--Ex Machina--
Chapter XXII: Lamentation
"All I'm saying," began Dragon, while pulling up a blueprint on one of the spare monitors in Colin's lab. "Is that the thrusters need more energy than you've currently specced them for if you want any kind of meaningful upgrade in performance, we've reached the peak of what materials and configurations can give to us."
Colin listened to her words, knowing that she was correct but still unwilling to concede the point. It was all fine and dandy to point out that one of his subsystems needed more power, but Colin had no idea where this energy would come from. The battery apparatus as it stands was already too bulky, taking up more space within his power suit than he would like. Adding more cells would not only require stress-testing the suit's joints again, but also to entirely recalibrate his combat protocol subsystem, as his movements would be altered by the changed weight distribution.
Colin pulled open another file, an experimental harness-like system that would balance the weight of the battery Dragon was suggesting, to see if he could run some preliminary simulations when he was interrupted by a ping on his console, indicating a high-priority alert.
Colin opened the system and allowed Dragon access to the monitor. What he saw drew a surprised, if satisfied, intake from him.
"Dragon, do you see this? The Prediction program worked! I need to get ready, send messages out an attack is about to happen. Make sure everyone knows as soon as possible, and why they do."
"Colin…" began his friend meaningfully, as he powered up his armor and prepared to suit up for the upcoming fight.
"What?" He said, mildly annoyed. Doesn't Dragon know how important this is, besides the event itself; everyone will know the reason that they have so much warning time.
"Colin, did you ever check the location marker?" Dragon said, a tone of, was that concern in her voice, broadcasting through the workshop?
"No," he told her, somewhat confused. "I need to be ready for transport to arrive, Strider keeps a tight schedule during these, and our team needs to be ready to go as soon as he gets here. Have you told the rest of them yet?"
"Colin," Dragon said, her voice reverberating throughout his workshop. "The attack is on Brockton Bay."
Colin stopped, and froze. Leviathan was attacking Brockton Bay? His city? His City? He looked over with horror at the monitor from which his prediction program pinged, and then back to where Dragon's avatar was displayed, a look of concern splayed across her digitized face.
"Dragon," Colin said. "I'm bringing it out today."
His friend's avatar betrayed momentary confusion before a sort of realization seemed to set across her features, followed immediately by a worried concern.
"I thought it wasn't ready yet?" Dragon asked, referring to the nanothorn halberd head that Colin had already taken from the wall.
"It runs, just not for very long," Colin replied, while attacking the head to one of his spare hafts, flicking it on for a second to ensure that the humming grey cloud of nanothorns was still being produced. "Hopefully that's all I'll need."
Dragon's avatar looked at him for a long second, not saying anything, before she broke the silence.
"I'll get in contact with everyone, ok? I'll talk to you later."
Colin nodded and grunted in the affirmative before turning back around and going back to his gear. He needed to make sure everything was working perfectly for what would happen today. In the background, he noted, the sirens had begun to sound, warning civilians to take shelter, and capes to ready themselves for the encounter ahead.
--Ex Machina--
"From this point on, we should have about eight and a half minutes until landfall," Colin said to Legend, his direct superior and one of the few other heroes he truly looked up to. Legend looked back at him, his jaw set in a hard line as he gave Colin a solemn nod before taking the stage.
Colin noted with approval (and perhaps a hint of envy) at Legend's effect on the crowd, silencing it almost completely, and drawing all eyes to the front, before he had even begun to speak. When the man did begin to speak, Colin admittedly tuned it out, as he'd heard some variant of this speech a dozen or more times before, though he paid enough attention to incline his head in recognition when Legend commended his and Dragon's early warning system, and to take the stage when prompted.
Once on the stage, Colin spoke for a few minutes about Brockton Bay's reservoir and geologic characteristics, making sure to warn those ground-bound capes to watch for the possible collapse of the ground. Once he had finished speaking, an endeavor he never really enjoyed, but nonetheless embraced as part of his job, he again conceded the stage to Legend, who began splitting the capes into teams, efficiently ordering the mass of parahumans into forces who could work together.
After a short while, Armsmaster found himself surrounded by a moderate force of ground-bound melee-focused fighters, who were all looking up to him and Chevalier, his counterpart in Philadelphia, for guidance. Chevalier took the lead, as Colin was all too happy to let him do in these scenarios, explaining specific points about combating Leviathan to the rookies and veterans alike before a warning was heard through their collective Armbands, warning of the Endbringer's imminent landfall.
Without hesitation, Colin and his group filed out and made their way toward the shoreline, wincing under the unrelenting force of the rain. Once about a block from the shoreline, Colin gave the order and the twenty-odd capes, heroes and villains alike under his guidance, spread apart taking up positions as they looked toward the shoreline.
After what seemed like an eternity to Colin, though in all actuality was likely under a minute, a figure became visible through the storm. Standing tall, with its oddly proportioned body and set of glowing green slit eyes, Leviathan could be seen, striding through the surf toward Brockton Bay. Toward his city.
Armsmaster unsheathed his halberds as he stared the beast in the eyes, while in front of him a thousand panes of colored shimmering light spring to life to block the first of the beast's tidal waves. Armsmaster breathed in, and then out, as Leviathan sprang forward onto the shoreline, crashing through the forcefields and scattering the first of the defenders.
--Ex Machina--
He had been fighting for hours, or at least that's what it felt like, Colin lamented as he dodged yet another of Leviathan's swings, the great tail of the Endbringer screaming through the air where his head had been only a second before.
His prediction program was doing its job. Colin had analyzed video from every single encounter with the Endbringers' middle child, and packed all that data into a program which analyzed it's every movement, and told him how to avoid it.
Colin sprang forward while the beast was turned around, flicking on his nanothorns as he swung his secondary halberd at the leg of the Endbringer, lasers from the various blasters quickly averting themselves from targeting his position.
The halberd swung true, carving deep into the sinewy leg of his massive adversary. Colin hopped himself back amid they spray of inky-black ichor, which stained what was lift visible of his once gleaming silver power armor. Where he had once stood blasted a torrent of water, a remnant of the echo which sloughed off the Endbringer, brought back around to use as a weapon.
Leviathan stood back up and turned, but the leg which Colin had cut into lagged behind, and its foot caught on the ruin of what was once one of Colin's favorite coffee shops, as the leg was pulled backwards, Leviathan's knee kept moving forwards, causing the beast to trip as it moved forward, and to fall chest down on the ruined street which had once been a busy commercial area.
As he hopped backwards, Colin noted with approval the barrage of multicolored projectiles and laser fire which slammed into Leviathan's back, all but pinning it to the ground with a massive amount of force. As the beast remained immobile under the force of the assault, water continued to pour off of it, pooling around the Endbringer and flooding the street it lay on even more than it had been before.
Suddenly, Leviathan stopped struggling under the barrage, allowing the water to continue to pool around itself. After a few moments, the water gathered back together around Leviathan, who had begin to spin in place with a speed that Colin had difficulty differentiating head from tail in the green blur.
Without any warning, either from the beast itself or his prediction software, the water lasted out, untold thousands of gallons spraying forward in all directions, and crushing everything in their wake.
Colin didn't even have time to react before the rushing wall of water hit him, slamming his body backwards into and then through the wall of yet another ruined building. That no powersuit in the world could protect against that kind of force was Colin's last thought as he was crushed beneath the moving mass of water.
--Ex Machina--
Victoria squeezed her sister's hand one last time before letting her make her way back outside to the medical shuttle. She had gotten the 'stay safe, don't do anything dumb' speech no fewer than three times since the sirens had begun. While Aunt Sarah's had seemed genuine, Mom's had made Victoria feel like she was expecting her to do something stupid, like charge the Endbringer head-on.
Her sister's though, Amy's speech that Vicky had just finished hearing, was heartfelt, and with an undercurrent of something that Vicky just couldn't pin down. One thing was for certain though, her sister couldn't bear to see her gone at the end of the day, more than anything else, and Vicky knew that she couldn't let her sister down like that.
So as she bid Amy farewell and made her way over to Alexandria's group, Victoria made a promise to herself, that she would see her sister again. Because at the end of the day, everything else could be fixed, or replaced. Everything except family.
--Ex Machina--
There was a tremendous crash as Victoria's body was flung into a building, victim of a nonchalant slap by the monster that was destroying her home. It hadn't been the first such incident, nor, Vicky suspected, would it be the last. Nonetheless, she dug herself out and took off back to the fight.
The fight had only just started and the defenders had already taken heavy casualties, though most of the reports Vicky heard through her armband were injuries, and not outright deaths of the defenders. Victoria glanced over at the fight in time to see Legend unleash a salvo into Leviathan's chest, making him stumble backwards just in time for Alexandria to knock out his legs with an upended light pole.
While Vicky wished she could take the time to admire the display of teamwork, and the opening created for the blasters, including Crystal and Aunt Sarah, to fire on the Endbringer, she was distracted by another warning coming through her armband.
Tidal Wave Incoming.
Broadcast the voice of Dragon to everyone in the fight. Victoria looked down at the pinned form of the Endbringer and made a snap decision that she shouldn't get involved with the barrage still pelting into Leviathan.
Instead she flew down to the shoreline as quickly as possible, where the Barrier Corps, as Eric had so helpfully labeled them for her, were stationed. After a second or two of looking, Victoria found her cousin's bright blue-dyed hair and flew down to beside him.
"Hey cuz," Shielder said, giving her a lopsided, if forced, grin. "I'm going to assume you're here to help with the wall. Mason's over there," he said, pointing down the shoreline at a cape dressed in a blocky costume decorated with a repeating brick motif, who was in the process of summoning a large wall of what appeared to be cinderblocks with his powers.
Victoria nodded her thanks and flew over to the indicated cape, whose wall was now sprouting crenellations and gargoyles, perhaps as some kind of nervous tick, Vicky thought as she glanced over at the shoreline, where a large swell was visible in the distance, growing by the second.
Mason took a second to look at Victoria before silently pointing at a point on the wall, which had spouted some sort of handlebar for Vicky to hold onto.
She immediately flew over to the area and grabbed the handholds, bracing herself against the wall for the imminent wave. Vicky glanced down the shoreline, where innumerable barriers, from glassy bubbles, to smoky forcefields, to the pastel-colored hexes Narwhal had interspersed as wave breakers ahead of everyone else's, sprung into place.
After what felt like an eternity of waiting, a shout of "Brace," echoed through the line and Vicky leaned into the wall, trying to mimic the posture Mason had taken up, though unable to fade into the construct as he had.
A heartbeat later, a tremendous crash assaulted Victoria's senses, the sound and pressure of the water crashing against the line of barriers the only thing in the world that existed for a second and an eternity. Down the line, the sounds of shattering glass indicated the barriers had failed, and the list of casualties began rolling off, though there was only one that Vicky heard before speeding off back down the line.
Shielder Deceased, CD-5.
As the water receded, Vicky spotted her cousin's white bodysuit, caked in mud and grime from the battle so far, and with a red stain spreading from the left side of his chest. Victoria swooped down and grabbed his body, bringing his body up to the highest ground nearby.
In her arms the body lay still until she got to the place, a park a block or two from the shore, with a view that peeked between buildings to allow one to see the surf on calmer days and feel the breeze which wafted in from the sea. With trembling arms, Victoria laid Eric's body out on one of the still intact Picnic tables, the blood seeping out of his costume already beginning to stain the white sleeves of hers.
Victoria knew that he couldn't be saved, Dragon's armbands were never wrong, but she wouldn't let his body be lost in the surf and the muck at the shoreline. She took a look down at her cousin, taking a second to remember him before turning her head back up toward the fight, where Leviathan had gotten up and was engaged in dancing with the swarm of gnats that were the defenders of Brockton Bay, swatting them down almost as quickly as they could come back.
Victoria lifted up into the air and sped off toward Leviathan, going faster than she ever had, the tears in her eyes indistinguishable from the damnable rain that the Endbringer brought with it.
With a wordless howl escaping from her mouth, Victoria slammed into the back of the Endbringer, sending the green monster tumbling forward. As if on cue, a yellow beam blasted into Leviathan's head, sending him tumbling forward. Victoria was still for a second, watching the fruits of her work, before a torrent of water impacted her feet, sending her tumbling off.
Before she could recover, the water snaked back around and slammed into her again, smashing her into another building. As she landed, she was slammed again and again by the water. Each time her forcefield protected her, but she was unable to move, being battered over and over by the water.
After what felt like forever, the water pulled back again, and Victoria braced for another hit, but instead of slamming into her, the water poured over her, flooding the pit she had been struck down into.
Victoria flew upwards, as fast as she could through the water, but was pulled back down by the current, moving so fast she couldn't make headway upwards, couldn't escape from the flooded hole in the ruin of the building.
Upward and upward she struggled against the indomitable current, which just as surely pulled her back down.
Upward and upward she struggled until her vision darkened and the world started spinning.
Upward and upward she struggled until she could struggle no more, and fell back to the bottom, her vision darkening and her movements stopping until she forgot why she had ever struggled in the first place, and settled back to the bottom, where it was warm and quiet, away from the screams and the crashing she could no longer hear above her.
--Ex Machina--
Coil paced angrily in his office, waiting from a report from his reconnaissance experts on the movements of the Empire. All the percentages told him that his highest chance of claiming control over the city which was rightfully his came by exposing the Empire, and especially Max Anders, and thereby throwing the economy of the bay into turmoil as its largest employer faced a tremendous upheaval in the way it was run. Sure no plan was one hundred percent, but that was far-and-away superior to any other plan he had made, at least according to his pet.
By all accounts it worked marvelously, Kaiser, Krieg, and a half-dozen others were removed from their positions of economic power within the city, cutting off much of the above-board funding that ran the neo-Nazi gang. The Empire should have crumbled from within with the lack of both funding and anonymity, but instead the entire organization had rallied, expanding borders and claiming territory that had for months belonged to the ABB or Coil himself.
To make matters worse, his Tattletale had disappeared and the remaining Undersiders had no idea that they were working for him, leaving both of his teams practically useless until Genesis could break out the other travelers.
Coil's ponderences were interrupted by the squeal of the radio he had sat upon his desk. All but diving toward the small device, he took a moment to pull himself together and answered, asking for a report in a cool, even voice.
"Sir," replied Namir, the head of his overwatch team, who had been watching the northern end of his holdings. "There's a small Empire incursion, it appears to be Crusader and Alabaster, do we engage? Over."
Coil split the timelines, in one he okayed the offensive, in the other, he advised his men to make a slow retreat, covering their retreat with covering fire while they made their way back to the safehouse a block and a half back.
Coil spent the next five minutes frantically checking security feeds in either of his two timelines, feeding information from one to another to try to repel the Empire troops which were interloping on his territory. As he was about to order a flank to a trio of his more hardened mercenaries, several of his camera feeds darkened suddenly, and a few seconds later raindrops began to accrue over the lenses.
"What the hell?" Coil muttered to himself as he switched tabs on his monitor to a browser window. There wasn't supposed to be any kind of rain today, so what would explain the…
And then he heard the sirens. Even underground in his bunker, he could hear the unmistakable wail, which was at just such a frequency that it was audible through most obstructions. Coil Immediately opened his comms to hear that he was not the only one who had heard the sirens and began directing his men back to the central base, which had the strongest bunker.
After giving the order, Coil closed down his computer and removed the hard drive, slipping it into a bag which he slung around his shoulder before vacating the office. He collapsed the timelines he had running and split again. In one, he walked across the metal catwalks which criss-crossed his base until he made it to the large central staircase, which he turned and began making his way down to the lowest level, amid throngs of his men.
In the other, he left his office through the secret door he had in the back and went up the staircase, taking off his mask as he climbed the stairs and grabbing the heavy coat which he had hung by the door. Once he reached the top, he slipped out into the street, where there existed a cacophony of people and cars in a mass panic to get to safety, with uniformed police and PRT officers vainly attempting to direct the mass. Coil took one look at the chaos and began quickly walking down the sidewalk with his head down. His destination was toward the inland edge of the city, where he had another, smaller safehouse, just large enough that he could maybe survive the attack going on.
--Ex Machina--
The collected people huddling in the basement of Coil's central base shuddered as another roaring crash could be felt in the earth above, below, and around them. Coil himself, huddled just like any of his soldiers was lamenting his chances, as even within the fortified bunker, he didn't feel safe with only one self.
His other self had been found by Stormtiger and Hookwolf almost immediately after leaving, the latter of which had taken a hold of him with a feral grin on his face and a murderous glint in his eyes. Coil had collapsed the timeline before it went any further, he knew he couldn't escape the two crazed gang members and didn't want to know the pain they the undoubtedly would have inflicted on him.
Coil's thoughts were interrupted by the shout of one of his mercenaries, who had pointed to a part of the ceiling. Naturally every eye in the room followed his arm and, after seeing the spreading crack and leaking water, all but panicked. Coil among them, they tried to move away from the growing structural weakness, moving along the ground floor to other rooms, the last man bolting doors behind him for all the good it would do.
When they had gotten as far as they could, a score or more mercenaries all crowded into the small kitchen in the corner of the floor. As seasoned as the men and women coil hired were, as ruthless and battle-hardened they might be, they all tensed up when a loud cracking echoed through. And all near the door braced against it as they heard the rushing of water on the opposite side.
Coil looked up, praying not to God, he believed in no such thing, but that Cauldron found him useful enough to keep alive. It was as he looked up that he saw the growing depression in the steel ceiling.
The last thing he saw before being crushed beneath thousands of tons of building was the ceiling giving out, and a mixture of rubble, water, and wood rushing downwards to filling the space he and his men occupied.
--Ex Machina--
"Lee, report," asked Lung lazily, as he reclined in his chair
"The Empire are engaging Coil's base sir, they appear to have uncharacteristically good information, and are well organized for whatever operation they seem to be undertaking."
"Good, leave them alone, through fighting, one will be defeated and the other weakened, then we can clean up the aftermath."
Lee wordlessly saluted with his remaining arm before dissolving into a pile of ash, undoubtedly off to inform his men of his decision. Lung reclined backwards and looked out the window of his apartment at the Bay.
He had made a good life here, after being forced to flee his home. In the aftermath of the fight which had given him his name. He had lost his home in return for making his name; a return which even today he was not altogether sure was worthwhile.
As he looked out over the bay he noticed, subtly at first, and then much more suddenly, the darkening sky, and the beginnings of a rainfall. The mirror of a scene which he had seen before.
Lung knew, more than he knew that day that he was no match for the woman in the suit, that one day Leviathan would come back for him. He didn't consider for a second turning his tail and fleeing. The last time he had faced the Endbringer he had lost the home that he was born to. Today, he would protect the new home he had made.
Lung got up from his chair and walked over to his window, resting his hands on the sill as he looked at the swiftly darkening bay below. Along his fingers and arms, slivery scales began peaking to the surface as he thought on the day ahead.
--Ex Machina--
Lung roared his fury to the world as he pulled the remains of a building off of him and charged back into the fray. Cloaked in flames, he rammed his opponent, knocking the Endbringer backwards as it struggled to fight against him with only one leg.
Lasers and projectiles from behind him plowed into Leviathan, but Lung paid them no heed as he dove again toward the Endbringer, forcing it back toward the sea, away from his city.
The attacks dug briefly into his backside before they cut off, but Lung relished the pain, a feral grin twisting his draconic features as white-hot flames billowed out from his mouth, and his back knit back up.
Leviathan continued to retreat, toward the shoreline, ushered on by Lung, and by the Blasters behind him. As the Endbringer backed up, Lung advanced, pushing forward until he was ankle-deep in surf. The water began to swirl around his ankles but before Leviathan could do whatever he had planned, Lung dove forward, tackling the Endbringer and bringing the both of them down into the bay.
Water rushed in, and was evaporated just as quickly by the corona of white-hot flames that Lung had surrounded himself with. Lung ripped at his opponent indiscriminately with claws and teeth and tail, while Leviathan struck back with blinding speed, its limbs moving through the water faster than Lung could see.
But Lung didn't need to see, Lung could feel as the Endbringer pulled back for a strike and Lung could twist his body to take the blow and strike back. He felt his ribs crack and spine break with every strike, but they knit back together almost as quickly as Leviathan could strike him again.
Again and again, Lung ripped into the Endbringer and was struck in return. Deeper and deeper the two of them sank as Lung brought Leviathan further away from Brockton Bay, further away from his home.
As Lung carried the Endbringer away, Leviathan struck at him, over and over until he could feel the injuries piling up, the strikes coming faster than he could regenerate. A wild strike on his arm shattered the bone and allowed Leviathan to slip away, letting the Endbringer to begin moving freely in the water.
The pressure around Lung increased, as the water crushed in on him from all sides. He was blind in the dark but for the light of his quickly extinguished flames and from the darkness Lung had a half second of vision before Leviathan slammed into him, driving him downward until he hit the sandy bottom of the bay.
Leviathan tore into him, ripping past his regeneration and into his chest as the water rushed in, filling in the cavities created by the claws of the Endbringer.
Lung, fire quashed by the crushing pressure of the water, and body being torn apart by the claws and tail of Leviathan gave one last effort against the monster which had twice assaulted his home.
With a roar of fury, Lung's fire exploded outward, generating a wave or force to push back Leviathan. It bought him almost a second of reprieve before the Endbringer dove back in toward him, continuing his efforts to tear open Lung's chest.
As his cavity opened to let the water rush in, guided to tear open his organs and shatter his bones, Lung looked at his opponent, the monster that had taken his first home from him, and had made an attempt on his second. An attempt that Lung had stopped before it had gone as far as the first.
The last thing he registered before succumbing to the Endbringer was its four-eyed face, split and blistered by his claws and flames, as it guided the rushing torrent of waters to tear him apart.
--Ex Machina--
--Author's Note--
Thanks to Prodigious Thunder for beta-ing, he's a cool dude.
Even Taylor checked him over in canon.
