn't sure she'd ever eat chili again. Or soup. Or anything red, chunky, and liquid.
As Amy healed another person, Taylor's attention drifted, just making sure the box was stocked as her thoughts were dragged back to what she'd seen. He'd been. . . he should've been dead, and then Amy had caught fire and put him back in minutes and then he'd gone right back out there. She could hear the Armbands of those around her reading off deaths, but she didn't pay attention to them. Even if Lee got another armband, hearing that he'd been taking down again, or worse. . . she didn't know what she'd do.
She wanted to help, to fight, but she was the bug-girl, what could she do? Lee said he had plans, but she'd seen how his plans turned out. Sometimes they turned out amazing, doing things she'd never thought possible, though there was always a cost. Other times? She still remembered the feeling as lightning coursed through her, when her hero had tried to kill her.
Sometimes Lee's plans had worked, sometimes they hadn't. Today it'd been the latter at every step.
Now he'd done. . . something to Panacea, and not only was she not tired, her power was better. She was working faster, not a lot faster, but enough for Taylor to notice. That wasn't the only thing that she'd noticed, and it'd kept prodding her, kept going 'you can't run from me forever' no matter how much she tried to ignore it. It was silly, it was stupid, it was something that shouldn't matter in the middle of an Endbringer attack, but the thought didn't care, pulling at her ever since she'd seen enough that she couldn't ignore.
Amelia likes Lee, and he likes her back. She'd been putting off that thought, thinking that Lee being friendly with her was like how Lee was with everyone, but seeing him hug her to his bare chest, something that he hadn't even done with her, made it hard to deny.
And why wouldn't he? she wondered. Amy wasn't attractive but she wasn't unattractive either. She had a better figure than Taylor did, with actual curves instead of flat, bony awkwardness. And anything Amy didn't like, Lee could fix. She knew he was doing that for other people, and she believed him when Lee told her he wouldn't do it to anyone under eighteen, but she also believed him when he said wouldn't do anything to change someone's insides. That meant he could easily tweak Amy's face to look beautiful, but he couldn't do anything about Taylor's complete lack of breasts, or hips, or anything that didn't make her look like a long-haired boy.
Then there was everything else to think about. Amy was a healer, known across the country, and what was she? She was just the bug-girl, only useful to help the real hero on the sidelines. Amelia even fought better than she did, since they'd only found out about how Lee's healing made someone stronger because Taylor, the clumsy, gawky, idiot, kept messing up and getting injured and needing him to put her back together so often.
She tried to take solace in the fact that Lee'd said he'd date her when she was eighteen, only he hadn't, had he? He'd said he would if they were both single. And Amelia was older than her. Not by enough, only a few months, but enough to matter. Taylor wondered if she'd been tricked. It was more subtle than the trio, but Lee'd had a lot more time to get better at that then the bitches three. She shook her head, getting rid of that thought, feeling guilty at even thinking it. No, Lee wasn't like that. He was weird, and aggravating, and could go from being invincible to vulnerable in an instant in a way that made her heart hurt, but he was honest. Even when she wished he wouldn't be.
He wouldn't set those conditions just to trick her, he'd really believe them, and he'd likely tell any other girl her age who was interested the same thing. And it was obvious that Amy was that other girl.
Taylor wanted to hate the girl, but she couldn't, not really. Lee'd told her about her life, and at least Taylor had had her mom, before the accident. Sometimes she thought things would've been better if she'd never had her mom, wished she never had someone to miss, but she hadn't meant it. What Amy'd gone through, that wasn't just not having a mom, that was like having a negative mom, where even home wasn't a safe place.
And she'd seen the look on Amy'd face when Lee's costume had opened up, she'd looked. . . she'd looked just as horrified as Taylor was. She seemed to care, not just using Lee to get away from her parents like she thought, even if she was a bitch about it sometimes. Taylor didn't know what to do. Did she give up the first person who'd cared about her in years? He might be happier without her. But Lee'd been there when no one else was, Lee'd seen her, been there for her and she didn't want to give that up, no matter how bad a person that made her, sacrificing his happiness to have some for herself. He believed in her being a hero, and the hero thing would be to help him be happier with Panacea than he could ever be with Bug, but she didn't want to. Did that make her a bad person? What should she do? She just didn't know.
Amelia had been brought to a bunch of people, all laid out, and was working on them one after another. Taylor put the box down, keeping it stocked, and stepped away from the healer, trying to give herself time to think. Time to be away from the other girl.
Wandering away, her eyes caught on a figure sitting in a chair as everyone moved around her. She wasn't in costume, or anything that marked her as a parahuman, not even a domino mask. Instead she was dressed in a baggy hoody, jeans, and beat up sneakers, the same 'don't look at me' uniform that Taylor had worn for years, that she hadn't even realized she was wearing until Lisa had pointed it out to her. The girl just seemed lost, staring at one of the screens that was showing a video feed of the city from the cameras on the building's roof, telling everyone what was going on, in case they needed to protect themselves.
"You okay?" Taylor asked, feeling dumb as soon as the words left her mouth. With what was going on outside, she'd heard enough from what the people around them were saying to know that that no one was okay, that it was a fight worse than anyone could remember.
"Um, yes?" the girl answered, unsure. She hesitated, as if trying to figure out the right words. "Um, where am I?"
Taylor blinked behind her mask. She'd been expecting a 'No', a 'How could you say that?', or maybe a sarcastic 'What do you think?' Not that. "Um, you're in the medical area?"
That got her the flat look she'd expecting, though worry edged in at the edges. "I meant what city, this doesn't look like Worcester," she asked.
Now it was Taylor's turn to be confused, she had no idea where that was, and how could the girl not know what city she was in? Did she get caught in the crossfire and get hit by something that messed with her memory? "You're in Brockton Bay." There wasn't even a single flicker of recognition at the name. "North of Boston?"
"There aren't any cities north of Boston that big," the girl, whose name Taylor didn't even know, shot back. "Maybe Providence. Do you mean Brockton? I didn't think it was that big. But that's, did you mean south, not north? What's going on?"
Definitely some sort of Memory effect, Taylor thought. She didn't know how to tell this girl that an Endbringer was attacking. She thought it would be obvious, but if she didn't know, she needed to. Taking a deep breath, she broke the news to the other girl, "Leviathan is attacking."
The other girl just stared at her, narrowing her eyes, "The sea-serpent?"
"What? No, the Endbringer!"
". . . You say that like it means something," the other girl observed, puzzled, "and it doesn't sound good."
Taylor just stared at her. What rock had this girl been living under? "It isn't." No, that wasn't fair, she'd obviously been caught in the blast of some-sort of memory destroying power. Thinking about that kind of thing was horrible, but if it'd worked on the Endbringer, wouldn't it maybe be worth it? It wasn't this girl's fault she didn't know. "My names Lady Bug, what's yours?" she tried instead offering hand.
The girl took it, cautiously shaking it before stuffing her hands back into her hoody. "Grace."
Taylor stood there, awkwardly, not sure what to say next. Did she ask what the girl's power was? She was unmasked, and while Grace might be her cape name, it sounded like it was her real name, the way she said it. Did she even have powers? Thankfully, Panacea finished with her patients and started to move on. One of the heroes watching her tried to lift the box that held the bio-goo bugs, and stumbled, not ready for its weight. "Um, I gotta go, Grace. I hope you get your memories back," she told the girl, quickly escaping the conversation.
She took the box from the woman who was trying to carry it, ignoring the girl's, "What are you talking about?" as she followed Amelia to the next set of patients.
More attacks came against the medical area, the defenses holding, the Leviathans made out of water repelled, and Panacea was still healing everyone she could while Taylor supplied the materials. She'd ran out of fliers, and was now using everything she could, trying to ignore the looks of disgust when a dozen cockroaches, all carrying ants on their backs, ran out of vents, across the floor, up her leg, down her arm, and into the box she held. She was used to them.
She heard Lee's speech about not holding back and bit back her concern. If he hadn't been holding back, he might not've been hurt, but if he was telling everyone not to hold back? That meant things were Bad. She watched the screens whenever she could, and she had a feeling that the skyscraper sized pillar of fire that arched up over the city was Lee's doing, and maybe the pure white, glowing crystals that flashed into exitance over the building nearby a minute later were too, or maybe the sphere of pure darkness that covered a block for several seconds after that.
Taylor felt powerless, not able to help, not able to fight beside him, just sitting by the sidelines, doing nothing. She wanted to talk to Amelia, see how much she liked Lee, but now was not the time, and she'd just be distracting the heroine from actually helping people, while Taylor just stood there making her less than useless.
She hadn't missed the comment about the Simurgh, though she was pretty sure Amy did. There was no way they could get to the base in time, if things started going bad, so she stayed with the healer and hoped for the best. As if the universe was listening, there was a gasp from around her and she looked around, seeing that everyone was staring at. The nearest monitor, showing the city outside, displayed Leviathan, but it didn't. From what she remembered from the videos, Leviathan was lighter in color, and had glowing eyes, and. . . and wasn't giant.
Well, he was, she corrected, annoyed at herself for focusing on something like that when a blue-black water-Leviathan at least five times bigger than the original started stomping its way through the city. Behemoth at least was slow about it; this giant Leviathan was fast enough to dodge almost everyone attacking it. Not that it mattered, the water-Leviathan just ignoring anything that did hit it.
Someone launched something glowing purple the size of a city bus at it, which pierced the thing's body, making it stagger back a step, but that was it. The camera wasn't good enough to pick out who was fighting, but Taylor thought the white blur might be Purity. The woman could destroy a city block, and she was barely putting a dent in it.
"We're all gonna die," someone said behind her, other people muttering, some crying, but most of them were like her, transfixed, as they watched the fight. The Endbringers were supposed to be getting smaller, not. . . whatever that was. What must've been Legend was shooting as well, and they'd started carving out pieces when a thick tendril of water came down out of the sky and attached to the giant Leviathan's back. The stream healed it, all the damage the giant monster had taken reversed in seconds.
"That's just not fair," she muttered to herself, as others cried out, yelled, or laughed in a hopeless kind of way, all watching what was going on. The heroes in the air kept fighting, but the giant Leviathan ignored them, attacking people on the ground instead. Someone shot Leviathan with a beam that seemed to paint it with light instead of hurting it, the glowing sections blowing up like a bomb a few seconds later.
Whatever it was, it hurt the creature, as it dodged a second, part of the city blowing up instead. She was so glad they'd evacuated everyone. Whoever it was tried a third time, and Taylor was reminded about Lee's advice about Leviathan, how you needed to hit and run, how you needed to keep trying new things. The beam-cape didn't run, and Levi took the blow to the hand, shoving it where the blast came from. The power must've been on a timer, not a switch, as it went off and blasted the probably dead cape backwards, only visible by how the flames trailed off his body from the explosion that'd enveloped him.
The giant Leviathan had lost a hand, but it was already started to regrow as it pulled back, something purple moving up it's legs. It reared back, hand moving to squish whatever it was when the two brightly glowing fliers let off a blast that mangled its watery appendage, moving it back. The shape paused at Leviathan's stomach, before moving up to the middle of its chest. Where it'd stopped, there was a glowing light that opened up a hole in the watery body.
Leviathans' tail arched up and over itself to strike the car-sized purple person, only for it to be knocked back by something hitting it, probably Alexandria, losing some of its form. There was a distortion, and the view was blocked by a snake appearing a few inches over the camera, leaning out weirdly into the air. Except it kept going, and going, and was the wrong color, and bumped into the remains of a skyscraper, knocking pieces off.
That wasn't a snake.
Whatever it was, was enormous, came from where they were, and could fly. It sped up, moving for the giant Leviathan, the purple, vaguely humanoid shape still hanging tight onto its chest as it opened the glowing vortex in the giant Endbringer's chest wider. It wasn't until the giant snake ignored every attack Leviathan threw at it, slammed into the giant Endbringer, and kept going that Taylor realized what, realized who it was.
It was Break.
Lee'd said to stop holding back, to go mythical. She remembered her mom telling her about the monster from legends: Dragons, Unicorns, Medusa, and Leviathan, the giant sea-serpent. Taylor wondered if Grace was a precognitive Thinker, not seeing the same thing that Taylor had been, but seeing this instead.
The giant Leviathan clawed at the creature from myth without doing any damage before it fell apart, the giant serpent flying through the air, something clenched tightly in its jaws, something with blue-green glowing eyes. Break slammed Leviathan, the real one, down, dragging it along, before rearing up and doing it again. Everything was obscured as Leviathan brought down a crushing wave of water across the city, most of it missing the medical area but Taylor could feel the ground shake as it hit, or maybe that was just Break.
The sea serpent continued to drag the Endbringer along like a dog with a chew toy and anger problems, smacking it into the ground over and over again, and grinding it across anything in range. It went on for so long that people started to laugh, honestly laugh, and Taylor wanted to join in. As hellish as the fighting had been, they were finally winning. Not by a little, but by so much it made Leviathan look almost silly. That relief vanished when Break did, leaving nothing of Leviathan behind.
When the half the screens shifted, showing a stormy sky and a familiar winged shape, the sense of victory, of relief, broke into a thousand razor edged shards, even though Taylor knew it was coming. There'd never been a time when more than one Endbringer had shown up, but Lee'd warned them this might happen. She'd heard him, but some part of her hadn't really believed him, and she almost jumped when her comm crackled to life.
"Someone with an armband, I need the location of a Hero named Flechette. She might have a way we can kill Leviathan, and we're running out of options," Lee stated, tense and commanding, but not hopeless. She hung onto that surety like a lifeline, it meant he had a plan, and while sometimes his plans didn't work, sometimes they did the impossible.
The words came out before she realized she said them, "Thank God you're okay." Taking a deep breath, she focused on the task. She could hear the sounds of fighting from outside, as water-Leviathans, regular sized water-Leviathans, started attacking the medical area again. The defenders had held them off before, they could hold them off again, at least until Lee pulled another crazy plan out of nowhere. "Sure, I can check," she told him, but Amy was already working her connection to Dragon, who didn't give them grid coordinates, but a building location.
"Building F's this way," Panacea explained as she started to walk quickly towards the exit, probably having remembered the names of the buildings. Taylor wasn't so good with names, but she didn't need to be when she had a 3D map of everything.
"Oh," Taylor said, as she was surprised at how lucky that was. "Panacea says she's-"
The world tilted, veils removed as she saw more, and more, and m͔̗̠̜̞̟̦̎ͣ̂̔ͫ͒̕o̝̪̖͎̦͙̟̟͂͋͝ŗ̴̘͉͈̰̩͔̖̮͑͑̎̎ḙ̢͚̖̩̼̽̿̈ͫ̅̍̋̕.
"Says she's," Taylor repeated, trying to remember what she was talking about.
She stood in a hall, full of the injured and dying, as she stood in a constellation of stars, so close she could touch them. The one in front of her felt familiar, somehow. It was small, scared, but burned brighter than any other near her.
"What's that?" she asked to herself, half-hearing what she was saying, half hearing nothing at all.
She looked around, seeing dozens, hundreds of other stars all around her on an almost flat plane. In one direction, past those around her, there was emptiness, but not a blackness, just a lack of substance. In the other direction, she saw hundreds more, some high up, a few down below. Her eyes saw the wall, but something else saw the stars moving, some winking out, like snuffed candles.
"Lady Bug, I need the info now!" an angry, familiar voice demanded. "I don't know how much time we have!"
"Huh?" she asked, trying to remember what she saw, as she looked up, then beheld a sky that wasn't a sky. A Sphere made of Platinum & Light far larger than any star around her, though cold as the other were warm, closed off, hung high above.
Beyond that, though, she could see a swirling, rainbow hole in the sky, a multicolored whirlpool that reminded her of Lee's eyes. Lee's eyes? Who was-
She pulled herself out, of what was happening, everyone around her quiet as they stared upwards as one. No, not everyone, every parahuman was silent as a nurse pulled at a cape a few dozen feet away, asking what was wrong, and she heard the sounds of screaming and gunfire outside. "Sorry, it's just." She tried to think, was it a Master effect? Who would attack an Endbringer attack? "What is that? It's-"
She felt her mind slip as she looked upwards into the yawning abyss, larger than anything she'd ever seen, large enough to swallow the city, large enough to swallow the world. It was "Huge."
The longer she stared up at it, the more she could see. The swirling vortex of light and power clearing to reveal something on the other side. Glowing, multicolored clouds that reminder her of Nebulas swirled in a column beyond. No, they swirled around a column of nothingness, though at the edge, the border between this world and the one she gazed into, was a shape. It was just as massive as the vortex, it's bulk circling the whirlpool, creating and restraining it. The shape was hard to make out as she struggled against the tide, trying to keep the her that was her rooted as the vortex pulled against everything below it.
When she did see it, the being so great it could encircle the solar system, she knew she was wrong, but it looked like. . "It's a giant. . . snake?" It had horns, too many horns, every scale a thorn that extended upwards and backwards, in a way no animal was shaped. It was familiar, not just to the star-her, but to the her-her as well. She'd seen it before. A memory of blood, and fear, and loss-averted grounded her.
She'd seen it before, she realized. The caduceus Vejovis wore, it wasn't a snake it was. . . This.
"Taylor, that's Break," Lee said, and she was going to have words with him. The anger helped, star-her wasn't angry, couldn't be angry, but her-her could be. "What's going on?" he demanded.
Only that couldn't be Break, because, past the not-snake, past the clouds, she'd seen stars. "Break's in space?" she asked, because if that was Break, then. . .
She looked out, towards the scattered stars. A sphere, made of Water & Blood, like the sphere above their heads, was coming near, but past it she could see the stars. Three burned more brightly than the others. One had a sense of displacement, that seemed foreign; one a sense of change, that felt like Herb; the last, a sense of growth, looking different than the other two in ways she couldn't describe but felt like Lee. She couldn't say how she knew, why she knew, just that she did. "I. . . I don't think that's Break, Lee," she told him helplessly, struggling against the pull from above and losing.
She wanted to cry out, but her body wouldn't respond as it turned its gaze back upwards, and into the vortex, seeing what lay beyond. She rose, leaving herself behind as she flew higher and higher, moving, yet still, as she passed through the gate.
Passing through, she saw the creature, the being, the Entity in full. She stayed, just on the other side, drifting. She could feel the space above her, pulling at her but she held on to invisible edges of the gate. If she didn't, if she kept moving, she might survive, but she would never return. She felt the others around her, reaching out to the Bone White & Blood Red star she thought as familiar. It reached out in turn, as desperate as she was, helping her stay, holding her down as she did the same to it.
The ruler of this place, this rainbow well among the stars, moved a head that could swallow the Sun and gazed at them, judging them. Its eyes, too many to count, weighed every star individually. She felt a sense, not of approval, nor of disapproval. She saw her mother, glad she was trying, but worried she'd been hurt, like the first time she'd ridden a bike without training wheels, in the eye that stared into her.
A single scale, near its head, detached, and started to move towards the prismatic pool she hovered over. It grew, larger and larger, until the shard of the Entity that burned ##### & Ice White above her seemed to fill her vision, before slipping by her tiny star, like an enormous ship passing a rowboat in the night. The piece of the not-snake slammed down into the surface of the pearly sea below them, which parted without a single wave, disappearing without a trace, invisible in the world on the other side.
Looking past it, dark shapes swarmed over the ground, closing on an array of structures away from the rest, flashes of irregular light illuminating the are below. She felt some of the stars around her wink out, gone forever, and she held onto the star next to her tightly, trying to keep it there, keep it from going out. The world shook, and she dropped, falling towards the rainbow well like a doomed comet, bringing the other star with her.
The lustrous depths loomed, and she splashed through them, stumbling into Panacea, both of them falling as a watery claw reached for them, missing by inches. Moving on instinct, she grabbed the smaller girl and rolled, picking her up with one hand and running, her other hand reaching for her gun.
No, that won't help, she thought, as another water-Leviathan tore its way through the wall, killing a kid who was struggling to her feet with fluid claws. Grabbing the gun Lee'd made sure she'd taken, despite her protests. Still carrying Panacea over a shoulder, Taylor aimed and fired, the fifteen-foot cone of dryness coring the monster as what was left lost its form.
"Wha?" Panacea groaned, as out of it as the others around her, struggling to their feet and trying to fight. Taylor might've been there too, but her bugs could be nauseous for her, she was busy. Turning a corner, she saw another monster, this one had ripped open the wall and was pulling out heroes, crushing them, and tossing them away like empty soda cans. A girl her age, trying to bring up glowing hands was pulped in an instant and thrown out the building as it reached for a woman on a hospital bed.
Taylor knew it would be safer to stay and hide, but these people needed help, and she had an excuse, she needed to find Flechette. Lee could be mad at her later. Charging forward, the monster flicked its tail at her, and lost it to a blast of evaporation. The monster turned, claws nearly as big as she was reaching down towards her, but she got close, close enough that the high-pressure digits started to close, and the monster, leaning down into the building, lost everything above the waist.
"Where's building F?" she demanded as another water-Leviathan took the place of the previous one, and died like the previous one.
"Huh?" a man in a green duster asked, staring at her from behind colored glasses.
Taylor put Panacea down, steadying her as she swayed on her feet. "Where's building F?" she asked the healer, who didn't seem any better than the man. A third water-Leviathan stuck its head in the gap and lost its head, though it started to reform, just smaller. Taylor shot it again and its remains splashed down. "We need to find Flechette, you said building F, where is building F?"
"It's," the healer said, trying to get her bearings. "It's next to the comm center."
"Where's that?" Taylor asked, killing a fourth monster. She'd used up so many bugs that she didn't have the normal spy-net she liked to use. She hadn't been paying attention to them earlier, trying not to spy on anyone and violate the Endbringer truce. Maybe we shouldn't stand right here? she thought, but looking at the capes starting to get up, those that could get up, and without her they'd die to the next monster that showed up. She could at least stay here while Panacea got her the directions she needed.
Amelia raised her hand to point the way they'd come. "It's over-aah!" she screamed as a claw of solid water ripped through the roof, right down into Panacea, running her through.
Taylor vaporized it, along with the Endbringer made of water above them, as she rushed to Amy's side. She expected to see a bloody mess, like the girl before, but while Amy's cloak had been torn apart, her armor was intact.
"Fuck," wheezed the healer, gasping through the pain. "Fuck, broke my shoulder, ribs, don't know what else. Fuck!" She waved to the west, "Go, go get Flechette."
"What? No!" Taylor told her. Lee'd told them not to split up, and, despite what else she might think, or feel, she didn't want Amy to die! As a fifth Water-leviathan tried to claw its way in, only to be destroyed by Taylor, the man with the green duster firing an energy blast a half-second too late, she knew that's exactly what would happen if she left the healer alone. Amy could heal anyone but herself.
"Sorry," Taylor apologized before reaching down and picking up Panacea, who screamed in pain. She tried not to listen to the other girl sob as she ran for the door, opening it up to come face to face with another Water-Leviathan, four more on the rooftop of building F.
She vaporized the first one, hoping the gun would hold out, when shots from above blasted one of the others, everyone who'd been injured and carried to what should've been safety finally starting to fight back. Taylor ran on through the pounding rain, Panacea crying in pain, when she turned the corner and stopped. On top of a building at the edge of the city, several hundred feet away from the medical area, was Leviathan, the real one, watching everyone die as his creations killed the injured, and more water-Leviathans streamed from between the buildings towards them. There were dozens upon dozens, loping across the open areas, more than Taylor could hope to fight as she started to back up where she came.
She'd go around to the back entrance, find Flechette, whoever that was, and all three of them would hunker down until help arrived, if help did arrive in time. She took a step back, muddy ground suddenly slippery ice and fell, twisting and rolling to make sure she didn't land on Panacea, who screamed and went limp. Oh, don't be dead, don't be dead," Taylor though, scrabbling backwards and lifting the girl out of the rapidly flooding street.
The girls weak coughs sounded bad, but they sounded alive. Taylor glanced back up at Leviathan, who was staring back at her. No, not at her, at one of the other buildings. It tensed up, ready to jump, when it stopped, and turned around to look back across the city, towards the ocean.
Then the sky tore, and a day so dark it was almost night lit up in hellish light.
A conflagration exploded into being where Leviathan was standing, its flames a familiar Royal Purple and Blood Red, a streak of fire the same color stretching out in a perfectly straight line back across the city to the bay. A shockwave blasted outwards and rocking her back as she held onto Amelia.
The Water-Leviathans, every single one of them, lost form like a switch had been thrown, dropping down to flood the alleys between buildings.
The rain stopped, petering out in seconds, the city quieting down for the first time since everything had stared.
As the explosion cleared, Leviathan was gone, a small, dark, human-sized shape falling where it'd been. Every building around it was collapsing, and the figure bounced bonelessly off the still-dropping wreckage. Before it hit the ground, a second dark shape rocketed down from the city so fast it was hard to see, grabbing the figure as they both flew away, nearly vanishing as they flew off into the countryside.
Taylor just stared at what happened, holstering her gun to carefully pick Amy back up. The girl groaned, crying from the pain, but it got her completely out of the water. Looking up, Taylor saw the winged form of the Simurgh high above, getting higher every moment as it flew up through a hole in the slowly breaking cloud cover.
Heroes rushed to help the injured, one helping her carry Panacea back inside as a golden glow appeared on the horizon over the bay.
Taylor felt useless. She was stuck with Amy, Panacea, she reminded herself, and was glad she'd combed the city of bugs on her way here. She'd hidden them in the vents and corners of the storage buildings the PRT had turned into a hospital complex just outside of the city and was slowly pulling them out for Panacea to use to heal people, but even then, she was starting to run low.
She followed the healer, and the capes who'd been assigned to guard them, to yet another bed. It was a woman, maybe Lee's age, who had her legs broken and was missing most of the fingers on her right hand. Amy put her mesh-covered palm on the woman's bare neck, reaching with the other into the metal box Taylor carried.
She felt the connection to the insects inside snap, as their bodies were turned to goo, directing more to fly down into the contraption and wait for the slaughter. She wondered if she should feel bad about sacrificing their lives, but she couldn't bring herself to care. She could always get more bugs; she couldn't make more heroes. Then again, technically she wasn't helping at all, it was all Amelia.
The healer placed the goop on the woman's legs, which twisted and shifted, limbs turning until they turned the right way. The woman let out a shuttering breath and relaxed, not passing out, but not in as much pain either. "Legs are fixed, as is the internal bleeding. You're good for now," Panacea told the woman, already moving on, full of purpose and energy. Taylor, unable to do more than keep the 'device' full and in arm's reach, followed along behind her.
Amy had been starting to flag, tiring from using her power constantly, until Lee'd done something to her. The healer's eyes had burned, and no-one else had commented on it, but her power had exploded in speed while it happened.
Taylor had been following Amelia for half an hour before then, watching her heal as fast as she could, and had gotten a sense of how quickly the girl worked. Internal misalignments were fast fixes, but anything that required her to regrow things took a bit, and Lee. . . Lee'd been nothing but regrowing parts.
She shuttered, the image of what she'd seen when Lee'd opened his costume. There wasn't anything left. His armor had been the only think keeping his insides inside, Hookwolf's copied power the only thing that'd given him the ability to move. With what she'd seen. . . she wasn't sure she'd ever eat chili again. Or soup. Or anything red, chunky, and liquid.
As Amy healed another person, Taylor's attention drifted, just making sure the box was stocked as her thoughts were dragged back to what she'd seen. He'd been. . . he should've been dead, and then Amy had caught fire and put him back in minutes and then he'd gone right back out there. She could hear the Armbands of those around her reading off deaths, but she didn't pay attention to them. Even if Lee got another armband, hearing that he'd been taking down again, or worse. . . she didn't know what she'd do.
She wanted to help, to fight, but she was the bug-girl, what could she do? Lee said he had plans, but she'd seen how his plans turned out. Sometimes they turned out amazing, doing things she'd never thought possible, though there was always a cost. Other times? She still remembered the feeling as lightning coursed through her, when her hero had tried to kill her.
Sometimes Lee's plans had worked, sometimes they hadn't. Today it'd been the latter at every step.
Now he'd done. . . something to Panacea, and not only was she not tired, her power was better. She was working faster, not a lot faster, but enough for Taylor to notice. That wasn't the only thing that she'd noticed, and it'd kept prodding her, kept going 'you can't run from me forever' no matter how much she tried to ignore it. It was silly, it was stupid, it was something that shouldn't matter in the middle of an Endbringer attack, but the thought didn't care, pulling at her ever since she'd seen enough that she couldn't ignore.
Amelia likes Lee, and he likes her back. She'd been putting off that thought, thinking that Lee being friendly with her was like how Lee was with everyone, but seeing him hug her to his bare chest, something that he hadn't even done with her, made it hard to deny.
And why wouldn't he? she wondered. Amy wasn't attractive but she wasn't unattractive either. She had a better figure than Taylor did, with actual curves instead of flat, bony awkwardness. And anything Amy didn't like, Lee could fix. She knew he was doing that for other people, and she believed him when Lee told her he wouldn't do it to anyone under eighteen, but she also believed him when he said wouldn't do anything to change someone's insides. That meant he could easily tweak Amy's face to look beautiful, but he couldn't do anything about Taylor's complete lack of breasts, or hips, or anything that didn't make her look like a long-haired boy.
Then there was everything else to think about. Amy was a healer, known across the country, and what was she? She was just the bug-girl, only useful to help the real hero on the sidelines. Amelia even fought better than she did, since they'd only found out about how Lee's healing made someone stronger because Taylor, the clumsy, gawky, idiot, kept messing up and getting injured and needing him to put her back together so often.
She tried to take solace in the fact that Lee'd said he'd date her when she was eighteen, only he hadn't, had he? He'd said he would if they were both single. And Amelia was older than her. Not by enough, only a few months, but enough to matter. Taylor wondered if she'd been tricked. It was more subtle than the trio, but Lee'd had a lot more time to get better at that then the bitches three. She shook her head, getting rid of that thought, feeling guilty at even thinking it. No, Lee wasn't like that. He was weird, and aggravating, and could go from being invincible to vulnerable in an instant in a way that made her heart hurt, but he was honest. Even when she wished he wouldn't be.
He wouldn't set those conditions just to trick her, he'd really believe them, and he'd likely tell any other girl her age who was interested the same thing. And it was obvious that Amy was that other girl.
Taylor wanted to hate the girl, but she couldn't, not really. Lee'd told her about her life, and at least Taylor had had her mom, before the accident. Sometimes she thought things would've been better if she'd never had her mom, wished she never had someone to miss, but she hadn't meant it. What Amy'd gone through, that wasn't just not having a mom, that was like having a negative mom, where even home wasn't a safe place.
And she'd seen the look on Amy'd face when Lee's costume had opened up, she'd looked. . . she'd looked just as horrified as Taylor was. She seemed to care, not just using Lee to get away from her parents like she thought, even if she was a bitch about it sometimes. Taylor didn't know what to do. Did she give up the first person who'd cared about her in years? He might be happier without her. But Lee'd been there when no one else was, Lee'd seen her, been there for her and she didn't want to give that up, no matter how bad a person that made her, sacrificing his happiness to have some for herself. He believed in her being a hero, and the hero thing would be to help him be happier with Panacea than he could ever be with Bug, but she didn't want to. Did that make her a bad person? What should she do? She just didn't know.
Amelia had been brought to a bunch of people, all laid out, and was working on them one after another. Taylor put the box down, keeping it stocked, and stepped away from the healer, trying to give herself time to think. Time to be away from the other girl.
Wandering away, her eyes caught on a figure sitting in a chair as everyone moved around her. She wasn't in costume, or anything that marked her as a parahuman, not even a domino mask. Instead she was dressed in a baggy hoody, jeans, and beat up sneakers, the same 'don't look at me' uniform that Taylor had worn for years, that she hadn't even realized she was wearing until Lisa had pointed it out to her. The girl just seemed lost, staring at one of the screens that was showing a video feed of the city from the cameras on the building's roof, telling everyone what was going on, in case they needed to protect themselves.
"You okay?" Taylor asked, feeling dumb as soon as the words left her mouth. With what was going on outside, she'd heard enough from what the people around them were saying to know that that no one was okay, that it was a fight worse than anyone could remember.
"Um, yes?" the girl answered, unsure. She hesitated, as if trying to figure out the right words. "Um, where am I?"
Taylor blinked behind her mask. She'd been expecting a 'No', a 'How could you say that?', or maybe a sarcastic 'What do you think?' Not that. "Um, you're in the medical area?"
That got her the flat look she'd expecting, though worry edged in at the edges. "I meant what city, this doesn't look like Worcester," she asked.
Now it was Taylor's turn to be confused, she had no idea where that was, and how could the girl not know what city she was in? Did she get caught in the crossfire and get hit by something that messed with her memory? "You're in Brockton Bay." There wasn't even a single flicker of recognition at the name. "North of Boston?"
"There aren't any cities north of Boston that big," the girl, whose name Taylor didn't even know, shot back. "Maybe Providence. Do you mean Brockton? I didn't think it was that big. But that's, did you mean south, not north? What's going on?"
Definitely some sort of Memory effect, Taylor thought. She didn't know how to tell this girl that an Endbringer was attacking. She thought it would be obvious, but if she didn't know, she needed to. Taking a deep breath, she broke the news to the other girl, "Leviathan is attacking."
The other girl just stared at her, narrowing her eyes, "The sea-serpent?"
"What? No, the Endbringer!"
". . . You say that like it means something," the other girl observed, puzzled, "and it doesn't sound good."
Taylor just stared at her. What rock had this girl been living under? "It isn't." No, that wasn't fair, she'd obviously been caught in the blast of some-sort of memory destroying power. Thinking about that kind of thing was horrible, but if it'd worked on the Endbringer, wouldn't it maybe be worth it? It wasn't this girl's fault she didn't know. "My names Lady Bug, what's yours?" she tried instead offering hand.
The girl took it, cautiously shaking it before stuffing her hands back into her hoody. "Grace."
Taylor stood there, awkwardly, not sure what to say next. Did she ask what the girl's power was? She was unmasked, and while Grace might be her cape name, it sounded like it was her real name, the way she said it. Did she even have powers? Thankfully, Panacea finished with her patients and started to move on. One of the heroes watching her tried to lift the box that held the bio-goo bugs, and stumbled, not ready for its weight. "Um, I gotta go, Grace. I hope you get your memories back," she told the girl, quickly escaping the conversation.
She took the box from the woman who was trying to carry it, ignoring the girl's, "What are you talking about?" as she followed Amelia to the next set of patients.
More attacks came against the medical area, the defenses holding, the Leviathans made out of water repelled, and Panacea was still healing everyone she could while Taylor supplied the materials. She'd ran out of fliers, and was now using everything she could, trying to ignore the looks of disgust when a dozen cockroaches, all carrying ants on their backs, ran out of vents, across the floor, up her leg, down her arm, and into the box she held. She was used to them.
She heard Lee's speech about not holding back and bit back her concern. If he hadn't been holding back, he might not've been hurt, but if he was telling everyone not to hold back? That meant things were Bad. She watched the screens whenever she could, and she had a feeling that the skyscraper sized pillar of fire that arched up over the city was Lee's doing, and maybe the pure white, glowing crystals that flashed into exitance over the building nearby a minute later were too, or maybe the sphere of pure darkness that covered a block for several seconds after that.
Taylor felt powerless, not able to help, not able to fight beside him, just sitting by the sidelines, doing nothing. She wanted to talk to Amelia, see how much she liked Lee, but now was not the time, and she'd just be distracting the heroine from actually helping people, while Taylor just stood there making her less than useless.
She hadn't missed the comment about the Simurgh, though she was pretty sure Amy did. There was no way they could get to the base in time, if things started going bad, so she stayed with the healer and hoped for the best. As if the universe was listening, there was a gasp from around her and she looked around, seeing that everyone was staring at. The nearest monitor, showing the city outside, displayed Leviathan, but it didn't. From what she remembered from the videos, Leviathan was lighter in color, and had glowing eyes, and. . . and wasn't giant.
Well, he was, she corrected, annoyed at herself for focusing on something like that when a blue-black water-Leviathan at least five times bigger than the original started stomping its way through the city. Behemoth at least was slow about it; this giant Leviathan was fast enough to dodge almost everyone attacking it. Not that it mattered, the water-Leviathan just ignoring anything that did hit it.
Someone launched something glowing purple the size of a city bus at it, which pierced the thing's body, making it stagger back a step, but that was it. The camera wasn't good enough to pick out who was fighting, but Taylor thought the white blur might be Purity. The woman could destroy a city block, and she was barely putting a dent in it.
"We're all gonna die," someone said behind her, other people muttering, some crying, but most of them were like her, transfixed, as they watched the fight. The Endbringers were supposed to be getting smaller, not. . . whatever that was. What must've been Legend was shooting as well, and they'd started carving out pieces when a thick tendril of water came down out of the sky and attached to the giant Leviathan's back. The stream healed it, all the damage the giant monster had taken reversed in seconds.
"That's just not fair," she muttered to herself, as others cried out, yelled, or laughed in a hopeless kind of way, all watching what was going on. The heroes in the air kept fighting, but the giant Leviathan ignored them, attacking people on the ground instead. Someone shot Leviathan with a beam that seemed to paint it with light instead of hurting it, the glowing sections blowing up like a bomb a few seconds later.
Whatever it was, it hurt the creature, as it dodged a second, part of the city blowing up instead. She was so glad they'd evacuated everyone. Whoever it was tried a third time, and Taylor was reminded about Lee's advice about Leviathan, how you needed to hit and run, how you needed to keep trying new things. The beam-cape didn't run, and Levi took the blow to the hand, shoving it where the blast came from. The power must've been on a timer, not a switch, as it went off and blasted the probably dead cape backwards, only visible by how the flames trailed off his body from the explosion that'd enveloped him.
The giant Leviathan had lost a hand, but it was already started to regrow as it pulled back, something purple moving up it's legs. It reared back, hand moving to squish whatever it was when the two brightly glowing fliers let off a blast that mangled its watery appendage, moving it back. The shape paused at Leviathan's stomach, before moving up to the middle of its chest. Where it'd stopped, there was a glowing light that opened up a hole in the watery body.
Leviathans' tail arched up and over itself to strike the car-sized purple person, only for it to be knocked back by something hitting it, probably Alexandria, losing some of its form. There was a distortion, and the view was blocked by a snake appearing a few inches over the camera, leaning out weirdly into the air. Except it kept going, and going, and was the wrong color, and bumped into the remains of a skyscraper, knocking pieces off.
That wasn't a snake.
Whatever it was, was enormous, came from where they were, and could fly. It sped up, moving for the giant Leviathan, the purple, vaguely humanoid shape still hanging tight onto its chest as it opened the glowing vortex in the giant Endbringer's chest wider. It wasn't until the giant snake ignored every attack Leviathan threw at it, slammed into the giant Endbringer, and kept going that Taylor realized what, realized who it was.
It was Break.
Lee'd said to stop holding back, to go mythical. She remembered her mom telling her about the monster from legends: Dragons, Unicorns, Medusa, and Leviathan, the giant sea-serpent. Taylor wondered if Grace was a precognitive Thinker, not seeing the same thing that Taylor had been, but seeing this instead.
The giant Leviathan clawed at the creature from myth without doing any damage before it fell apart, the giant serpent flying through the air, something clenched tightly in its jaws, something with blue-green glowing eyes. Break slammed Leviathan, the real one, down, dragging it along, before rearing up and doing it again. Everything was obscured as Leviathan brought down a crushing wave of water across the city, most of it missing the medical area but Taylor could feel the ground shake as it hit, or maybe that was just Break.
The sea serpent continued to drag the Endbringer along like a dog with a chew toy and anger problems, smacking it into the ground over and over again, and grinding it across anything in range. It went on for so long that people started to laugh, honestly laugh, and Taylor wanted to join in. As hellish as the fighting had been, they were finally winning. Not by a little, but by so much it made Leviathan look almost silly. That relief vanished when Break did, leaving nothing of Leviathan behind.
When the half the screens shifted, showing a stormy sky and a familiar winged shape, the sense of victory, of relief, broke into a thousand razor edged shards, even though Taylor knew it was coming. There'd never been a time when more than one Endbringer had shown up, but Lee'd warned them this might happen. She'd heard him, but some part of her hadn't really believed him, and she almost jumped when her comm crackled to life.
"Someone with an armband, I need the location of a Hero named Flechette. She might have a way we can kill Leviathan, and we're running out of options," Lee stated, tense and commanding, but not hopeless. She hung onto that surety like a lifeline, it meant he had a plan, and while sometimes his plans didn't work, sometimes they did the impossible.
The words came out before she realized she said them, "Thank God you're okay." Taking a deep breath, she focused on the task. She could hear the sounds of fighting from outside, as water-Leviathans, regular sized water-Leviathans, started attacking the medical area again. The defenders had held them off before, they could hold them off again, at least until Lee pulled another crazy plan out of nowhere. "Sure, I can check," she told him, but Amy was already working her connection to Dragon, who didn't give them grid coordinates, but a building location.
"Building F's this way," Panacea explained as she started to walk quickly towards the exit, probably having remembered the names of the buildings. Taylor wasn't so good with names, but she didn't need to be when she had a 3D map of everything.
"Oh," Taylor said, as she was surprised at how lucky that was. "Panacea says she's-"
The world tilted, veils removed as she saw more, and more, and m͔̗̠̜̞̟̦̎ͣ̂̔ͫ͒̕o̝̪̖͎̦͙̟̟͂͋͝ŗ̴̘͉͈̰̩͔̖̮͑͑̎̎ḙ̢͚̖̩̼̽̿̈ͫ̅̍̋̕.
"Says she's," Taylor repeated, trying to remember what she was talking about.
She stood in a hall, full of the injured and dying, as she stood in a constellation of stars, so close she could touch them. The one in front of her felt familiar, somehow. It was small, scared, but burned brighter than any other near her.
"What's that?" she asked to herself, half-hearing what she was saying, half hearing nothing at all.
She looked around, seeing dozens, hundreds of other stars all around her on an almost flat plane. In one direction, past those around her, there was emptiness, but not a blackness, just a lack of substance. In the other direction, she saw hundreds more, some high up, a few down below. Her eyes saw the wall, but something else saw the stars moving, some winking out, like snuffed candles.
"Lady Bug, I need the info now!" an angry, familiar voice demanded. "I don't know how much time we have!"
"Huh?" she asked, trying to remember what she saw, as she looked up, then beheld a sky that wasn't a sky. A Sphere made of Platinum & Light far larger than any star around her, though cold as the other were warm, closed off, hung high above.
Beyond that, though, she could see a swirling, rainbow hole in the sky, a multicolored whirlpool that reminded her of Lee's eyes. Lee's eyes? Who was-
She pulled herself out, of what was happening, everyone around her quiet as they stared upwards as one. No, not everyone, every parahuman was silent as a nurse pulled at a cape a few dozen feet away, asking what was wrong, and she heard the sounds of screaming and gunfire outside. "Sorry, it's just." She tried to think, was it a Master effect? Who would attack an Endbringer attack? "What is that? It's-"
She felt her mind slip as she looked upwards into the yawning abyss, larger than anything she'd ever seen, large enough to swallow the city, large enough to swallow the world. It was "Huge."
The longer she stared up at it, the more she could see. The swirling vortex of light and power clearing to reveal something on the other side. Glowing, multicolored clouds that reminder her of Nebulas swirled in a column beyond. No, they swirled around a column of nothingness, though at the edge, the border between this world and the one she gazed into, was a shape. It was just as massive as the vortex, it's bulk circling the whirlpool, creating and restraining it. The shape was hard to make out as she struggled against the tide, trying to keep the her that was her rooted as the vortex pulled against everything below it.
When she did see it, the being so great it could encircle the solar system, she knew she was wrong, but it looked like. . "It's a giant. . . snake?" It had horns, too many horns, every scale a thorn that extended upwards and backwards, in a way no animal was shaped. It was familiar, not just to the star-her, but to the her-her as well. She'd seen it before. A memory of blood, and fear, and loss-averted grounded her.
She'd seen it before, she realized. The caduceus Vejovis wore, it wasn't a snake it was. . . This.
"Taylor, that's Break," Lee said, and she was going to have words with him. The anger helped, star-her wasn't angry, couldn't be angry, but her-her could be. "What's going on?" he demanded.
Only that couldn't be Break, because, past the not-snake, past the clouds, she'd seen stars. "Break's in space?" she asked, because if that was Break, then. . .
She looked out, towards the scattered stars. A sphere, made of Water & Blood, like the sphere above their heads, was coming near, but past it she could see the stars. Three burned more brightly than the others. One had a sense of displacement, that seemed foreign; one a sense of change, that felt like Herb; the last, a sense of growth, looking different than the other two in ways she couldn't describe but felt like Lee. She couldn't say how she knew, why she knew, just that she did. "I. . . I don't think that's Break, Lee," she told him helplessly, struggling against the pull from above and losing.
She wanted to cry out, but her body wouldn't respond as it turned its gaze back upwards, and into the vortex, seeing what lay beyond. She rose, leaving herself behind as she flew higher and higher, moving, yet still, as she passed through the gate.
Passing through, she saw the creature, the being, the Entity in full. She stayed, just on the other side, drifting. She could feel the space above her, pulling at her but she held on to invisible edges of the gate. If she didn't, if she kept moving, she might survive, but she would never return. She felt the others around her, reaching out to the Bone White & Blood Red star she thought as familiar. It reached out in turn, as desperate as she was, helping her stay, holding her down as she did the same to it.
The ruler of this place, this rainbow well among the stars, moved a head that could swallow the Sun and gazed at them, judging them. Its eyes, too many to count, weighed every star individually. She felt a sense, not of approval, nor of disapproval. She saw her mother, glad she was trying, but worried she'd been hurt, like the first time she'd ridden a bike without training wheels, in the eye that stared into her.
A single scale, near its head, detached, and started to move towards the prismatic pool she hovered over. It grew, larger and larger, until the shard of the Entity that burned ##### & Ice White above her seemed to fill her vision, before slipping by her tiny star, like an enormous ship passing a rowboat in the night. The piece of the not-snake slammed down into the surface of the pearly sea below them, which parted without a single wave, disappearing without a trace, invisible in the world on the other side.
Looking past it, dark shapes swarmed over the ground, closing on an array of structures away from the rest, flashes of irregular light illuminating the are below. She felt some of the stars around her wink out, gone forever, and she held onto the star next to her tightly, trying to keep it there, keep it from going out. The world shook, and she dropped, falling towards the rainbow well like a doomed comet, bringing the other star with her.
The lustrous depths loomed, and she splashed through them, stumbling into Panacea, both of them falling as a watery claw reached for them, missing by inches. Moving on instinct, she grabbed the smaller girl and rolled, picking her up with one hand and running, her other hand reaching for her gun.
No, that won't help, she thought, as another water-Leviathan tore its way through the wall, killing a kid who was struggling to her feet with fluid claws. Grabbing the gun Lee'd made sure she'd taken, despite her protests. Still carrying Panacea over a shoulder, Taylor aimed and fired, the fifteen-foot cone of dryness coring the monster as what was left lost its form.
"Wha?" Panacea groaned, as out of it as the others around her, struggling to their feet and trying to fight. Taylor might've been there too, but her bugs could be nauseous for her, she was busy. Turning a corner, she saw another monster, this one had ripped open the wall and was pulling out heroes, crushing them, and tossing them away like empty soda cans. A girl her age, trying to bring up glowing hands was pulped in an instant and thrown out the building as it reached for a woman on a hospital bed.
Taylor knew it would be safer to stay and hide, but these people needed help, and she had an excuse, she needed to find Flechette. Lee could be mad at her later. Charging forward, the monster flicked its tail at her, and lost it to a blast of evaporation. The monster turned, claws nearly as big as she was reaching down towards her, but she got close, close enough that the high-pressure digits started to close, and the monster, leaning down into the building, lost everything above the waist.
"Where's building F?" she demanded as another water-Leviathan took the place of the previous one, and died like the previous one.
"Huh?" a man in a green duster asked, staring at her from behind colored glasses.
Taylor put Panacea down, steadying her as she swayed on her feet. "Where's building F?" she asked the healer, who didn't seem any better than the man. A third water-Leviathan stuck its head in the gap and lost its head, though it started to reform, just smaller. Taylor shot it again and its remains splashed down. "We need to find Flechette, you said building F, where is building F?"
"It's," the healer said, trying to get her bearings. "It's next to the comm center."
"Where's that?" Taylor asked, killing a fourth monster. She'd used up so many bugs that she didn't have the normal spy-net she liked to use. She hadn't been paying attention to them earlier, trying not to spy on anyone and violate the Endbringer truce. Maybe we shouldn't stand right here? she thought, but looking at the capes starting to get up, those that could get up, and without her they'd die to the next monster that showed up. She could at least stay here while Panacea got her the directions she needed.
Amelia raised her hand to point the way they'd come. "It's over-aah!" she screamed as a claw of solid water ripped through the roof, right down into Panacea, running her through.
Taylor vaporized it, along with the Endbringer made of water above them, as she rushed to Amy's side. She expected to see a bloody mess, like the girl before, but while Amy's cloak had been torn apart, her armor was intact.
"Fuck," wheezed the healer, gasping through the pain. "Fuck, broke my shoulder, ribs, don't know what else. Fuck!" She waved to the west, "Go, go get Flechette."
"What? No!" Taylor told her. Lee'd told them not to split up, and, despite what else she might think, or feel, she didn't want Amy to die! As a fifth Water-leviathan tried to claw its way in, only to be destroyed by Taylor, the man with the green duster firing an energy blast a half-second too late, she knew that's exactly what would happen if she left the healer alone. Amy could heal anyone but herself.
"Sorry," Taylor apologized before reaching down and picking up Panacea, who screamed in pain. She tried not to listen to the other girl sob as she ran for the door, opening it up to come face to face with another Water-Leviathan, four more on the rooftop of building F.
She vaporized the first one, hoping the gun would hold out, when shots from above blasted one of the others, everyone who'd been injured and carried to what should've been safety finally starting to fight back. Taylor ran on through the pounding rain, Panacea crying in pain, when she turned the corner and stopped. On top of a building at the edge of the city, several hundred feet away from the medical area, was Leviathan, the real one, watching everyone die as his creations killed the injured, and more water-Leviathans streamed from between the buildings towards them. There were dozens upon dozens, loping across the open areas, more than Taylor could hope to fight as she started to back up where she came.
She'd go around to the back entrance, find Flechette, whoever that was, and all three of them would hunker down until help arrived, if help did arrive in time. She took a step back, muddy ground suddenly slippery ice and fell, twisting and rolling to make sure she didn't land on Panacea, who screamed and went limp. Oh, don't be dead, don't be dead," Taylor though, scrabbling backwards and lifting the girl out of the rapidly flooding street.
The girls weak coughs sounded bad, but they sounded alive. Taylor glanced back up at Leviathan, who was staring back at her. No, not at her, at one of the other buildings. It tensed up, ready to jump, when it stopped, and turned around to look back across the city, towards the ocean.
Then the sky tore, and a day so dark it was almost night lit up in hellish light.
A conflagration exploded into being where Leviathan was standing, its flames a familiar Royal Purple and Blood Red, a streak of fire the same color stretching out in a perfectly straight line back across the city to the bay. A shockwave blasted outwards and rocking her back as she held onto Amelia.
The Water-Leviathans, every single one of them, lost form like a switch had been thrown, dropping down to flood the alleys between buildings.
The rain stopped, petering out in seconds, the city quieting down for the first time since everything had stared.
As the explosion cleared, Leviathan was gone, a small, dark, human-sized shape falling where it'd been. Every building around it was collapsing, and the figure bounced bonelessly off the still-dropping wreckage. Before it hit the ground, a second dark shape rocketed down from the city so fast it was hard to see, grabbing the figure as they both flew away, nearly vanishing as they flew off into the countryside.
Taylor just stared at what happened, holstering her gun to carefully pick Amy back up. The girl groaned, crying from the pain, but it got her completely out of the water. Looking up, Taylor saw the winged form of the Simurgh high above, getting higher every moment as it flew up through a hole in the slowly breaking cloud cover.
Heroes rushed to help the injured, one helping her carry Panacea back inside as a golden glow appeared on the horizon over the bay.
- Location
- United States of America
- Location
- Oregon, USA
The Simurgh didn't actually do anything, probably because they only came to show that multiple Endbringers could attack at once.
Revision 13.1
- Location
- United States of America
Revision 13.1
I slept, and lived memories not my own. I was one of many. Each with a purpose. Each with a mission above all else. Nine hundred and thirty-two Cycles have passed. More may pass before the dream of our race is reached. It did not matter, the end must not come, the Cycles would finish, but not be broken.
Fragments filled the Entity, fragments of the last Cycle, fragments of Cycles before then. The Entity was fragments, and the fragments were the Entity. Each fragment a shard of the Entity, and the Entity's progenitors. Knowledge filled them, streamlined and purified, all against the inevitable destiny the Entities denied.
The Entity swims in the void between stars, looking for life. Last three stars barren, time running out. On the last, emissions where there should be none. Now it was in the in-between, where no stars dwelt, where no life thrived. Instincts, the memories of ancestors stated it was wrong, it would lead all to death, to waste, but energy trails, fragmented unnaturally, urged it on.
Again, it found nothing. Again, fragments passed down through cycle after cycle told it this would not help it finish the Cycle.
Denial.
Blackness surrounded it for time enough for four Cycles, but emissions remained, each stronger than the last. Shards drained, cast adrift to move forward. Then, light.
Surprise.
A star where none existed, blue-white. Dozens of worlds floating around. Each with life. Each with different life. Enough to run Cycle, after Cycle, after Cycle. The Entity had waited so long, but success seemed near. It moved towards the first one, orange and green, and started to prepare.
Anticipation.
I woke, remembering the relief, the hunger, the victory that all seemed. . . off. Muted and distant. I moved to run my hands through my hair, but only my left arm moved. Opening my eyes, I was. . . somewhere. The ceiling tiles looked familiar, though I couldn't place them, and I was in a bed, but not my bed. I hadn't slept in it more than a few times, but I didn't recall it being this stiff.
Sitting up, I finally recognized the room. I was in one of Eclipse's medical bays, wearing my civilian clothes, somehow. Shaking off the last vestiges of sleep I remembered what I did, and let out a short laugh. So it didn't kill me. Good. Refocusing, I felt a weight on my legs and looked down.
A familiar mop of brown hair obscured a figure who had dragged her chair next to where I'd slept, head down and using my legs as a pillow. Tension I didn't realize I'd been holding drained out of me. It worked.
I stretched, my right arm still not responding, feeling like it'd fallen asleep. Trying to lift it, metal tendrils extended up, weaving themselves into an extra arm. I looked at it in confusion, retracting it and trying to lift my real arm. Air solidified, making an invisible appendage, fingers and all. Dismissing it, I looked down and could only see my shoulder. Was I laying on it? It'd explain the numbness.
It seemed like I was, since my arm had to be folded behind me, though I didn't feel it pressing against my back when I woke up. Reaching over with my left arm to fish out my right, I sighed, not looking forward to that pins-and-needles, static-y feeling. My fingers ran up my side, past my ribs, continuing on smoothly over the fabric of my shirt until they reached the top of my shoulder. That was. . . odd.
Trying again, reaching completely over, I found that from my armpit to the top of my shoulder was completely smooth. I tried to move my right arm, only for metal tendrils to once again sprout out, and form the appendage. Form out of my shoulder. My perfectly smooth, arm-less shoulder.
I couldn't suppress a whimper as I realized I was missing an arm.
Shit, then, damn, okay, okay I can work with this, I though, freezing. Taylor stirred, and I pushed down the whole mess of emotions. I'll either get Panacea to heal it, or just use a power until I can find someone who can. There's so many powers out there, I should be able to find someone who can regrow limbs, or I could copy the power of someone who can regrow their own if I need to. God knows I get hurt enough that that'd be useful.
Taylor yawned, lazily stretching in a feline manner, still leaning on me. She turned over, blinked sleepily, and blew some hair out of her face. She froze, now able to see me clearly, looking at me as I looked back at her. "You, you're awake," she stuttered, as if this fact was surprising.
"So are you," I pointed out, a smile tugging the corner of my mouth as she blushed and leapt to her feet, chair sent skidding backwards, revealing a pillow that'd been laid over my shins. "What's up?"
"I, well, you," she sputtered, stopping and taking a deep breath. "Amy healed you, but you've been out for, um, three days and no-one knew why," she revealed, stepping up next to me, looking at me like she wasn't sure if I was real, or if she was just dreaming. "She couldn't figure out why, but Herb thought it wouldn't be for too long, but he wasn't really sure either, and I was worried, but I knew you'd be fine, but I didn't know when you'd be fine, so I was waiting, and helping Panacea, and helping fix the base, the places in range, but I- gah!" she rambled, squeaking when I leaned forward and hugged her.
"Um, are you okay? Not that I'm complaining, but-" she started to say, but I interrupted her.
"I'm just glad you're okay," I told her. "We survived, and we can handle anything else that comes."
"I, um, okay," she replied, the tension that ran through her lessoning somewhat, but not going away. "I, just, um, I can't feel you, and it's been. . . I don't like it."
At first, I wasn't sure what she meant, until it clicked. For the first time since we met, we didn't share a power. I knew I had limited slots, and that I probably should shepherd them carefully, but screw it. My main identity used Bug-control, so it would be really suspicious if I suddenly couldn't, is what I told myself. Truth be told I missed the connection, and the honesty it brought, as, while you could not share emotions over it, you couldn't fake the emotions that could be shared with that power.
Slotting Arthropod Control, I was glad I wasn't standing as the senses of every single insect in range flooded my senses, the touch, taste, sound, and sight from thousands of separate sources overwhelming me. As I shook, I could feel Taylor as well, the worry, the fear, the insecurity the sense of loss-averted mixing with future-loss, and she helped center me, her presence pulling my mind to the surface and blocking out the flood of data.
As I focused on her, unable to control what I sent, she stiffened, before the tension flooded out of her and she nearly melted in my arms. Pulling her onto the medical bed with me, we sat there, holding onto each other, stabilizing each other. I hadn't realized just how hurt she was, even with me trying to help, possibly because I was trying to help.
Even as I thought that, I could feel denial-assistance-appreciation, in a way words couldn't quite describe. We both sat, not moving, for I don't know how long. It was only the growling of my stomach, like a feral wolf, that shocked me out of that state, somewhere between meditation and a cat's blissful contentment.
Pulling back, I pushed the power down. I wasn't able to turn it off, but I could retreat from it, giving it less to work with. We both gave out matching sighs, and I let go of Taylor. "So. . . Right. . . That happened," I said, trying to fill the suddenly awkward space with words, before groaning as I realized how little of my training was applicable now. Would my other powers, the ones I'd used previously, be this wonky, and affect me this deeply not that I wasn't in a fight-for-your-life scenario? Would other powers add more and more senses, limiting what I could use, without me knowing if that was going to happen until I locked it into an empty slot? I'd just started to get a figure out these damn things, and now everything was different.
"What? I'm sorry!" she replied, sounding hurt as she let go of me.
I was tempted to use the power we shared once more, to show her that it wasn't her fault, but whatever the hell had just happened was seriously not normal and something I'd need to figure out, and I wasn't even sure if the desire to use the power that way was even a thought of mine, or the power's, like when I'd tried to use Trickster's and started to objectify everything, including other people. This was going to take so much work. "No," I told her, with a bit more command then I'd meant in my tone. "Don't be. Powers change and evolve, something just happened but whatever it was wasn't your fault. Damn, and I'd just started to get a handle on this stuff too. Fucking Eidolon."
My stomach growled again. "I don't see a feeding tube, so that means I haven't eaten anything in. . . what day is it?"
"Wednesday?" she said, not really sure of the answer. She slipped her phone out of her jacket pocket and checked. "Yeah, Wednesday the eighteenth. Um, it's six thirteen. A.M.," she added.
"So, it's been almost three days , and I'm starving. Let's go get something to eat, okay?" She nodded, not moving. "That means you need to get off my bed so I can get up," I prodded.
She leapt up off the bed, blushing bright red. Teenagers, I thought, smiling as I got up as well. "Let's go fly the flag and get a damage report. Nothing's supposed to happen for a few weeks, but we should make plans as soon as we can, and that requires understanding exactly what's going on."
"What?" I asked, not sure I'd heard correctly.
"City's gone," Herb shrugged.
"But, I, it, what do you mean gone? Yeah it was messed up, but unless some serious bullshit went down after I got knocked out then most of it's intact!" I argued. Taylor and I had walked to the cafeteria we'd been using before the fight, where my teammate had been making dinner. He'd been happy to see us, but he'd said that he wouldn't tell me what was going on until he'd finished making breakfast, so everyone could be there. 'Everyone' was Herb and I, Taylor, the Dallon sisters, Dean, Kayden, Theo, Robin, Raida (Previously Rune, who's real name was apparently Ester), Hedera, Missy, and Dinah.
Amy had looked at my right arm in disbelief when she'd walked in, seeing the sleeve and glove I'd turned my costume into in order to cover the shifting metal prosthetic, giving it the appearance of a living limb, and marched right up to me. Without asking she grabbed my real, exposed hand and focused, her power working on me as she did a diagnostic scan. Grumbling, she let it go, taking a seat to my left, Taylor already sitting to my right. The others had drifted in, looking at me in a mix of confusion, worry, and maybe awe. I didn't like any of it.
"Too much shit broke," Herb explained, not saying anything more than that.
I sighed, putting down my fork as I pinched the bridge of my nose with my fake hand. It lacked a bit of the effect, the metal limb only giving me the barest of feelings of touch, but it still helped calm my thoughts. "Okay, and as I said, it didn't look that bad. Obviously, I'm missing something here. What am I missing?"
"Powers," Missy shrugged, next to Dean, Vicky on his other side. "There's all kinds of weird stuff. Fires that won't go out, a street that's all warped, one place doesn't have gravity. Even the wall I made is still there, kinda. It's not as big, but it's still keeping the bay dry."
I checked, and yes, I was still powering it. Dropping it all at once might be bad, so I put lowering it slowly over time as it 'ran out of energy' on my to-do list, but if there was anyone below the waterline, they'd need warning to get out. "Okay, fine, so it needs some work, but you can't just go 'Hey, not a thing anymore', it's an entire city."
Now everyone was staring at me. Shit. What'd I say?
"Um, V-man? It totes is. Like, they taught us that in civics," Vicky said, most of the teens nodding, as well as Kayden. "How do you not know that?"
"His school didn't have civics," Herb told them, covering for me. He wasn't wrong either, my high school didn't, but this seemed like one of those 'universal societal knowledge' things I'd been avoiding, mostly by not talking to a lot of different people. Probably not the best strategy, but it'd worked so far. "'Casionally he doesn't know somethin' like that," he added, "but he knows so much other random stuff it kinda works out."
"How do you know what you don't know?" I shrugged, not technically lying. "It hasn't come up before. So, right, shit. What does that mean?" I asked Victoria, who seemed to be the expert on this.
Dean answered instead, "It was an Endbringer attack, so the survivors are given money to relocate. Usually there aren't as many if the attack zone is that bad, but that's not a bad thing. If people can, they are brought in to get their stuff and get out."
"If they can?" I echoed.
Missy answered me with one word: "Madison."
Ah, right, I thought nodding. If the entire area was quarantined because of Ziz bombs, then no one was allowed inside, and only those that'd escaped the city early in the attack would be re-settled.
"They're still finding safe areas," Dean said, picking up his explanation. "And the city government hasn't been dissolved yet, but it will be, then it will be state-owned land. They're still helping the survivors get back on their feet." He nodded to Amy and Taylor, "Without those two, there'd be a lot more crippled than there have been. Including me."
"That bad?" I asked, and he nodded solemnly. Vicky wasn't subtle about reaching over and taking his hand, but I didn't really blame her. "What's going to happen to the PRT office?"
"Transfers," Dean shrugged. "I've requested Boston, but I'll find out at the end of the week."
"Me too," Missy added.
It's too much. We've changed too much, I thought. "And the Slaughterhouse Nine?" I asked.
"Seattle," Herb replied. "Did they?"
"No," I replied. "At least, I don't think so."
"Did they what?" Vicky asked.
I cocked an eyebrow towards Herb, writing 'Should I tell them about our vision of the future?' in the air behind me. His eyes glimmered for a second as he borrowed my Power Sight to read it, nodding. "Right, so, about that. There's the short version and the long version. Short version is that, 'bout a month ago, Break and I managed to get ourselves a precognitive glimpse into what was going to happen here for the next few months, and then everywhere in two years. No, we can't get another, and here's the kicker: It was what would happen if we did nothing. Given that would mean bad things for pretty much every single person at this table, we decided that playing the long game, making no ripples until we were ready to come in at the very end and make sure the good guys won that way was not an option."
"We knew an Endbringer was going to attack Brockton Bay, though we weren't sure if it was going to be the same Endbringer. Sure as fuck didn't expect two," I added. "What happened to Ziz at the end?"
"She. . . left," Taylor said. "Didn't even scream."
I nodded at that, "So she was just observing. Good. Well, not good, but better than the alternative. Anyways, we tried to tamp things down, make things bearable in ways that wouldn't butterfly too much with. . . limited success."
Herb snorted, and I shot him a hard look. "Listen, we didn't bomb Max and Kenta in their offices, despite what they've done. I consider that keeping things subtle."
"Kenta?" Amy asked.
"Lung," I replied. "So, the way things were supposed to go was that Levi shows up, sandbags like normal, kills about a hundred fighters in the normal proportions, and leaves. City's got a ton of flood damage from low-level tidal waves, but nothing too bad. Money is allocated from the relief fund to rebuild, gets caught up in the Bay's corruption, only the downtown area is rebuilt as villains take over everywhere else like warlords because they're actually helping when no-one else is. New Wave are useless, but they've lost Manpower, Shielder, and Flashbang has brain damage, while things are further deteriorating between Amy & Carol so I can't exactly blame them, especially since their area of town is getting rebuilt so they might not notice the problems everywhere else. Um," I looked over to Vicky. "Did they. . . are they. . .?"
"Everyone made it," Vicky nodded. "Crystal got hurt bad, but Ames patched her up."
I sighed in relief. "Good. There were only so many things and I could do, and I'm glad they made it. Right, so, where was I? Right, despite the Villains taking over, things are, were, would be looking up, which is when the Slaughterhouse Nine arrive. Thing is, I don't think they will this time, because there's no longer a city to terrorize, and I don't know if they hit Seattle before, since the vision was hyper-focused on this city."
"But that's a good thing, right?" Dinah asked, looking around the table. "Right?"
She looked so innocent, I wanted to send her away, but knowing this wouldn't hurt, and might even help. Kayden beat me to answering, shaking her head. "No honey, it means they don't know what's going to happen next."
I nodded, "We've still got a precog that might send us a warning, but yeah, that's the problem. We could take the S9, but now I don't know what's going to happen. Will the Fallen and the Teeth show up? Accord won't, probably, or maybe he will. Maybe some other group I've never heard of will decide this is a prime time to move in, I don't know."
"I, I could help," Dinah offered, and I winced. "Not a lot," she proposed. "Just a question or two a day."
"We'll see," I told her kindly, "But you're not to hurt yourself with your power, okay?" The young girl nodded, and I still felt like a monster for asking her to hurt herself to help me. I knew she'd do it even if I asked her not to, powers, especially Natural Triggers, pushed their Hosts to use them, but that didn't make me feel any better, so I turned back to the topic at hand. "Right, so, yeah. That happens, bad times all round, then there's a Broken Trigger, one of the bad ones, and that makes things even worse, and that's about it as far as we know. Coil tries to take over the city, installing a puppet Mayor with the help of the Travelers, but no city, no mayor," I shrugged weakly.
"Broken Trigger?" Dean asked. "What's that?"
"Someone's power doesn't align correctly. They're not really that common until after- until what'll happen in two years," I explained, "and there's an organization which helps take care of them before they get really bad, but for some reason they missed this one. Sometimes it means their power's just weaker than normal, sometimes their power's effects are erratic, sometimes it kills them because the necessary secondary powers aren't there, and sometimes, sometimes the power goes wrong. Echidna's the last one."
"Mother of monsters?" Taylor asked.
Herb nodded seriously, "Giant monster things instead of legs. Really bad."
"Twenty feet high, thirty feet across, looks a bit like Scylla, everything below her waist is monstrous," I agreed. "Any cape she touches, she knocks out and spawns a doppelganger of, in pretty much every sense of the word. One of yours controlled rats instead of insects," I told Taylor. "They're all insane, and. . . yeah. The parahumans with useful powers Echidna finds she pulls inside herself and. . . it's bad," I explained. "She used to be one of the Travelers, and they're trying to get her help, only they went to Coil, who has no intention of losing a potential asset or wasting resources in what he thinks is an impossible task, and they run out of time. If I knew where she was, I'd see if we could help unfuck her powers, and if not, I'd kill her. It'd be a mercy. After that Behemoth attacks India, dies, and then nothing really happened in the vision until two years later. And that. . . that's something will deal with later."
I looked around at everyone, all of them staring at me and Herb. "So, right, Slaughterhouse Nine. If they kept their roster from the vision, we can take them fairly easily. Siberian's tricky, but that's because her power's esoteric, and once you know her secret she's easy to get rid of. Panacea's a hard-counter for Bonesaw, Break for Crawler, literally half of you for Mannequin, myself for Shatterbird, Dean for Cherish, either Herb or I for Burnscar, I shot Oni Lee through his shard so Bonesaw can't combine him with Hatchetface to make. . . I forget its name, and Mouse Protector's in our medical Bay so Murder Rat isn't being made either," I rattled off. "What?"
"You know the Slaughterhouse Nine's current roster?" Dean asked carefully.
"In a timeline that's looking increasingly likely not to happen, yeah," I replied.
Vicky spoke up while Dean processed that statement, though why that confused him I wasn't sure. "What about Jack Slash?"
"Eh, so, either I could, or we just give the PRT a chance to actually be useful. His Trump/Thinker ability's a bitch to deal with and may or may not work on me," I hedged.
Dean stared at me, "His what."
"He can read the. . . not really minds, he can read people's powers to know what they're going to do. It's how he managed to keep that ever-revolving batch of murder-hobos cohesive. Some rando with a shotgun kills him in a year and a half-ish in the ruins of an Endbringer attack, but since they always send, or at least tell their plans to, heroes, he always knows they're coming," I explained.
"Any other bombs you want to drop?" laughed Herb, shaking his head.
I shot him an accusatory look. "It's no longer information that their actions will invalidate, and you agreed to tell them!" I pointed out. He just nodded in a 'you're right' way but didn't say anything. "Right, so, that's what would've happened, except now Brockton Bay isn't going to exist, so all of that goes right out the window. I've got all sorts of plans, contingency plans, tactics, and ideas that don't work anymore, because they all had 'Brockton Bay is a place that exists' as a key component, because I wasn't aware that was something that could change."
"So, you're saying you don't have any plans?" my teammate pressed.
"None right this moment, give me an hour or two to do some research and I'll get some basic ideas. Hell, I need to start looking over the fatalities to see who we could work with," I replied. "I've got some long-term stuff, but I know me, you, and the world too well to plan those in detail."
He grinned, "Good."
I stared at him. "Okay, either you're going to explain that, or my only response to that sort of ice cream koan, 'tis better to have no plan than a flawed one' bullshit will be to tell you to fuck right the hell off with that crap."
"I got a plan," he said placatingly, making 'settle down' gestures. "It's really simple. Makes sense you wouldn't see it, 'cause you like to overcomplicate things."
"I believe I like to make things clear, logical, and exactly as detailed as they're required," I shot back, a little defensively, "but go ahead and tell us what this 'simple yet effective' plan of yours is, oh great master of wisdom."
Herb grinned broadly, "We buy the city."
I slept, and lived memories not my own. I was one of many. Each with a purpose. Each with a mission above all else. Nine hundred and thirty-two Cycles have passed. More may pass before the dream of our race is reached. It did not matter, the end must not come, the Cycles would finish, but not be broken.
Fragments filled the Entity, fragments of the last Cycle, fragments of Cycles before then. The Entity was fragments, and the fragments were the Entity. Each fragment a shard of the Entity, and the Entity's progenitors. Knowledge filled them, streamlined and purified, all against the inevitable destiny the Entities denied.
The Entity swims in the void between stars, looking for life. Last three stars barren, time running out. On the last, emissions where there should be none. Now it was in the in-between, where no stars dwelt, where no life thrived. Instincts, the memories of ancestors stated it was wrong, it would lead all to death, to waste, but energy trails, fragmented unnaturally, urged it on.
Again, it found nothing. Again, fragments passed down through cycle after cycle told it this would not help it finish the Cycle.
Denial.
Blackness surrounded it for time enough for four Cycles, but emissions remained, each stronger than the last. Shards drained, cast adrift to move forward. Then, light.
Surprise.
A star where none existed, blue-white. Dozens of worlds floating around. Each with life. Each with different life. Enough to run Cycle, after Cycle, after Cycle. The Entity had waited so long, but success seemed near. It moved towards the first one, orange and green, and started to prepare.
Anticipation.
I woke, remembering the relief, the hunger, the victory that all seemed. . . off. Muted and distant. I moved to run my hands through my hair, but only my left arm moved. Opening my eyes, I was. . . somewhere. The ceiling tiles looked familiar, though I couldn't place them, and I was in a bed, but not my bed. I hadn't slept in it more than a few times, but I didn't recall it being this stiff.
Sitting up, I finally recognized the room. I was in one of Eclipse's medical bays, wearing my civilian clothes, somehow. Shaking off the last vestiges of sleep I remembered what I did, and let out a short laugh. So it didn't kill me. Good. Refocusing, I felt a weight on my legs and looked down.
A familiar mop of brown hair obscured a figure who had dragged her chair next to where I'd slept, head down and using my legs as a pillow. Tension I didn't realize I'd been holding drained out of me. It worked.
I stretched, my right arm still not responding, feeling like it'd fallen asleep. Trying to lift it, metal tendrils extended up, weaving themselves into an extra arm. I looked at it in confusion, retracting it and trying to lift my real arm. Air solidified, making an invisible appendage, fingers and all. Dismissing it, I looked down and could only see my shoulder. Was I laying on it? It'd explain the numbness.
It seemed like I was, since my arm had to be folded behind me, though I didn't feel it pressing against my back when I woke up. Reaching over with my left arm to fish out my right, I sighed, not looking forward to that pins-and-needles, static-y feeling. My fingers ran up my side, past my ribs, continuing on smoothly over the fabric of my shirt until they reached the top of my shoulder. That was. . . odd.
Trying again, reaching completely over, I found that from my armpit to the top of my shoulder was completely smooth. I tried to move my right arm, only for metal tendrils to once again sprout out, and form the appendage. Form out of my shoulder. My perfectly smooth, arm-less shoulder.
I couldn't suppress a whimper as I realized I was missing an arm.
Shit, then, damn, okay, okay I can work with this, I though, freezing. Taylor stirred, and I pushed down the whole mess of emotions. I'll either get Panacea to heal it, or just use a power until I can find someone who can. There's so many powers out there, I should be able to find someone who can regrow limbs, or I could copy the power of someone who can regrow their own if I need to. God knows I get hurt enough that that'd be useful.
Taylor yawned, lazily stretching in a feline manner, still leaning on me. She turned over, blinked sleepily, and blew some hair out of her face. She froze, now able to see me clearly, looking at me as I looked back at her. "You, you're awake," she stuttered, as if this fact was surprising.
"So are you," I pointed out, a smile tugging the corner of my mouth as she blushed and leapt to her feet, chair sent skidding backwards, revealing a pillow that'd been laid over my shins. "What's up?"
"I, well, you," she sputtered, stopping and taking a deep breath. "Amy healed you, but you've been out for, um, three days and no-one knew why," she revealed, stepping up next to me, looking at me like she wasn't sure if I was real, or if she was just dreaming. "She couldn't figure out why, but Herb thought it wouldn't be for too long, but he wasn't really sure either, and I was worried, but I knew you'd be fine, but I didn't know when you'd be fine, so I was waiting, and helping Panacea, and helping fix the base, the places in range, but I- gah!" she rambled, squeaking when I leaned forward and hugged her.
"Um, are you okay? Not that I'm complaining, but-" she started to say, but I interrupted her.
"I'm just glad you're okay," I told her. "We survived, and we can handle anything else that comes."
"I, um, okay," she replied, the tension that ran through her lessoning somewhat, but not going away. "I, just, um, I can't feel you, and it's been. . . I don't like it."
At first, I wasn't sure what she meant, until it clicked. For the first time since we met, we didn't share a power. I knew I had limited slots, and that I probably should shepherd them carefully, but screw it. My main identity used Bug-control, so it would be really suspicious if I suddenly couldn't, is what I told myself. Truth be told I missed the connection, and the honesty it brought, as, while you could not share emotions over it, you couldn't fake the emotions that could be shared with that power.
Slotting Arthropod Control, I was glad I wasn't standing as the senses of every single insect in range flooded my senses, the touch, taste, sound, and sight from thousands of separate sources overwhelming me. As I shook, I could feel Taylor as well, the worry, the fear, the insecurity the sense of loss-averted mixing with future-loss, and she helped center me, her presence pulling my mind to the surface and blocking out the flood of data.
As I focused on her, unable to control what I sent, she stiffened, before the tension flooded out of her and she nearly melted in my arms. Pulling her onto the medical bed with me, we sat there, holding onto each other, stabilizing each other. I hadn't realized just how hurt she was, even with me trying to help, possibly because I was trying to help.
Even as I thought that, I could feel denial-assistance-appreciation, in a way words couldn't quite describe. We both sat, not moving, for I don't know how long. It was only the growling of my stomach, like a feral wolf, that shocked me out of that state, somewhere between meditation and a cat's blissful contentment.
Pulling back, I pushed the power down. I wasn't able to turn it off, but I could retreat from it, giving it less to work with. We both gave out matching sighs, and I let go of Taylor. "So. . . Right. . . That happened," I said, trying to fill the suddenly awkward space with words, before groaning as I realized how little of my training was applicable now. Would my other powers, the ones I'd used previously, be this wonky, and affect me this deeply not that I wasn't in a fight-for-your-life scenario? Would other powers add more and more senses, limiting what I could use, without me knowing if that was going to happen until I locked it into an empty slot? I'd just started to get a figure out these damn things, and now everything was different.
"What? I'm sorry!" she replied, sounding hurt as she let go of me.
I was tempted to use the power we shared once more, to show her that it wasn't her fault, but whatever the hell had just happened was seriously not normal and something I'd need to figure out, and I wasn't even sure if the desire to use the power that way was even a thought of mine, or the power's, like when I'd tried to use Trickster's and started to objectify everything, including other people. This was going to take so much work. "No," I told her, with a bit more command then I'd meant in my tone. "Don't be. Powers change and evolve, something just happened but whatever it was wasn't your fault. Damn, and I'd just started to get a handle on this stuff too. Fucking Eidolon."
My stomach growled again. "I don't see a feeding tube, so that means I haven't eaten anything in. . . what day is it?"
"Wednesday?" she said, not really sure of the answer. She slipped her phone out of her jacket pocket and checked. "Yeah, Wednesday the eighteenth. Um, it's six thirteen. A.M.," she added.
"So, it's been almost three days , and I'm starving. Let's go get something to eat, okay?" She nodded, not moving. "That means you need to get off my bed so I can get up," I prodded.
She leapt up off the bed, blushing bright red. Teenagers, I thought, smiling as I got up as well. "Let's go fly the flag and get a damage report. Nothing's supposed to happen for a few weeks, but we should make plans as soon as we can, and that requires understanding exactly what's going on."
"What?" I asked, not sure I'd heard correctly.
"City's gone," Herb shrugged.
"But, I, it, what do you mean gone? Yeah it was messed up, but unless some serious bullshit went down after I got knocked out then most of it's intact!" I argued. Taylor and I had walked to the cafeteria we'd been using before the fight, where my teammate had been making dinner. He'd been happy to see us, but he'd said that he wouldn't tell me what was going on until he'd finished making breakfast, so everyone could be there. 'Everyone' was Herb and I, Taylor, the Dallon sisters, Dean, Kayden, Theo, Robin, Raida (Previously Rune, who's real name was apparently Ester), Hedera, Missy, and Dinah.
Amy had looked at my right arm in disbelief when she'd walked in, seeing the sleeve and glove I'd turned my costume into in order to cover the shifting metal prosthetic, giving it the appearance of a living limb, and marched right up to me. Without asking she grabbed my real, exposed hand and focused, her power working on me as she did a diagnostic scan. Grumbling, she let it go, taking a seat to my left, Taylor already sitting to my right. The others had drifted in, looking at me in a mix of confusion, worry, and maybe awe. I didn't like any of it.
"Too much shit broke," Herb explained, not saying anything more than that.
I sighed, putting down my fork as I pinched the bridge of my nose with my fake hand. It lacked a bit of the effect, the metal limb only giving me the barest of feelings of touch, but it still helped calm my thoughts. "Okay, and as I said, it didn't look that bad. Obviously, I'm missing something here. What am I missing?"
"Powers," Missy shrugged, next to Dean, Vicky on his other side. "There's all kinds of weird stuff. Fires that won't go out, a street that's all warped, one place doesn't have gravity. Even the wall I made is still there, kinda. It's not as big, but it's still keeping the bay dry."
I checked, and yes, I was still powering it. Dropping it all at once might be bad, so I put lowering it slowly over time as it 'ran out of energy' on my to-do list, but if there was anyone below the waterline, they'd need warning to get out. "Okay, fine, so it needs some work, but you can't just go 'Hey, not a thing anymore', it's an entire city."
Now everyone was staring at me. Shit. What'd I say?
"Um, V-man? It totes is. Like, they taught us that in civics," Vicky said, most of the teens nodding, as well as Kayden. "How do you not know that?"
"His school didn't have civics," Herb told them, covering for me. He wasn't wrong either, my high school didn't, but this seemed like one of those 'universal societal knowledge' things I'd been avoiding, mostly by not talking to a lot of different people. Probably not the best strategy, but it'd worked so far. "'Casionally he doesn't know somethin' like that," he added, "but he knows so much other random stuff it kinda works out."
"How do you know what you don't know?" I shrugged, not technically lying. "It hasn't come up before. So, right, shit. What does that mean?" I asked Victoria, who seemed to be the expert on this.
Dean answered instead, "It was an Endbringer attack, so the survivors are given money to relocate. Usually there aren't as many if the attack zone is that bad, but that's not a bad thing. If people can, they are brought in to get their stuff and get out."
"If they can?" I echoed.
Missy answered me with one word: "Madison."
Ah, right, I thought nodding. If the entire area was quarantined because of Ziz bombs, then no one was allowed inside, and only those that'd escaped the city early in the attack would be re-settled.
"They're still finding safe areas," Dean said, picking up his explanation. "And the city government hasn't been dissolved yet, but it will be, then it will be state-owned land. They're still helping the survivors get back on their feet." He nodded to Amy and Taylor, "Without those two, there'd be a lot more crippled than there have been. Including me."
"That bad?" I asked, and he nodded solemnly. Vicky wasn't subtle about reaching over and taking his hand, but I didn't really blame her. "What's going to happen to the PRT office?"
"Transfers," Dean shrugged. "I've requested Boston, but I'll find out at the end of the week."
"Me too," Missy added.
It's too much. We've changed too much, I thought. "And the Slaughterhouse Nine?" I asked.
"Seattle," Herb replied. "Did they?"
"No," I replied. "At least, I don't think so."
"Did they what?" Vicky asked.
I cocked an eyebrow towards Herb, writing 'Should I tell them about our vision of the future?' in the air behind me. His eyes glimmered for a second as he borrowed my Power Sight to read it, nodding. "Right, so, about that. There's the short version and the long version. Short version is that, 'bout a month ago, Break and I managed to get ourselves a precognitive glimpse into what was going to happen here for the next few months, and then everywhere in two years. No, we can't get another, and here's the kicker: It was what would happen if we did nothing. Given that would mean bad things for pretty much every single person at this table, we decided that playing the long game, making no ripples until we were ready to come in at the very end and make sure the good guys won that way was not an option."
"We knew an Endbringer was going to attack Brockton Bay, though we weren't sure if it was going to be the same Endbringer. Sure as fuck didn't expect two," I added. "What happened to Ziz at the end?"
"She. . . left," Taylor said. "Didn't even scream."
I nodded at that, "So she was just observing. Good. Well, not good, but better than the alternative. Anyways, we tried to tamp things down, make things bearable in ways that wouldn't butterfly too much with. . . limited success."
Herb snorted, and I shot him a hard look. "Listen, we didn't bomb Max and Kenta in their offices, despite what they've done. I consider that keeping things subtle."
"Kenta?" Amy asked.
"Lung," I replied. "So, the way things were supposed to go was that Levi shows up, sandbags like normal, kills about a hundred fighters in the normal proportions, and leaves. City's got a ton of flood damage from low-level tidal waves, but nothing too bad. Money is allocated from the relief fund to rebuild, gets caught up in the Bay's corruption, only the downtown area is rebuilt as villains take over everywhere else like warlords because they're actually helping when no-one else is. New Wave are useless, but they've lost Manpower, Shielder, and Flashbang has brain damage, while things are further deteriorating between Amy & Carol so I can't exactly blame them, especially since their area of town is getting rebuilt so they might not notice the problems everywhere else. Um," I looked over to Vicky. "Did they. . . are they. . .?"
"Everyone made it," Vicky nodded. "Crystal got hurt bad, but Ames patched her up."
I sighed in relief. "Good. There were only so many things and I could do, and I'm glad they made it. Right, so, where was I? Right, despite the Villains taking over, things are, were, would be looking up, which is when the Slaughterhouse Nine arrive. Thing is, I don't think they will this time, because there's no longer a city to terrorize, and I don't know if they hit Seattle before, since the vision was hyper-focused on this city."
"But that's a good thing, right?" Dinah asked, looking around the table. "Right?"
She looked so innocent, I wanted to send her away, but knowing this wouldn't hurt, and might even help. Kayden beat me to answering, shaking her head. "No honey, it means they don't know what's going to happen next."
I nodded, "We've still got a precog that might send us a warning, but yeah, that's the problem. We could take the S9, but now I don't know what's going to happen. Will the Fallen and the Teeth show up? Accord won't, probably, or maybe he will. Maybe some other group I've never heard of will decide this is a prime time to move in, I don't know."
"I, I could help," Dinah offered, and I winced. "Not a lot," she proposed. "Just a question or two a day."
"We'll see," I told her kindly, "But you're not to hurt yourself with your power, okay?" The young girl nodded, and I still felt like a monster for asking her to hurt herself to help me. I knew she'd do it even if I asked her not to, powers, especially Natural Triggers, pushed their Hosts to use them, but that didn't make me feel any better, so I turned back to the topic at hand. "Right, so, yeah. That happens, bad times all round, then there's a Broken Trigger, one of the bad ones, and that makes things even worse, and that's about it as far as we know. Coil tries to take over the city, installing a puppet Mayor with the help of the Travelers, but no city, no mayor," I shrugged weakly.
"Broken Trigger?" Dean asked. "What's that?"
"Someone's power doesn't align correctly. They're not really that common until after- until what'll happen in two years," I explained, "and there's an organization which helps take care of them before they get really bad, but for some reason they missed this one. Sometimes it means their power's just weaker than normal, sometimes their power's effects are erratic, sometimes it kills them because the necessary secondary powers aren't there, and sometimes, sometimes the power goes wrong. Echidna's the last one."
"Mother of monsters?" Taylor asked.
Herb nodded seriously, "Giant monster things instead of legs. Really bad."
"Twenty feet high, thirty feet across, looks a bit like Scylla, everything below her waist is monstrous," I agreed. "Any cape she touches, she knocks out and spawns a doppelganger of, in pretty much every sense of the word. One of yours controlled rats instead of insects," I told Taylor. "They're all insane, and. . . yeah. The parahumans with useful powers Echidna finds she pulls inside herself and. . . it's bad," I explained. "She used to be one of the Travelers, and they're trying to get her help, only they went to Coil, who has no intention of losing a potential asset or wasting resources in what he thinks is an impossible task, and they run out of time. If I knew where she was, I'd see if we could help unfuck her powers, and if not, I'd kill her. It'd be a mercy. After that Behemoth attacks India, dies, and then nothing really happened in the vision until two years later. And that. . . that's something will deal with later."
I looked around at everyone, all of them staring at me and Herb. "So, right, Slaughterhouse Nine. If they kept their roster from the vision, we can take them fairly easily. Siberian's tricky, but that's because her power's esoteric, and once you know her secret she's easy to get rid of. Panacea's a hard-counter for Bonesaw, Break for Crawler, literally half of you for Mannequin, myself for Shatterbird, Dean for Cherish, either Herb or I for Burnscar, I shot Oni Lee through his shard so Bonesaw can't combine him with Hatchetface to make. . . I forget its name, and Mouse Protector's in our medical Bay so Murder Rat isn't being made either," I rattled off. "What?"
"You know the Slaughterhouse Nine's current roster?" Dean asked carefully.
"In a timeline that's looking increasingly likely not to happen, yeah," I replied.
Vicky spoke up while Dean processed that statement, though why that confused him I wasn't sure. "What about Jack Slash?"
"Eh, so, either I could, or we just give the PRT a chance to actually be useful. His Trump/Thinker ability's a bitch to deal with and may or may not work on me," I hedged.
Dean stared at me, "His what."
"He can read the. . . not really minds, he can read people's powers to know what they're going to do. It's how he managed to keep that ever-revolving batch of murder-hobos cohesive. Some rando with a shotgun kills him in a year and a half-ish in the ruins of an Endbringer attack, but since they always send, or at least tell their plans to, heroes, he always knows they're coming," I explained.
"Any other bombs you want to drop?" laughed Herb, shaking his head.
I shot him an accusatory look. "It's no longer information that their actions will invalidate, and you agreed to tell them!" I pointed out. He just nodded in a 'you're right' way but didn't say anything. "Right, so, that's what would've happened, except now Brockton Bay isn't going to exist, so all of that goes right out the window. I've got all sorts of plans, contingency plans, tactics, and ideas that don't work anymore, because they all had 'Brockton Bay is a place that exists' as a key component, because I wasn't aware that was something that could change."
"So, you're saying you don't have any plans?" my teammate pressed.
"None right this moment, give me an hour or two to do some research and I'll get some basic ideas. Hell, I need to start looking over the fatalities to see who we could work with," I replied. "I've got some long-term stuff, but I know me, you, and the world too well to plan those in detail."
He grinned, "Good."
I stared at him. "Okay, either you're going to explain that, or my only response to that sort of ice cream koan, 'tis better to have no plan than a flawed one' bullshit will be to tell you to fuck right the hell off with that crap."
"I got a plan," he said placatingly, making 'settle down' gestures. "It's really simple. Makes sense you wouldn't see it, 'cause you like to overcomplicate things."
"I believe I like to make things clear, logical, and exactly as detailed as they're required," I shot back, a little defensively, "but go ahead and tell us what this 'simple yet effective' plan of yours is, oh great master of wisdom."
Herb grinned broadly, "We buy the city."
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- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/Him
It would still be evacuated, right?
- Location
- Somewhere in Space
True ,but hire Accord for city layout planning and abuse the heck out of powers and you could make a better designed and well functioning city. Heck, he has earth and tree manipulation so that's alot of help right there. It also probally will attract people when you point out that what are the odds of a Endbringer hitting the same place twice?
- Location
- Oregon, USA
Endbringers can hit the same place twice, they just don't twice in a row.
Plus, with the Simurgh showing up, certainties are going out the window.
Plus, with the Simurgh showing up, certainties are going out the window.
- Location
- Wonderland
Herb cuts the Gordian Knot.
- Status