Chapter 38 & 39: Storm Pt I & II
Tempestuous
Words are wind, so I write.
- Location
- CA
Chapter 38: Storm
No-one else bothered stopping by to chat with us. The 'current' ABB showed up with around 26:00 left on the clock, but Shinigami either had nothing to say to me or decided that socializing with me would send the wrong message. GUARD couldn't talk to me without breaking my cover. Lisa didn't show in either identity. New Wave showed up, Glory Girl in tow, and edged around me like I was radioactive.
The Triumvirate came separately. I shouldn't have been surprised; they were stationed all across the country, and had no reason to meet up ahead of the briefing. Legend was the first to arrive, having flown in from New York; his tight blue fire-and-lightning bodysuit was instantly recognizable, and a whisper swept through the crowd as he entered. Alexandria arrived second, her dark bodysuit and opaque-visored helmet similarly iconic, and drawing another murmur of respect, although without the warmth afforded the Protectorate's public face. Eidolon slipped in without any fanfare whatsoever, taking up a lonely position by the windows where he could stare out at the Bay. His green cloak and hood, lit from within with a soft glow, gave him a mysterious air that only intensified his brooding.
Emily was among the last to arrive, dressed in the same Magical Girl Contessa outfit and carrying a freakish tinker-tech-looking gun that was larger than she was tall. It looked like the weapon you'd saw the barrel off of to make an Opticor, and given that I knew she already had one of those, that was goddamn terrifying. Her appearance caused a minor commotion among the Triumvirate, who kept shooting glances at her between whatever conversation they were currently having.
The clock skipped a few times, as new estimates came in and shortened the countdown. When the clock jumped from nearly a quarter hour down to 9:51, Legend stepped up onto the stage. The various conversations going on quieted at once.
"We owe thanks to Dragon and Armsmaster for the early warning," he said, his voice easily filling the room without any sign of audio equipment. "Thanks to their efforts, we have had time to gather, instead of being forced to join the battle as we arrive. With that advantage, some luck, and the dedication of everyone assembled here, I hope that today will be one of the good days." He paused. "However, I feel I owe you the full truth. Even if this is one of the 'good days', as many as one in four of you may be dead by the time the battle is over.
"I do not say that to discourage you, but because each and every one of you deserves to know exactly how dangerous the coming fight is. I've seen too many capes, heroes and villains both, die before their time because they did not realize the danger they were facing. Leviathan is often thought of as the 'middle' Endbringer: the second to arrive, between the other two in size, without the pure, targeted killing power of Behemoth or the insidious mind-altering effects of the Simurgh. However, he is not merely an average of the other two; Leviathan is the mover of the trio. I cannot understate the speeds he can achieve."
Legend let his words sink in for a moment before he continued, "Of course, he also has his theme: water. If you have not seen Leviathan before, he has an afterimage, a 'water echo', that follows his movements. The water is not bound to him, allowing him to increase the range of his attacks by flinging it out like a whip. At the speed he moves, being hit by water is like being smashed against concrete. He is also a hydrokinetic and weather manipulator; the storm is his doing. His hydrokinesis is stronger on larger bodies of water; it can foul your footing in close combat, but the larger threat is on a more massive scale."
He moved on to describing previous fights, where a conservative defense resulted in total destruction as Leviathan's tidal-wave attacks grew in power. A real-life enrage timer. I was having trouble paying attention, distracted by the clock continuing to skip down in fives and tens, sometimes more. 8:47. 8:12. 7:51. Legend gestured to the television screens, and a cross section of the Bay appeared, showing the aquifer. When the screen returned to the countdowns less than a minute later, they showed 5:09. Come on. We needed to move!
I snapped back to the present when Kid Win shoved an armband into my hand. "You are doing a great thing. The greatest thing." Oh, good, Legend was wrapping up. "This is why we are tolerated, heroes and villains both; why society allows us to walk their streets and fight in their cities. Because at times like this, we are needed. With luck, we can stop this disaster. Your deeds, and your sacrifices—should the worst come to pass—will be remembered."
Legend stepped away from the front of the stage, and Armsmaster immediately replaced him. "The Wards are handing out armbands of Dragon's design," he said, his voice booming out over the speakers at the corner of the stage. "Slip them over your hand and tighten them around your wrist. The front has a screen that will display critical updates, such as the location of the Endbringer, or the time to the next wave.
"There are two buttons: the one on the left is for communication. It will not directly transmit unless you are a member of the Protectorate or a recognized veteran of Endbringer fights. Dragon has a program screening communications for unnecessary chatter that could prove fatally distracting, prioritizing and passing on critical information as quickly as possible. The program does introduce a delay, so if you must transmit urgently time-critical information, speak the words 'hard override' before your message. Anyone who abuses this feature will be barred from sending further messages."
"The other button is an emergency ping, to request aid directly to your location. If you need assistance, but it is not an emergency, such as needing a flier to move you to a better position or a brute to help dig someone out of rubble, press both buttons and state your request as plainly as possible. Dragon will dispatch help as soon as possible. The armband will automatically measure your condition and send a ping if it detects injury." He stepped back. I slipped the band onto my wrist and whispered my name when prompted. The armband flashed 'FLEX' Y/N, forcing me to do it again, louder.
"Everyone!" Legend yelled. "If you have faced an Endbringer before, stand!" There were no surprises among those standing. Lung, most of the Protectorate, GUARD. The Travelers, who drew Armsmaster's eye. "If you do not know what to do, follow the Protectorate first; they have trained for this. Follow those you see standing now second; they have been in this situation before, and lived to tell the tale.
"We will be splitting you into groups based on your abilities. If you can take a hit from Leviathan or produce expendable combatants, you're needed on the front line. Go to Alexandria." He pointed at the left corner of the stage, where Alexandria was standing. I nodded to Stalker and Skitter before standing up and moving towards her. "If you are a hand-to-hand combatant, but are not confident in your ability to take a hit, go to Armsmaster. If you…"
I tuned him out, because Alexandria was already speaking to the capes gathering in front of her. "If you can survive a hit, but expect to be injured or need time to recover afterward, step to the left." She raised her right arm to indicate that she meant our left. "If you are tough enough to take repeated hits without fear, step to the right. Masters, sort yourself by how quickly you can replace your minions."
I stepped to the right, alongside Lung, who gave me another glare when he noticed I'd joined his group. Glory Girl looked like she was about to step left, but stepped right after seeing me do so. Her funeral. Assault, Parian, and Krieg were in the other group. A glance at the screens showed that we had barely two minutes remaining. "Excellent," she said as the last capes to arrive sorted themselves. "Those in the right group will be the main line. Those in the left group, aid them as much as you can, but do not throw your own lives away. Who here has a mover ability that will allow them to pursue Leviathan?" I raised my hand. "Who here can move others? About half? Good. When Leviathan moves, grab the closest non-mover cape and assist them in pursuit."
A buzzer sounded as the timer dropped below two minutes. "We're the front line, and that means we go first." She pointed to an emergency fire exit that had been incongruously propped open in the pouring rain, and we filed out.
After nearly a half hour spent indoors, the rain hit me like a physical blow. It was pouring, a continuous deluge that felt more like a hose than weather. Even with all the time I'd spent working on my phobia, I could still feel my heartbeat quicken as we waded through water that was already up to our ankles on the sidewalk. The Alexandria packages took to the air, while the rest of us simply made due. A glance over my shoulder showed more capes exiting through the door; the shakers, I thought, since they were heading directly for the Bay.
"You're not going to be idle here!" someone said to me, yelling over the storm. I looked over and was shocked to see it was Krieg. His voice was unrecognizable without the accent; with his identity exposed, he didn't have any reason to bother. "If you wanted a challenge, there's nothing harder than this!"
"No shit!" I yelled back. "What is your power, anyway?"
"Force manipulation! I can deflect or slow incoming hits! It doesn't deplete, but I don't know if it will be enough to prevent injury, or even enough to keep me alive!"
That surprised me. "You don't know?"
"No! But I'm no use anywhere else, so I came here!"
Damn it, I really didn't want to start respecting avowed Nazis. "You could have gone with Search and Rescue!"
"I would be expected to rescue–"—the following list of slurs put to rest the smidgen of grudging respect with prejudice, unintentionally solving my conundrum. I pushed forward through the crowd to leave him in the proverbial dust as I mentally kicked myself for giving a fucking Nazi even that much credit.
Our armbands buzzed, a mechanical female voice calling out the words displayed on the screen: 30 SECONDS.
"Fliers!" Alexandria yelled. The capes in the air tensed, and I braced myself like a runner, ready for takeoff. "Get ready!" The cape next to me cracked his knuckles.
Alexandria thrust her arm forward towards something I couldn't see. "…there! GO!"
We went.
———X==X==X———
Leviathan breached the surface of the bay like a whale, flying up and over the hastily-erected forcefields. It might have been a good thing that I got my first look at him after I'd launched myself forward with the rest of the fliers; I might have hesitated otherwise.
I'd known what he looked like. Max had displayed a photo from his attack on Seattle during the planning, which someone had printed out and taped over the dart-board in the games room as a joke. Maybe it was the disconnect between that joke and the reality of the situation that made the real thing so terrifying. Something about him made our bravado look like idiocy.
He was easily thirty feet tall, even in the hunched posture that accentuated his freakish, disproportionately top-heavy appearance. His limbs tapered quickly, his forearms and calves looking too thin to belong to a creature that bulky; his arms ended in massive clawed hands, and his legs bent backwards like a bird's. His head was vaguely humanoid, but lacked a nose, mouth, or ears; the only features were four menacingly glowing eyes, three on the left, one on the right, yellow orbs set in cracks in his thick green hide. He had his tail stretched out behind him for balance, and he trailed a veritable sea of water behind him like a comet.
We managed to intercept him in midair, his leap carrying him straight into the cloud of flying bricks. Half of us died on impact.
That was probably an exaggeration, but I could clearly see the two capes ahead of me turn into bloody streaks with a single wave of his claw. I hit him next, drawing every bit of energy I could through the bracers that were still on my wrists and slamming them into his chest. Two lightning bolts shot down from the storm clouds overhead as I struck. Leviathan's only reaction was to backhand me through an office building and into the one behind it. I picked myself from among shattered glass and office furniture, uncomfortably reminiscent of my second round against the Teeth, and launched myself back out the hole I'd made in the building.
Leviathan was still where he'd first made landfall, hemmed in by a mishmash of forcefields and metal blades. As I fell back into the fray, I saw Alexandria hit Leviathan hard enough to drive him onto all fours. I used the opportunity to angle towards his right leg, grabbing him by the ankle and raising my mass as high as I could, then upped it more, straining to be as heavy as possible.
Shockingly, I could feel him with my power, although the information I was getting was confused in the extreme. Actually trying to manipulate his physics was like trying to work tiny, stuck knobs with greasy fingers, so I settled for simply holding on, hoping the weight would interfere with his movements.
He ignored me, continuing to fight with the handicap of a ten ton ball and chain around his foot. The motion was enough to make me feel slightly unwell, and I wasn't even sure I was slowing him down. Time to test my theory. I used Clockblocker's power, and flinched at the spike of blinding pain that drove through my skull. I took one hand off to reflexively grab my head, and Leviathan immediately kicked out, dislodging me and sending me flying into another building. At least this time I had the sense to lower my mass so I'd bounce off it, rather than going through it; if I'd left my mass at maximum, I'd probably have over-penetrated the city.
I stood up slowly, the pain already fading into memory, and found that Clockblocker's power was gone. Whatever 'downgrade' the power had gotten had let Leviathan simply no-sell it, and the attempt had 'used up' the borrowed power entirely. I stood up and staggered slightly at the wave of tiredness that passed over me, breathing heavily. Turning my mass up that high had taken a lot out of me.
My armband buzzed again. FIRING. I had a moment to wonder what that meant before a massive barrage of lasers slammed home, managing to knock Leviathan back farther than even Alexandria had. The attack didn't stop; different capes had different rates of fire, so the continued bombardment staggered itself naturally into an unrelenting stream of fire.
Then GUARD cut loose; I could tell, because Leviathan's motions changed completely. He went from shrugging off the hail of powers to dodging and weaving like a speedster. It didn't help much. Dozens of craters appeared in his flesh in an instant—I caught a brief flash of Homura dual-wielding pistols as she dropped out of time-stop for a moment, before even more craters appeared. Another brief flash had her pull out that massive sword I'd seen months ago, and then something hit the water next to me in a spray of red.
"Emily!" I yelled, forgetting myself completely as my sister's upper body landed at my feet, missing everything below the waist.
"I'm fine," she said calmly. "Wasn't expecting that. I'll be back in a moment." She disappeared.
Meanwhile, Leviathan had had enough and broke containment, smashing aside the barriers and running deeper into the city. I stopped to grab the nearest brute, a guy in red and gold spandex with a fist centered on his chest, then flew off after him. Finding him again was as simple as following the beam spam; he'd broken light of sight for the grounded capes, but the flying artillery hadn't missed a beat. On the way, I keyed the non-emergency line and asked, "Did weighing him down have any effect?" It wasn't like I lost anything for trying if the spam filter caught it. It only took a couple of seconds before I got a response in the affirmative. Okay, then.
Leviathan wasn't standing still, this time. The barrier capes hadn't managed to catch up yet, and he wasn't giving them a chance, running an odd sort of fighting retreat deeper into the city. No, not a retreat… he's kiting us! The bastard was in no rush to kill capes; that was Behemoth's job. He was here for the city. Not that he wasn't killing as many people as he could, obviously, but he knew what his objective was. The only good news was that stopping to squish the occasional unlucky cape underfoot let the faster bricks like me catch up.
I set my passenger down and went for his arms, this time. The first attempt got me backhanded nearly out of the city; the second time, I came in from a lower angle and managed to get a hold on his wrist. The effect was a lot more noticeable now that I was interfering with his attacks, to the point that within a few seconds, he started trying to remove me with his other claw. He smashed me flat twice before realizing that that wouldn't work, then tried scraping me off. When that failed, he used me to block a ranged attack that managed to blast me off and hurt like a motherfucker. I had no idea who'd fired that, but that stung.
The distraction had accomplished the goal, though: the barriers were up, containing him in the street between two intersections. The ranged fire picked up as more and more blasters got back into range; Leviathan was starting to show wear already, his hide pitted and leaking ichor. I shook off the lingering vertigo of having been thrown clear of the Endbringer again, and rushed back into melee range.
Maybe I was flattering myself, but I think I had at least annoyed him, because he went out of his way to prevent me from getting a grip a third time. I flew back in for his ankles again, and he kicked out, sending a rush of water at me that hit me like a boulder and tossed me against the side of a building, which took me out of the fight for about ten seconds. Leviathan tossed another wave of water at me with his tail, and I met it with lightning, pouring thousands of volts/amps/joules/whatever out of my bracers. The water flashed to steam, forcing a nearby flier to retreat or risk being scalded, but it let me grab hold of his tail as it finished the attack meant to bat me away.
He dipped me in the water, which only made me squeeze harder, then made the mistake of slamming me into the top of a nearby building. I took the opportunity to adhere myself to the massive steel structure while increasing the toughness for as much of the building as I could reach, locking him in place. The bombardment redoubled, blasters firing as quickly as they could now that he was anchored. Leviathan continued fighting, even hampered by the fact that his tail had become a leash. I saw a flash of reality-distorting light—a beam of pure white that warped vision around it like a lens—and my struggle to hold firm suddenly stopped; Leviathan had ripped the tip of his tail off rather than take a hit from whatever that was.
I released my power and set the wall I'd been stuck to as ground, since the actual street had more than a couple feet of water in it. It took me a moment to realize I was still holding a massive chunk of Endbringer: about three feet of tail, the end ragged like a torn page. It was just as impossible to change as it had been when it was still attached, so I tossed it aside and pulled a hip flask out of my pocket, drinking down about one dose of the stamina potions I'd poured in. I'd learned from my mistake against the Teeth; I wasn't going to be caught defenseless again. It still tasted terrible, and I was sure I was making quite the face as I capped the flask and returned it to my pocket.
While the potion went to work, I took a moment to survey the damage that weird attack had done to what it actually hit, and saw a dinner-plate-sized hole punched cleanly through the side of the building I was standing on. And I mean cleanly, the exposed steel and glass glimmering with razor sharpness like a portal cut, all the way through the building, and the building behind it. I had no idea how far the hole went.
With my curiosity satisfied and my energy restored, I ran 'up' the building and jumped back into action. Leviathan didn't even let me get close, grabbing another cape off a nearby rooftop and throwing her at me hard enough that the impact would have killed us both if not for my power. As it was, the force carried the two of us half a block before I managed to control our fall. "Oh god!" she screamed. "I'm dead. I'm dead!"
"You're okay!" I yelled as I set us down on the closest rooftop. "You're fine. I got you."
She blinked in confusion. "I'm okay," she repeated. "Holy shit. He grabbed me. How am I still alive?"
"Luck," I said simply. Our armbands buzzed, the synthesized voice yelling at maximum volume: ALL MELEE DISENGAGE. I had a moment to wonder why, given the firepower they'd been pouring into Leviathan with us in melee, and then the Endbringer exploded.
I lost sight of Leviathan in the rapidly expanding cloud of crystal dust and vaporized ichor, but I could tell he was still moving when something slammed into the barriers keeping him pinned in the street. When they held against his first breakout attempt, he went up, a blast of water lifting him skyward like a bottle rocket and dispelling the cloud. He'd been eroded, losing several inches of his outer layers to reveal darker, more corded 'musculature' beneath, dripping with thick, slimy ichor. Despite the massive damage that attack had done, I couldn't help but feel that he looked healthier now that all the previous damage had been blasted away.
Leviathan angled towards the top of the nearby buildings, kicked off a couple as he weaved between lasers, and then disappeared into the rain too fast for even the blasters to track. The battle paused for a moment as everyone attempted to figure out where he'd gone. I pulled out my map, and scowled when I saw that it had marked the entire city as the 'quest area'. Because that would be too easy. I turned back to the cape I'd collided with, a woman in a purple jumpsuit and a reflective visor. "Do you need evac?" I asked.
"No. Don't worry about me." She pressed the buttons on her armband. "I lost my weapon. I need a replacement. And more ammo."
"Good luck," I said, not really caring if she heard me, and took off again in search of the Endbringer.
I was momentarily confused by flashes of light from various directions before I realized that I'd been chasing lightning strikes. At this distance, I couldn't tell the blasters from natural lighting, and there was a lot of the latter to go around. It was really storming. Really storming storming! Holy shit, I was functionally lashing myself sideways through a natural-disaster-thunderstorm and I really wished I had time to nerd out about that. I really needed a shardblade, and not just because it would be sharp enough to tell Endbringer physics to go fuck itself. But mostly because it would be sharp enough to tell Endbringer physics to go fuck itself.
My armband pinged with an updated location, and I shook my head as I adjusted my flight, pushing the thoughts aside. I couldn't let myself get distracted.
Leviathan was back to his running battle strategy, moving quickly enough that he only had to fight the faster capes. I was just catching up when I was suddenly and disorientingly elsewhere, directly beneath Leviathan's foot. He smashed me flat into the pavement, only to for me to pop back up again like a jack-in-the-box once he'd moved, confused and more than a little annoyed. After it happened twice more, I was angry. "TRICKSTER!"
"You're helping!" He yelled from aboard a flying chunk of concrete, pointing to an equally disoriented cape in my last position, who was currently patting himself down as if to reassure himself that all his bits were attached. I jumped up and landed on the platform, intending to tell him exactly how little I appreciated being used as a ninja log, only to be swapped again, this time into mid-air in front of Leviathan. That hit sent me flying away into the side of another building.
"Damn it!" I yelled as I dug myself out of the shallow crater I'd left, lashing myself back towards Trickster. Weirdly, referring to it as 'lashing' in my own head made it… not easier in an effort sense, but faster, more instinctive. Like it was suddenly a single, simple action, 'fall that way', rather than 'grab and rotate a vector in 3-space to a new alignment.' I'd chalk it up to weird parahuman bullshit and heuristic shortcuts.
I swore to god I was going to give Trickster a piece of my mind, but when I saw the kid hugging the flying platform where I'd last been, whimpering at his near brush with death, I gave up complaining and let myself become a human pinball. I was just recovering from three rapid teleports in as many seconds when a roar cut through the storm.
Lung had entered the fray.
———X==X==X———
I wasn't sure what he'd been doing up until now, but he was twenty feet tall and growing fast, covered in silver scales and wreathed in flames. Leviathan met him head on, bodychecking him backwards. Lung used the opportunity to grab hold, pulling the Endbringer down with him. Steam obscured both of them for a moment; when it cleared, they were locked hand-to-claw, straining against each other, feet churning up the street. Leviathan was still stronger, forcing Lung back with every step, his tail sending whips of water flying at the capes who were taking the opportunity to unload into his back. His 'muscles' were showing cracks, now, exposing the next layer down. It was still too little. I kept expecting another of those eye-bending spears of light to hit him, but the cape had stopped firing. I assume they were simply wary of hitting Lung.
Alexandria dropped from the sky like a hammer, the force of her blow to Leviathan's head visible as a shockwave through the pounding rain. Stop staring, idiot! I ran forward, heading for Leviathan's ankles again. All I got for my trouble was another kick to my face, sending me bouncing away down the street. I groaned as I sat up and chugged a second stamina potion, shaking off the lightheadedness that signaled that I really shouldn't drink any more. Damn it! I could take hits, but Leviathan had enough power that I couldn't stop him from launching me away with every strike. The best I'd managed to do was tear off a couple feet of tail, and that had cost me enough that repeating the performance would leave me too tired to continue fighting unless I risked a bad reaction from another potion. I ran forward, and got kicked again.
But in the moment Leviathan's foot was off the ground, Lung pushed him back a few inches.
I went high, this time, trying to find an opening, a way to be more than just a momentary distraction, to create an opening for… I wasn't sure. For something. I got above the two titans and dropped, turning my gravity and inertia as high as they would go. Leviathan was too large a target to miss; I hit him just behind the hump his hunch formed on his back. Alexandria landing another hammer blow at the same time and he went down. I was swept away in the torrent the water echo of the motion created, tossed even farther by the shockwave of Alexandria's hit, but I kept my head enough to lash myself upwards and hover for a moment to try and gauge my next shot.
Lung was taking the opportunity to savage the Endbringer, holding him down and raking him with his claws. He'd grown to match Leviathan's size already; if he kept growing, he might actually be able to pin the Endbringer down. Looking at them now, with Lung on top and Leviathan beneath him, suffering massive gashes with each pass of Lung's claws, one could be forgiven for thinking Lung was the Endbringer, and Leviathan a mere changer struggling against the tide. So Leviathan decided to cheat.
The street erupted in water, blasting apart the concrete and asphalt as hundreds of tons of water surged upwards. Half a dozen capes who'd been nipping at Leviathan's ankles disappeared in a flash. Lung stumbled as his footing disintegrated, and Leviathan threw him off. He wasn't moving like the dumb brute he'd started the fight as; Leviathan spun, delivering a roundhouse kick to Lung's midsection, using Lung as a springboard to keep spinning as his tail whipped towards Lung's neck for a killing blow. Lung was still staggering from the mountain-breaking force of the blow to his gut; he couldn't get far enough to avoid the full length of the tail.
He was barely able to get far enough to avoid the shortened length, the cracked nub barely nicking Lung's throat. The water echo turned to steam harmlessly.
Lung fell backwards into the sinkhole that had swallowed half a dozen city blocks in an instant. His claws were clutching his neck, his entire body shrinking as his power diverted strength to healing the wound. The bleeding slowed, and then stopped. Lung roared in frustration as he began to rise back to his feet.
Hahahaha holy shit, Lung owes me his life.
My giddiness was short-lived, because Leviathan was moving back towards us, leaving Lung in the crater he'd made. I dropped down to the street and blocked a claw swipe that nearly killed a couple of ground-bound blasters. The force of the impact shoved me two feet deep into the facade of a building; by the time I'd dug myself out, Leviathan was already a hundred feet away. I was preparing to give chase when the armbands buzzed at maximum urgency:
BARRIER DOWN
WAVE INBOUND 30 SEC.
"Fuck!" one of the capes I'd just saved yelled. "We need to get to high ground!"
"Get on then, idiot!" Rune yelled back, dropping three large chunks of broken building into the street. Capes began scrambling on, the pursuit forgotten.
"I can take people!" I called. "Grab my hands!" A tinker in badly battered armor and someone in a more artistically-tattered cloak and hood took my offer immediately. I flung us up onto the roof the tallest building around, some twenty stories up, then went back down and grabbed another two, and then another. Rune dropped her passengers off on the same building before going back for a second trip, apparently trusting my judgment. Between us, we managed to get every cape in line of sight onto the roof with seconds to spare. I could see it, even through the rain; a vague, shapeless darkness that seemed to swell out of nothing as it rushed forward into the city.
God, I hope I picked a structurally sound building.
WAVE IMMINENT
I felt rather than saw buildings go down closer to the shore, and then it hit. The sound was indescribable, shaking the building we were on to the core, thrumming in my head. It just kept coming, more and more and more. The building swayed alarmingly, and several capes grabbed each other in fear. The two closest to me were lucky enough to grab me, which meant I'd actually be able to help them if the building fell; through my boots, I could feel it strain, and I grabbed as much of it as I could with my power, willing it to stand, knowing it wouldn't be enough. It swayed, sagging beneath our feet—and then broke. I could feel the moment it did, the tension and shear forces on the small fragment I was able to reach vanishing as the top floors snapped off. The building lurched, causing many of the capes to yell in alarm, and then held steady, slowly sinking into the rushing water.
I looked about in confusion and saw Rune, kneeling on the roof, straining as hard as she could to keep us out of the floor. I immediately reversed the weight of as much of the building as I could grab, running across the roof to reach more of the building, and she gasped as the weight of the building was cut in half. The roof stabilized, then began to rise, the strain now manageable.
The wave finally stopped coming, leaving us on an island only a few feet above water. Then it reversed, rushing back into the Bay. If the wave's arrival was a roar, its departure was a growl, a low and constant sucking. Our platform rocked, its bottom half still caught in the rushing tide, but we remained safe, for now.
The first thing I looked for once the water had retreated was Lung, and I found nothing. No way! He survives a wrestling match only to die to a damned wave? If he was alive, he'd been swept away with everything else. The building we'd been standing on was gone, as were the two to either side of it. The streets were clogged, mangled cars and traffic lights lying in piles where the water had converged during its retreat. I stared, transfixed. The damage I'd seen before had been nothing. This was why Leviathan was known as the city-killer.
I was shocked out of my stupor by our arm-bands buzzing with a new message: NEXT WAVE 9:40. Damn it! The waves were supposed to grow in strength over time. I didn't want to see what happened when the next one hit.
Rune slowly and carefully lowered the massive building chunk to the ground, with what little help I could offer, and the capes we'd saved began hopping off the moment they'd survive the fall. More capes landed around us, fliers who'd opted to keep hold of whoever they'd managed to grab instead of setting them down on a rooftop. Given how well the buildings had held, I had to admit that they'd had the right idea.
The capes who'd had to deal with the building had gravitated towards Rune, who had collapsed in the middle of the street. Several of them offered thanks, which Rune was either too tired or too stubborn to acknowledge.
"You need evac?" a woman asked. One of the fliers, blue and gold.
"…yeah," Rune muttered. The woman scooped her up in a bridal carry and flew off.
I followed suit, 'falling' upwards until I was about even with the floating bricks and then killing my momentum and leaving my gravity at about one percent. The result let me suspend myself in the loose cloud of flying bricks and aerial artillery, allowing me to see what they were looking at, which was fuck-all. We hadn't even been able to tell what direction he'd taken off in, since he'd juked at least twice on his way out.
Finally, our armbands buzzed with a message: LEVIATHAN CE-7. We took off, each accelerating as hard as we could towards the indicated area. It was easy to tell where we were going; the capes who'd been left behind during the initial pursuit had ended up in the Endbringer's way as he doubled back towards the coast, and the blasters' fire was lighting up the night. Fenja and Menja, the Nazi Valkyrie Giantesses, were tag-teaming the Endbringer while Kaiser attempted to foul his movements.
I pulled myself to a stop, hanging weightlessly while I tried to pick my angle. What do I have to work with? I was tough, but Alexandria was clearly a heavier hitter, and she'd been fighting this bastard for years. My copied powers weren't enough to deal with Endbringer Bullshit. I could keep people alive, but that wouldn't save the city…
I could keep people alive.
I pushed both buttons for the 'request assistance' function and yelled, "Get me Clockblocker!" over the wind and rain. The battle continued while I watched and waited. Leviathan was boxed in between the two Valkyries, flying blasters buzzing around the three massive fighters like pixies. He was noticeably worse for wear, now. There were holes in his flesh large enough to see through; as I watched, another of those freakish space-warping beams struck him dead center and carved away enough flesh to make out a rib-like structure beneath the pseudo-muscle 'flesh'.
Finally, the armband pinged with a direction, and I flew off.
The Brockton Bay Wards had stuck together through the chaos… mostly. I saw Kid Win first, since he was in the air; the tinker had deployed a massive cannon on his hoverboard and was contributing to the frankly ridiculous amount of firepower flying towards the Endbringer. Browbeat, Clockblocker, Gallant, and Vista were below them; their contribution was less obvious, but I assumed Vista was part of the reason Leviathan wasn't kiting anymore.
I dropped straight past the fliers and landed with a splash in water that came up to my knees. "Clockblocker!" I yelled.
"What now?" he yelled back. "Did my power not work?"
"The copy wasn't good enough! You'll need to do it yourself!"
"No fucking way!"
"Are you crazy?" Vista asked.
"Let her talk!" Gallant yelled. He turned to me and asked, "You've got a striker effect that can protect someone, right?"
"Exactly! As long as I'm touching someone, they have the same defense I do!"
"How do you even know it'll work?" Clockblocker asked. "If your version failed, what makes you think I'd do better?"
Because you managed to do it in another timeline. "It's worth a shot, right?" I asked, holding my hand out. "This is as safe as you'll ever get in an Endbringer fight, dude."
I couldn't see Clockblocker's face behind his mask, but I'd bet he was scowling. He looked over at Gallant.
"It's your call," Gallant said.
"Kid!" Vista yelled, looking up at the tinker above us. I had just enough time to spot the falling form of Kid Win before he made a crater in the street—or a gentle splash, as it turned out. Vista had already sprung into action and shortened his fall into only a few feet. Not that he was in great shape; he was unconscious, his armor badly dented from whatever had hit him. Vista immediately reached over and hit the 'emergency evac' button on his wristband.
No sooner had that crisis passed than a massive crash from the street in front of us triggered a wave through the knee-deep water that caused us to stumble. Leviathan had KO-ed one of the Valkyries hard enough that she caused a localized earthquake when she hit the floor. He immediately took advantage of the gap to break the encirclement. The giantess vanished as he ran by… no, he'd killed her on the way, and her power-granted size had faded immediately. There was another titanic crash, and Leviathan doubled back, coming right for us.
"Vista!" Gallant yelled.
The world in front of us bent and twisted, the buildings on either side leaning over into and through one another like an Escher painting come to life. The street itself dilated like a dolly zoom, but Leviathan was faster; he was a thousand feet away, then eight hundred the next heartbeat, then five hundred, and then the buildings less than twenty feet away gave up and collapsed, burying the Endbringer in hundreds of tons of rubble.
Holy shit!
It stopped Leviathan for about five seconds. He burst out of the mess explosively, forcing me to deflect the rubble that came our way as best I could. It wouldn't matter, though, because he'd grabbed the top of the building next to us. Time seemed to stop as he hung overhead, water echo pouring off his form, and then his massive clawed feet were heading right towards us behind the deluge. We were too spread out for me to save everyone; I dove for Kid Win without thinking about it, my instincts defaulting to protecting the wounded. Vista was still standing over him, so I ended up tackling her, too, grabbing them both and hoping that my power was as good as I thought.
There was a muted thump, and then nothing happened.
I glanced up in surprise to see that Clockblocker had frozen the pouring water, forming an impromptu shield overhead. The noise was Leviathan bouncing off.
"Clock!" Browbeat yelled. "Are you all right?"
"Yeah?" Clockblocker yelled back, sounding surprised. "Yeah, I'm fine! A little stuck, though!" His hand was entirely encased in the paused water.
"I think I can help," I said as I stood up. I took a moment to pull Vista to her feet and haul Kid Win onto my back before heading over. Sure enough, I was able to render Clockblocker's hand flexible enough to pop it right out of the mold he'd cast… sort of. He'd frozen the water soaking his costume as well, so his glove was still stuck.
"Thanks," he said as he wiggled his bare fingers experimentally.
"Fuck." Gallant wheezed. I turned to see him lying half in the water, curled double around his crumpled armor. "Fuck. Ah, fuck, this hurts."
"What happened?" Browbeat asked as he hurried over.
"Goddamn piece of debris clipped me," he said. "Broke my arm. Maybe my ribs, too."
I raised a hand to my goggles and activated the 'medical diagnosis' mode, then growled in frustration when the scanner didn't work through his armor.
Browbeat took Kid Win off my hands. "We need to get the wounded out of here," he said. "Clock, you coming or going?"
Clockblocker glanced between me and Gallant for a few seconds.
I wasn't going to drag him away from his team like this. "Look after your friends, man."
"Thanks," he said. "Uh, good luck, I guess."
"You too."
I watched the Wards go, seeming to warp away with the help of Vista's power. The shield of water meant I had to walk a few feet before I took off, heading up over the buildings and hanging weightless again while I waited for the armband to call out a new location.
Dozens of other fliers hovered alongside me as the seconds ticking by. I was about to ask the nearest flier what was going on when Alexandria preempted me, her voice effortlessly cutting through the storm. "The weather's taken out most of the drones Dragon was using to keep track of Leviathan. Fliers, spread out over the city and find him!"
I stopped to watch where the others headed, planning to fill in any gaps I noticed, then went sideways in a flash of white and gold. Fucking Glory Girl had hit me on her way by, and my method of flight meant I was now cartwheeling through the air in microgravity. Judging by the brief flashes of horizon I got as I spun, I'd been knocked upwards and further into the city.
I was spinning too quickly and erratically to figure out a clever way to stabilize my flight, and the wind meant lowering my mass to airbrake just made things worse. I killed my gravity manipulation and dropped into frigid, churning water far deeper than I expected.
———X==X==X———
Chapter 39: Storm Pt II
Months of practice in a swimming pool were completely and totally insufficient to prepare me for being dropped into frigid, churning water. I slammed through the surface into a confusing mess of currents buffeting me this way and that, tumbling me round and round like a washing machine.
Bits and pieces of the school were floating past me, lockers and doors and other bits and bobs appearing for a split second before being smashed to pieces as the floodwaters raced onwards.
Things slammed into me, trying to smash me to pieces.
I didn't understand.
I couldn't understand.
This was a nightmare. If the dam had really burst, I was dead.
My friends were dead.
My town was dead.
I bobbed to the surface, gasping for air, only to find that I was still underwater.
I couldn't tell which way was up; I kicked and thrashed, but it was pure luck that brought me to the surface.
The fake surface.
I was still underwater!
I hit something, or something hit me, forcing more precious air out of my lungs.
The mud and sediment kicked up by the flood reduced visibility to nothing, the water nothing but blackness.
I shouldn't even be able to open my eyes, really, but for some reason it didn't sting.
My lungs were burning.
The currents brought me up to the surface, but I was still underwater.
I didn't know where the surface was.
Something hit me again, spinning me around.
There was no light to swim towards, nothing to tell up from down.
I was still spinning, things slamming into me and knocking me every which way.
Up. I needed to go up.
I hit the surface, then I was back underwater.
Which way was up?
Why couldn't I breathe?
I hit the surface and was still underwater.
What was going on?
Why was it so dark?
It hadn't been this dark when I'd triggered.
I'd triggered.
I had powers.
I wasn't in the fucking flood, I was in the ocean!
I lowered my mass and weight as much as I could, counting on buoyancy to get me to the surface, and hit something.
I was trapped under something!
I released the change to my mass, let myself get carried away, then tried again.
Trapped.
What was going on?
Again.
Trapped.
Where was I?
I. Needed. Air.
Why was it so dark?
I tried again, but couldn't manage to work my powers, and that was as good as a death sentence.
I can't believe this is how I die.
I'd managed to wrestle Leviathan and ripped off about three feet of his tail, only to be killed by my own incompetence and Glory Girl's fucking attitude.
The last thought I had before I lost consciousness was, Oh my god, I'm going to be stuck in Victoria's head for years!
———X==X==X———
I came to suddenly, coughing and hacking water out of my lungs. "Easy, now!" the cape standing over me yelled. "Calm down! Just breathe!"
I was… okay. I was okay.
I also needed to vomit. So I did.
"Wha—?" I kept hacking and coughing, my lungs still not used to the idea that air was a thing. "What?" I managed to ask.
"Breathe!" he repeated. "You're safe. You, uh, might have a broken rib or three, though! CPR's not pretty."
I laughed, which confirmed that I definitely had a broken rib. It didn't hurt as much as it should, though, and my lungs were already feeling much better. Now that I could actually breathe, I took a moment to actually observe my surroundings. I was in the middle of the street only a few hundred feet from the ocean, sitting in about a quarter inch of water, and my rescuer was none other than Aegis. "What happened?" I asked.
"You got swept down a storm drain! I had to wait and fish you out of the Bay!" His armband buzzed, and he frowned as he read whatever was on the screen. "Are you all right?"
"Been better. Nearly drowned. How are you?"
"Are you delirious?"
"Maybe." I was a little shy of lucid at the moment. "Does drowning do that? Or is that the PTSD?"
"Come on, get up." He grabbed my hands and hauled me to my feet. "If you can't fight, you need to evacuate."
"No. No, I can fight." I think. "I'll be okay," I insisted, trying to ignore his skepticism. "I just… I'm just disoriented." His armband was reciting an endless list of casualties. So many people. Down, down, deceased, down. I took a deep breath, wincing as my abdominal muscles tensed to bridge the gap in my ribcage. Wait a second… "Did you give me mouth to mouth?"
"You drowned!" Aegis said defensively.
I raised a hand. "No, I don't mind—actually, thank you, a lot. It's just that I think I copied your power during it."
"Oh." He laughed awkwardly.
"Do you know where Leviathan is?" I asked.
He pointed at the street next to us, where a massive rent had torn through the asphalt like clay. "He went through here only a minute ago. We don't have eyes on him, but we know where he was."
I had a trail to follow, at least. "Thanks for the save," I said. "I'll, uh, let you get back to work?"
"…right." He nodded and took off, probably in the direction of another injured cape. I started jogging in the opposite direction, since I wouldn't be able to see the tracks from the air. The water was less than an inch deep in the road, so following the tracks wasn't hard. I checked my armband as I went; there was no update on the Endbringer's position, but the next wave was in six minutes.
It had been less than three minutes away when I'd gone looking for Clockblocker; I must have fallen into the previous wave. Just my luck, really.
———X==X==X———
I heard the sounds of battle before I saw it, and instinct drove me to duck low and creep up to one of the piles of rubble that had accumulated wherever something got stuck. It was just as well that I did, because it means I didn't interrupt Armsmaster and Beacon's dance. They looked almost like mirrors of each other; the same super-heavy armor, the same halberds. They moved in perfect sync, keeping Leviathan between them, dodging strikes without needing to look. This must be Armsmaster's combat prediction program.
It was beautiful to watch. Where one advanced, the other retreated; when one dodged, the other struck. Each blow released a cloud of particulate as the nano-thorns on their halberds carved into the Endbringer's flesh; the cuts were shallow, but each strike bit deeper. They weren't striking randomly, either; they were focusing on one spot on his side, digging deeper and deeper.
Meanwhile, Leviathan was beginning to slow, favoring the injured side. He looked like a mostly-eaten corpse by this point, stringy muscles and sinews only partially attached to the underlying skeleton. He was showing—faking—pain and weakness, struggling more and more as the tinkers closed in for the kill… and then he moved, shooting forward towards Armsmaster, his weakness abandoned.
Armsmaster danced back, left, then right, then left again, the gap between life and death so fine that stray droplets of the water echo spattered on his helmet. Beacon nipped at his heels, punishing every strike with another hit to the wound he was no longer protecting. Baleful red light leaked out of the wound. The Core!?
Leviathan turned around to face Beacon and threw a claw out, prompting a wave of water to fly towards her. She went down on one knee and popped up a shield that absorbed the force without any sign of strain, while Armsmaster moved in for a shot at Leviathan's flank. The Endbringer spun back around to meet the attack, and Armsmaster stopped short and ducked before striking at the arm instead. He managed to hit Leviathan in the wrist, where only the 'bone' remained, and severed the claw outright.
Why wasn't Leviathan running? His feint had failed; at this rate, they were actually going to kill him. His core was exposed!
The answer seemed to be 'he wanted them dead', because he chose to cheat rather than run. He dove straight for Beacon; his water echo ignored his movements, heading for Armsmaster with far more water than it usually produced. The tinkers stumbled as their combat software gave them wrong answers, which was enough for the echo to wash Armsmaster away down the street and Leviathan to hit Beacon with his remaining claw. Her block kept her from dying instantly, but Leviathan wrapped his claw around her arms and pulled them off in a spray of blood.
Beacon didn't even flinch, immediately dodging away to create as much distance as possible, but without her arms for balance, it only took a moderate swell in the standing water to knock her over. Armsmaster let out a bellow of rage and fear, but he'd been swept too far away to intervene in time.
I started moving before I'd even considered a plan of action—not that I really needed one. All I needed to stop Leviathan from killing Beacon was physical contact. I lashed myself forward repeatedly, falling faster and faster towards her. He raised a foot to smash her flat, but I was already there, reaching out and—
Leviathan's knobby, skeletal tail slapped me away even as his foot came down. I spun end over end and came to rest upside down in the second floor of a water-damaged department store.
"No!" Armsmaster screamed, running back into melee with his halberd over his head—a suicidal charge if I'd ever seen one. I pulled myself out of the crater and lashed myself towards him. Leviathan spun to deal with me first, slapping Armsmaster aside with a contemptuous swing of his tail as he reached for me with claw and stump. I had zero interest in tangling with him alone; I dodged both hits, grabbed Armsmaster—who was still trying to fight despite barely being able to stand—and carried him away like a sack of potatoes over my shoulder.
"Put me down!" he yelled. "What are you doing?
"Saving your life!" I yelled, panting. The fact that we hadn't been caught yet was a pretty good indication that Leviathan wasn't chasing us, so I slid to a stop and set Armsmaster down, leaning him against the closest building. He was heavy.
He was heavy?
"Do you have some kind of anti-striker effect on your armor?" I asked.
"It's not an 'anti-striker effect'. The armor plates are quantum-anchored with a special matrix of exotic nanoparticles suspended in—"
"So you can't turn it off," I interrupted.
"…no."
I sighed and rolled my shoulders, feeling the strain of carrying a couple hundred kilos of power-armored tinker at a dead sprint. "How badly are you hurt?"
Armsmaster paused for a moment, his expression turning more and more unhappy as he—I presumed—read off a list of injuries from his heads-up display. "I will require medical attention," he admitted grudgingly.
That wasn't a surprise, given that he'd been hit by Leviathan. I could possibly fly him to the medical tents despite the annoying anti-striker effect, but it wouldn't be terribly safe. I'd have to support more than twice his nominal weight in flight, since I'd be pulled in the opposite direction, and I wouldn't be able to help him if anything went wrong. "Can you walk?"
"Yes." Armsmaster stood up, grimacing in pain as he put weight on his left foot. He leaned on his halberd heavily, teeth bared against whatever was wrong with his leg.
"Are you sure?" I asked.
"It's fine. My armor can compensate for broken bones."
"Oooor you could let me help you."
"I can wait here if I need to," he said. "It's not urgent."
"You called for evac, right?"
"I did." He moved his arm to display his arm-band, showing me the upside-down EMERGENCY AID REQUESTED message taking up most of the screen. "It might take a while. That last wave did a lot of damage."
"Are they going to get here before the next one?"
"Hopefully."
That wasn't a response that inspired much confidence. "We should get moving, then. If they don't get here in time, I'm going to have to fly you out."
"Doesn't that require your striker effect to work?" he asked.
"Yeah, it does, but I can carry you anyway."
"Is that safe?"
"It's safer than leaving you down here when a wave hits," I pointed out.
"I think I would rather walk."
I slung his arm over my shoulder to take the weight off his broken leg and started guiding him back towards Captain's Hill. The rain kept pouring, water running in rivulets down the streets and into the storm drains. I gave the nearest drain a suspicious look as we shambled past it. Not letting that happen again, that's for sure.
"I have an idea," I said about a hundred feet later. "Why not just use a piece of debris as a stretcher and fly you back that way?"
"That doesn't sound safe either," Armsmaster said.
I sighed. "I don't suppose you've had to give anyone the 'be willing to trust others' skills' speech lately?"
He stopped walking. "I received that one, actually," he said, softly enough that even with my head right next to his I could barely hear him over the rain. "Beacon gave me the ninth degree over not letting her join me in my plan to engage Leviathan."
Fuck. "I'm sorry," I said weakly. Erin would be back, after the jump, but that didn't mean anything to him. He'd never see her again.
Armsmaster began moving again, doggedly limping along. We turned a corner, and I had a bizarre moment of disconnect as we started down a familiar street. I'd walked through here only a month ago, with the spring sun shining bright overhead and cars moving past in ones and twos. Now, stormclouds completely blocked the evening sun, and the road was choked with debris. We were four or five blocks east of Curly's Gym… or what was left of it.
I hoped Curly made it to the shelters okay. I hoped Sophia and Taylor hadn't been injured.
Emma could go rot.
"Two minutes until the next wave," Armsmaster said.
"We might need to fly after all." I pointed to a wrecked truck. "Look, you strap yourself in, I use the car to cancel out your weight, and then I carry you back. Easy."
"Safe?" he asked.
"Safer than flying without it. I'll still have to deal with the inertia, but I won't be supporting your weight."
Armsmaster glanced down at his armband, the movement strangely reminiscent of someone checking a wristwatch. "Fine," he grumbled.
———X==X==X———
Only a couple minutes later, Armsmaster climbed out of the front half of the truck straight onto a proper stretcher. The paramedics whisked him away without another word.
The Protectorate had decided that when dealing with what was more or less a tsunami elemental, high ground was the order of the day; the triage center had been set up on Captain's Hill, the highest spot in the city with any amount of open ground. It would have given me a great view of the city, if I'd actually been able to see through the pouring rain.
The last wave had hit shortly after we'd touched down in the triage center's landing area. My arm-band had a counter for the next wave, so the battle hadn't ended yet. 5:33. They were getting faster. I rolled my shoulders again, loosening up after the strain of steering the large, weight-neutral mass across the city, and took off.
I hadn't had a chance to back off and grasp the scope of the fight while I'd been in melee. From the air, I could see a literal trail of destruction, even through the blinding rain. In places, it looked like a tornado had been through, a path carved straight through city blocks. And then I saw Leviathan himself.
He wasn't playing anymore. His water 'echo' had become a raging storm, a whirling tornado of water blades that tore apart everything in arms reach without him needing to lift a finger. Alexandria was still diving into melee range time and time again, but I doubted there were more than two or three other brutes who could stand up to that level of violence.
I flipped through vision modes until I found one that could see through the whirling water and immediately wished I hadn't. He was mostly skeletal, now, eye sockets empty but still glowing with a sinister green light. His claws were back on the amputated arm, longer and thinner than the other. The first thing that came to mind was an angel from Evangelion—alien and eldritch, central core glowing red where it was visible through the skeletal body.
I stopped short when I saw another lance of space-bending light shoot into the vortex, then headed over to see who was doing that. I shouldn't have been surprised to learn it was Emily, back in one piece and holding a massive tinkertech canon like a minigun, firing from the hip. Twin clouds of steam drifted up from the massive heat-sinks that jutted out to either side of the main body of the weapon, glowing orange as they dumped heat into the pouring rain. Emily blurred into a new position a few paces away, and another lance of weirdness shot out. "Damn it!" she cursed. "He shouldn't be able to dodge that!" She tried again, blurring to a new position on the roof across the street. I dropped down next to her before she could try again.
"What's our status?" I asked, yelling to be heard over the near-constant thundering of both parahuman powers and literal lightning.
"Not great!" she yelled back. "Even I can't land a proper hit on him!" She blurred in place, another blast from her cannon heading into the darkness. "Damn it! He's cheating with causality somehow! He's already moved when I release the timestop!"
"What about close range?"
"He can manipulate water I touch even while stopped!" she yelled. "That's how I got hit before! I can't get close!"
"The others?"
"The same! We might be able to save the city, but we can't get through his final defenses! We've already pulled out all the stops!"
"Why hasn't he run?" I asked. "There's barely anything left of him!"
"There was barely anything left of Behemoth in New Delhi! Whatever causes Endbringers to disengages, it's not just damage!" She opened a panel on her weapon and swapped out a component—probably a power pack or magazine—before punching the hatch closed and taking aim again.
I looked back at the living hurricane that was still smashing a path through the city. "Fuck."
She didn't respond, instead blurring to a new position a couple feet away and firing another shot mid-timestop. I didn't need to see anything but the look on her face to know she'd missed again.
What was I going to do?
I was nearly spent, again. I'd taken hit after hit and probably saved a dozen lives, but weathering those hits had a cost. I wasn't sure I could take much more.
As if in answer to my question, the arm-band buzzed: S&R: BRUTE NEEDED: CC-4. "I guess I'll get that, then," I said to no one as I pressed the communication button. "Flux responding to call for a brute." The screen changed to a map, and I set out.
Hopping roof to roof gave me a great view of exactly how much damage the waves had done, not that I needed it. The biggest indicator was how far I had to jump; in under a minute, I was leaping over areas where more than one in two buildings were missing. The wreckage lay in the street, a mishmash of broken buildings, cars, street lights, and other detritus. Whole city blocks were gone. I could feel my pulse quicken as I saw the damage. No. Stop. The city is still here. THE CITY IS STILL HERE. And it's going to STAY here.
I pulled my eyes away from the ruins, focusing on the directions on the wristband. My target turned out to be Kid Win, standing on his hoverboard, waving his hands for attention. His armor was just as battered as it had been when he'd fallen, but the medical teams had apparently fully healed him in the short time since I'd last seen him.
"Myrddin's stuck!" he yelled, pointing to a pile of rubble sitting half-submerged in the street. "He's pinned under the rubble!"
I looked at the debris. There was too much stuff for me to affect all at once, but it looked like Myrddin had gotten lucky; a massive bent metal plate near the bottom gave me a way to shift the whole pile. "I'll lift!" I yelled. "Pull him out!"
"Right!" We dropped together into water that was up to my knees. I grabbed the massive chunk of steel and yelled, "On three! One, two—" I hoisted it into the air. Myrddin scrambled out under his own power, shooing Kid Win away. His costume looked much the worse for wear, but miraculously, he seemed uninjured.
"Thank you," he said. "Can you find my staff?" Kid Win and I exchanged a look. "Damn! I need that staff! I hope it's not under a building somewhere." He immediately began searching the street, dragging his hands through the water.
"Is the staff actually part of his power, or it is just a magic feather?" I asked Kid Win once Myrddin had moved out of earshot.
He shrugged. "No idea. I've heard of some weird parahuman powers, so it's not out of the question."
"Hmm." I flicked through my visor's vision modes until I found one that worked decently well at seeing through the rushing water. Myrddin was a powerhouse, and probably more effective than me on a strategic level even when I was fully rested; as it was, I would do a lot more good helping the strange, possibly delusional cape find his stick than by rushing back into the fight.
There was something surreal and dream-like about the disjointedness of the whole experience. Wrestling a kaiju, being a punching bag, rescuing people, drowning, seeing someone I knew die, dragging Armsmaster away from his own death, and now setting out to help a Medivh-lookalike locate his 'magic staff'. So many different experiences it was almost hard to reconcile them all happening in the same fight.
My goggles picked out a shape in the gloom, and I bent down to examine it. Well, I'll be damned. I grabbed Medivh's—sorry, Myrddin's—staff and pulled it out of the water. "I found it!" I yelled, holding the staff overhead.
"Where? Ah, you got it!" Myrddin immediately started wading towards me. I reset my visor and looked around for Kid Win, but didn't see him; he'd probably left. Like I should, now that I'd found the stick.
It was too bad we couldn't bring real magic to bear; I bet Leviathan couldn't do shit against conceptual attacks.
We'd pulled out all the stops, and we 'might' be able to save the city.
We had magic enough to blast Leviathan apart thrice over… but not five times over, and the eighty percent reduction in effectiveness meant our attacks were bouncing off or being evaded. In that moment, I hated Management. His stupid drama-preserving handicap was feeding the city, and the whole world, to the Endbringers. And we still had no solution to the Scion problem, either!
Was there even any point to rejoining the fight? Leviathan had seen my best tricks already, and I didn't have the energy to repeat them even if he fell for the same thing twice. I would probably be more useful staying on search and rescue. What else did I have to offer? I could competently cast three charms, and they only worked because they were 'close enough' to parahuman powers to be unhelpful. Homura was already in the fight, so I didn't have another Deus ex Machina to call on.
Except… I did.
"I need to borrow this for a sec!" I yelled.
"Why?"
"Just a moment!" There was a chunk of concrete that was mostly flat and out of the water not too far from me, so I hopped up onto the surface and made it malleable while I used the staff to carve a large circle on it, at least three feet across. I turned and tossed the stick back to Myrddin just as he caught up to me.
The wizard-cape immediately took off, floating upwards to see what I'd been up to. "What are you doing?" he asked. "If you're trying to summon something—"
"Maeve!" I yelled.
"—I must—what? Look, it doesn't work like that—"
"Maeve!"
"—which is good, because if it did—"
"Maeve! I summon thee!"
———X==X==X———
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