The rule is "I will not consume an energy field bigger than my head." One Jewel Seed is certainly smaller than Behemoth's head.
Magical Girl Lyrical Taylor (Worm/Nanoha)
- Thread starter Marsyas
- Start date
5.2 - Who By Fire?
Marsyas
Surprisingly Jellicle
- Location
- Undimensioned and Unseen
Magical Girl Lyrical Taylor
(Worm/Nanoha)
by P.H. Wise
5.2 - Who By Fire?
Disclaimer: The following is a fanfic. Worm belongs to Wildbow. The Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha franchise is owned by various corporate entities. Please support the official release.
Thanks to @Cailin for beta-ing!
-----------------
The lance of rainbow light punched a hole in the storm on its way to the obsidian beast; the hole grew as the beam continued, and it quickly rippled out to the size of a city block. The stars shone down through the gap onto the increasingly hellish, fiery landscape below, and Behemoth staggered beneath the force of the blast.
It had caught him across the upper back, and when the blast cut off, there was a circular indentation in his hide a meter across and an average of six centimeters deep - deeper towards his back, shallower towards his shoulder. He lifted his head, and his single burning eye fixed its gaze on me.
I fired a second shot, and this time Behemoth was ready for it; the ground evaporated like smoke beneath his feet as he redirected a good chunk of the energy of my attack into the street, leaving Behemoth momentarily standing in mid-air above a crater that now filled the street.
Behemoth fell.
"Second test," Raising Heart said. "Teleportation."
"Yuuno," I called.
A green spell circle flared beneath his feet as he gathered the necessary mana together. it was taxing for him; teleportation got way more energy-intensive the further away you were creating the teleportation field.
A moment later, the teleportation field shimmered into place in front of Behemoth; I sent a sensor sphere in to take readings. The field vanished as Yuuno attempted to dump Behemoth into the Dimensional Sea.
My sensor sphere vanished, transported instantly into the Dimensional Sea; Behemoth didn't move.
I frowned. "I guess it wouldn't be that easy," I muttered.
Then I saw the data from my sensor sphere, and my eyebrows lifted in surprise. "... What the hell?" I asked aloud. [Dragon? Lisa? Are you seeing this]
The teleportation hadn't failed. Or maybe it had? Behemoth was within the Dimensional Sea; my probe that had gone through was picking him up there without any trouble. It he also hadn't moved. Did he exist in both places? Had we just created a second Behemoth?
[I see it,] Dragon replied.
[Interesting,] Lisa said. [I have a theory, but I need more data.]
"Third test," Raising Heart announced. "Teleportation, alternate target zone."
Behemoth unleashed a salvo of lightning bolts at us, and most of them didn't make it to us, the electricity finding easier path to follow; two managed to strike our shields. A shower of sparks rained down from the points of impact, but the shields held for now.
"So much for being out of range," I muttered.
Yuuno nodded in mute agreement.
Behemoth began to walk for the edge of the crater, next, and Yuuno dropped a second teleportation field in front of him, this one keyed to take him to the moon.
Just as Behemoth's foot came down into the teleportation field, there was a flare of the local mana -- Behemoth didn't actually generate any himself as far as Raising Heart could sense -- and the teleportation field collapsed into unshaped magical energy.
Behemoth kept walking.
"Fourth test," Raising Heart said.
Behemoth's gaze was fixed upon us, and his mouth was slowly opening, but that wasn't going to stop us.
Yuuno cast his third spell. A moment later, the distinct purple haze of a bounded field expanded out in a sphere around us, swept over Behemoth and kept going for another half kilometer in every direction.
Behemoth took a slow step forward, moving as if through water and not through air.
[Dragon,] I called telepathically. [We have Behemoth inside the Bounded Field. Can you confirm?]
Dragon's reply sounded oddly synthetic, but that stood to reason; she wasn't actually a telepath, she had just built a sort of telepathic emulator: [Cannot confirm, Starfall. Behemoth was not taken up by the Bounded Field. His movements are slower, however.]
I blinked. He was clearly there below us inside the Bounded Field. I moved a sensor sphere in close outside the field, and sure enough, there he was, moving out of the crater at maybe half the speed he had been moving before. He was adjusting for it, slowly moving faster, but it was clearly affecting him.
"He was already in the Dimensional Sea..." I muttered thoughtfully.
[Taylor, get out of there!] Lisa shouted.
A point of light too bright to look at bloomed in the back of Behemoth's throat, and then he breathed out a lance of I have no fucking idea what, a beam like a laser forged from nuclear fire that cut through everything it touched as he swept it up towards Yuuno and me.
"Protection!" Raising Heart cried, and she only had time to do so because Behemoth started the beam at ground level and then swept it upwards with a move of his head.
The shields Yuuno and I had put in place shattered into fragments of light, the beam punctured through Raising Heart's emergency defense, hit me in the chest, and had burned halfway through my barrier jacket before I managed to maneuver out if the way. "Oh, shit!" I yelped, and both Yuuno and I went into immediate evasive action, weaving down from the sky, desperately avoiding beams that sliced through buildings like they were made of paper.
I took a glancing hit that sheared off my shoulder pauldron and seared the flesh beneath it with second degree burns before I managed to get out of the two kilometer range of Behemoth's new attack.
Behind us, the upper portions of most of the downtown skyline tumbled down towards the streets. In my strategic analysis partition, Lisa and I watched as the wreckage slammed into the street, sending up huge plumes of dust and ashes into the rain-soaked night that the downpour swiftly beat back to the earth, and motes of light representing living humans began to go out. A thousand, and the tally kept climbing. Three thousand. Four thousand. The tally climbed higher. Seven thousand. Nine thousand. The number reached its total: ten thousand and thirty seven people, dead in an instant.
In the sky, I stared at the wanton, reckless destruction with wide, horrified eyes. "... Oh God," I whispered.
[... I think we made him mad,] Yuuno said.
All around the combat zone, parahumans with powers unsuitable to combat with Behemoth threw themselves into the rescue operations. The PRT arrived soon after, pouring out of a mix of vans and armored personnel carriers as Tinkers set up defensive lines in the path of Behemoth's advance.
He was marching for the coast; if he continued on the course he had been following since he arrived and he didn't speed up, he would reach the Medhall building in twenty minutes, Brockton Bay General Hospital in an hour, and the PRT building in an hour and a half.
Every few seconds, another handful of lights went out on my holo-map as human beings died.
[He exists across multiple realities,] I said, more thinking out loud than anything else. [He was inside the Bounded Field and in the real world and in the Dimensional Sea...]
In my strategic analysis partition, I looked Lisa in the eye. [We need Vista,] we both said at once.
[And Chrono,] Lisa added.
I nodded, seeing where she was going. So I turned to Alexandria in the real world and said, "Nimue and I have a plan. We need as many blasters as you can spare, plus any Shakers who have the ability to warp space or to access other worlds."
"What's the plan?" Legend asked.
I hit a button on the console in my strategic analysis partition, and Lisa's voice became audible in the real world. "Based on the sensor data we've gotten and my power filling in the blanks, we think Behemoth exists across multiple realities," she said. "His body is impossibly dense, dense enough to seriously fuck with time and space, and the only reason him even being on the planet doesn't fuck us all up is that most of him isn't actually here; his body is spread across multiple universes, with material drawn into our universe as needed around a central point."
"Where?" Eidolon asked.
"The base of the throat," Lisa replied. "Between his shoulders. But not only is he extremely tough, there's also a limit to how much you can damage him just because only so much of him is ever here at a time. What we need to do is either hit him with an attack that affects every part of him across every universe he's connected to, which I doubt anyone will be able to do, or..."
Alexandria blinked. "We hit him across multiple universes at the same time?" she asked.
"Basically," Lisa said. "We don't have nearly enough power to hit him everywhere he is, but we do have capes who can warp space and a bunch of mages who can create Bounded Fields, and if we combine the two to layer multiple bounded fields on top of each other, we might be able to circumvent his defenses and actually hit him where it hurts."
Alexandria frowned. "Wouldn't he be just as tough in each universe you attack him in?"
"That's where the Bounded Fields come in," I said.
"They fold space-time into a pocket dimension that exists in the same place as our universe," Lisa said, "A pocket dimension that didn't exist before we created it, but that Behemoth exists within. If I'm right, then each one we make and layer on top of him will reduce his overall mass and density, making him easier to hurt. And we hit him in as many different universes as possible to make sure he can't just concentrate on defending himself in one of them."
"Have you tested this?" Alexandria asked.
Inside my strategic partition, Lisa glared at Alexandria's image, but none of the Triumvirate saw it. "We haven't had time, or the means. But it should work, and if it doesn't we aren't any more screwed than we were before we tried."
Legend looked at Eidolon. "Would that work?" he asked.
Eidolon frowned thoughtfully. "I'm not sure," he said. "It's something I've never tried, at least."
"Wanna find out?" Lisa asked.
The Triumvirate exchanged glances. "Do it," Alexandria said.
-----------------
The PRT Armored Personnel Carrier screeched to a halt in front of the apartment high-rise, and Sergeant Rodriguez and his squad made a quick exit, six PRT officers in total. Four other APCs pulled up behind them, and six troopers came out of each one.
"Move it, people!" Rodriguez shouted, "This block is directly in Behemoth's path and we've got civilians trapped on floors two, three, five, six, and nine. The buses will be here in ten minutes, and I want them full the second they stop!"
Jensen and a pair of troopers used their laser rifles to cut through the debris blocking the entrance to the building, cracked open the door, and four and a half of the five squads went in.
Rodriguez was with the half squad that stayed on the street. His fellow troopers -- a fresh faced, newly graduated officer named McDowell and a prematurely grey thirty-three year old officer named Barker -- exchanged nervous looks as the rumble of Behemoth's approach drew slowly closer.
Elsewhere in the city, Mover capes were assisting in the evacuation of civilians; this apartment building didn't have high enough priority to warrant movers, but there were three hundred and sixty three people in here, and thirty three more in the building across the street, and if no one else was going to get them out, the PRT sure as hell would.
Prior to Behemoth's death laser attack, there had been over a thousand people in this block. Now, the sensors Dragon had hooked up said there were less than five hundred. The streets were strewn with rubble and wreckage, and they'd had to blast their way through in some places, but now they were here, and there was nothing for Rodriguez, McDowell and Barker to do but hurry up and wait.
The buses rumbles into sight just as the first civilians came rushing out of the building. Jensen and her two troopers came next, with Jensen carrying a toddler and the other two helping an elderly couple down the steps to the curb.
The heavy footfalls of the Endbringer grew louder. There was a heavy buzzing crackle that sounded a little like a Tesla coil followed by flashes of light and heavy impacts and distant shouting; capes were engaging Behemoth, trying to slow him down, and Rodriguez spoke a silent prayer for them.
The first bus was loaded up and pulled away from the curb, and Behemoth's footsteps drew nearer. There was another bright flash and a whole bunch of explosions that were way too close for comfort.
"Shield barricades!" Rodriguez called.
The second bus was loaded up, pulled away from the curb, and began to navigate the precarious passage they'd cut through the debris on the way in.
More and more people were coming out of the building, and a handful had started emerging from the building across the street. And the PRT officers began to deploy one of Armsmaster and Dragon's newest toys: portable force-field generators. It looked like a softball-sized metal sphere and it weighed about three pounds, and if you put it in place and turned it on, it formed a dome-shaped force-field that could be deployed however you pleased and held it in place for five minutes.
Each squad had two, and as people continued to load onto the busses, the five PRT squads deployed their shield barricades.
With a crack, a terrible rumble, and the clatter of brownstone hitting the street, Behemoth came through the building a hundred and twenty feet away from their position just as the third bus of six finished loading its passengers.
The civilians screamed in terror. Some ran, some cowered in place, a few stared in total disbelief.
Rodriguez glanced at his fellow PRT troopers, hefted his rifle and called out, "All right you apes, you wanna live forever?"
That was all he needed to say; the other PRT troopers raised their guns and engaged their shield barricades. Beehive-barrier style force fields sprang to life, each angled to provide as much protective surface as possible for those who sheltered behind them.
The third bus pulled away from the curb; the fourth was quickly filling up as panicked civilians rushed aboard, but even more than rushed aboard simply ran for their lives.
Behemoth extended an arm towards them, lightning leaped from his claws, and all 30 PRT troopers opened fire, lasers peppering Behemoth's head as the containment foam sprayers targeted his feet.
Behemoth's lightning grounded itself against the shield barricades, and the shields held. The monster slowed but didn't stop as the containment foam solidified around his feet.
The fourth bus pulled away from the curb.
Behemoth leaped, bounding fifty feet forward. It didn't look like much, but a few more steps would put them all inside his kill radius. Rodriguez grit his teeth and kept firing, and Behemoth's face was quickly pockmarked with glowing scars from concentrated laser fire.
A pattern of activity played itself out three times over: Behemoth would step forward and the PRT troopers retreated as a unit, all of them moving back at once, carrying their shields with them. Lightning lashed against them, one of the shields fell, and two troopers didn't have time to scream before lightning cooked them alive. Another step and three more troopers died. Another, and this time Rodriguez's shield fell, and a bolt of lightning blazed through Barker's body, and if he had been even a centimeter further to the left, Rodriguez would have been killed, too.
A light bloomed in the back of Behemoth's throat, too bright to look at, and a wave of unbelievable heat came with it, and Rodriguez knew that they were all about to die.
Then a dark blur smashed into Behemoth from the side with a boom like a tank cannon firing. The blur resolved itself into the form of Alexandria, like a goddess of war, who seized Behemoth by the horns and savagely wrenched his head skywards just as the beam fired; the heat redoubled, and Rodriguez was sure his eyeballs were drying out, but the beam of nuclear light shot straight up into the sky, and the storm clouds it touched seemed to evaporate into nothing.
The fifth bus pulled away full of civilians, and then there were no more people at the curb.
"We are leaving!" Rodriguez bellowed. "Move or lose it!"
The PRT moved it.
------------
Groups of parahumans were coming in, more and more being teleported to the battlefield, and once we actually started putting people into position, it got really obvious really quickly that there was just no way we'd be ready in time to save the Medhall building. The idea of just letting Behemoth crush one of the biggest employers in Brockton Bay did not sit well with me, but there wasn't much we could do about it. The Triumvirate engaged Behemoth along with those few brutes who could survive his death radius, doing their best to buy us the time we needed while we moved back the first main defensive line to beyond the Medhall campus.
The rain hadn't eased at all, but continued in a steady, punishing torrent. I guess I should be grateful; without the rain, the fires would be much, much worse, and Behemoth would be spreading radioactive material across half the city. The wind howled, and thunder roared, and another bolt struck the tip of the Medhall building. The wreckage left in Behemoth's wake was quickly turning to a thick, ashy sludge of muck, mud, pulverized concrete and ashes, and the rescue efforts slowed accordingly.
Chrono arrived on the scene while we were setting everything up halfway between the hospital and the Medhall campus, and I let out a breath when he landed nearby, but I didn't have it in me to smile. "Chrono," I said in greeting.
"Starfall," he said. "I'm here to help."
"Have you fought something like this before?" I asked.
Chrono nodded, hefting his Device -- Durandal -- as he did so. "I have," he said.
"Okay," I said. "What are you bringing to the table besides the obvious?"
As we spoke, Dragon's armband dutifully reported the death of a parahuman combatant and the downing of three more.
"It might not work," Chrono said, "but Durandal is optimized for a powerful form of sealing magic. It's called Eternal Coffin. It's a spell intended to freeze the target and seal it away for all eternity."
Another parahuman died. It was a distant thing, something that buzzed on the edge of my awareness.
My eyebrows went up. "Okay, yeah, we can use that."
More and more capes arrived as the seconds went by; Vicky set down between me and Chrono, and a moment later she was joined by Laserdream, Lady Photon, Shielder, Manpower, Brandish and Flashbang. A dozen of Dragon's suits arrived, each seemingly acting independently of the others, and a distant part of me wondered if she'd managed to work out how to create mental partitions from the math I'd given her; each was glowing with mana to my sight, though the supply within each suit was slowly -- almost too slowly to be perceptible -- decreasing. Mana batteries?
Tinkers were setting up weapon batteries side by side with the National Guard; Kid Win had an oversized laser rifle, and as Armsmaster arrived on his motorcycle I noted that his halberd was radiating a hell of a lot of mana.
Vicky's arrival buoyed up my flagging spirits, and I almost smiled. I didn't know how much of it was her aura and how much was just having my friend with me, but I also didn't care. "Where's Amy?" I asked.
"Panacea is with the other healer capes at the infirmary by the mobile command center," Brandish replied.
"Oh," I said, and felt a little foolish for asking. [Bet she hates that,] I told Vicky telepathically.
[You're not wrong,] Vicky answered, but there was little cheer in her telepathic voice.
I didn't ask if she was okay. Instead, I filled her in on the plan.
[... So you plan to beat Behemoth with cross-dimensional technobabble,] Vicky surmised.
[Basically,] I said.
[I'm excited about this plan,] Vicky said.
I didn't roll my eyes, but I came close. [Liar.]
The rain eased off a little, and the wind died down. A minute later, a fleet of city and school buses went by, thirty busses in total, each full of evacuees: the first convoy from Downtown Brockton Bay. The convoy had an escort of six police cars, lights flashing but without sirens. The downtown Endbringer shelters were now full, and they were bussing people to the others. A huge Tinker-tech vehicle that looked like a cross between a big rig and a tank cleared the road for the convoy, smashing derelict cars and debris aside with equal ease, belching black smoke as it went.
A few minutes later, a tiny convoy of six buses and five PRT APCs zoomed past. Seven minutes later, another full sized convoy followed the first, though this one lacked a big rig tank thing to lead the way. But then, that absurd Mad Max looking thing had done its job well, and the second and third convoys made it through without difficulty.
Charges were being set in the buildings that lined the approach to the defensive line, and as we prepared, Behemoth reached the Medhall campus.
Through my sensor spheres I watched as he strode across the campus, crushing the guard post with the casual sweep of his obsidian-encrusted arm. He went into the main building diagonally through the south wall, crashed through support pillars and interior walls with equal, careless ease, carving a path that took off the ceiling of the ground floor as his shoulders and head plowed through it. Rubble rained down on him from above, and still he marched. Once Behemoth reached the lobby, his body flared so brightly that it seemed pure white, bathing the entire structure in horrifyingly lethal levels of radiation.
Of the group that had broken into the building during the riots, forty-seven of the self-described anarchists had refused evacuation even in the face of the Endbringer sirens; a few seconds after Behemoth's flare of power, they dropped dead one by one.
Behemoth gave them no more regard than he did the ants beneath his feet. He walked through the lobby and out the front doors of the building. On the steps in front of the Medhall building, he brought his hands together in a monstrous, deafening clap that was like an explosion, and every window in the building shattered; the faux Roman pillars along the front of the building collapsed, blasted backward through the building like matchsticks in a hurricane.
The Medhall building listed dangerously off to the side as more supports broke free, and more, and then the building fell over sideways with a slow, ponderous grace that seemed almost unreal, and it brought ruin to its surroundings, crushing cars and buildings and anyone unfortunate enough not to have been evacuated.
As the dust plume warred with the wind and rain, Behemoth continued his slow march towards our defensive line; and though destruction followed in his wake, our preparations were complete.
We were ready for him.
(Worm/Nanoha)
by P.H. Wise
5.2 - Who By Fire?
Disclaimer: The following is a fanfic. Worm belongs to Wildbow. The Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha franchise is owned by various corporate entities. Please support the official release.
Thanks to @Cailin for beta-ing!
-----------------
The lance of rainbow light punched a hole in the storm on its way to the obsidian beast; the hole grew as the beam continued, and it quickly rippled out to the size of a city block. The stars shone down through the gap onto the increasingly hellish, fiery landscape below, and Behemoth staggered beneath the force of the blast.
It had caught him across the upper back, and when the blast cut off, there was a circular indentation in his hide a meter across and an average of six centimeters deep - deeper towards his back, shallower towards his shoulder. He lifted his head, and his single burning eye fixed its gaze on me.
I fired a second shot, and this time Behemoth was ready for it; the ground evaporated like smoke beneath his feet as he redirected a good chunk of the energy of my attack into the street, leaving Behemoth momentarily standing in mid-air above a crater that now filled the street.
Behemoth fell.
"Second test," Raising Heart said. "Teleportation."
"Yuuno," I called.
A green spell circle flared beneath his feet as he gathered the necessary mana together. it was taxing for him; teleportation got way more energy-intensive the further away you were creating the teleportation field.
A moment later, the teleportation field shimmered into place in front of Behemoth; I sent a sensor sphere in to take readings. The field vanished as Yuuno attempted to dump Behemoth into the Dimensional Sea.
My sensor sphere vanished, transported instantly into the Dimensional Sea; Behemoth didn't move.
I frowned. "I guess it wouldn't be that easy," I muttered.
Then I saw the data from my sensor sphere, and my eyebrows lifted in surprise. "... What the hell?" I asked aloud. [Dragon? Lisa? Are you seeing this]
The teleportation hadn't failed. Or maybe it had? Behemoth was within the Dimensional Sea; my probe that had gone through was picking him up there without any trouble. It he also hadn't moved. Did he exist in both places? Had we just created a second Behemoth?
[I see it,] Dragon replied.
[Interesting,] Lisa said. [I have a theory, but I need more data.]
"Third test," Raising Heart announced. "Teleportation, alternate target zone."
Behemoth unleashed a salvo of lightning bolts at us, and most of them didn't make it to us, the electricity finding easier path to follow; two managed to strike our shields. A shower of sparks rained down from the points of impact, but the shields held for now.
"So much for being out of range," I muttered.
Yuuno nodded in mute agreement.
Behemoth began to walk for the edge of the crater, next, and Yuuno dropped a second teleportation field in front of him, this one keyed to take him to the moon.
Just as Behemoth's foot came down into the teleportation field, there was a flare of the local mana -- Behemoth didn't actually generate any himself as far as Raising Heart could sense -- and the teleportation field collapsed into unshaped magical energy.
Behemoth kept walking.
"Fourth test," Raising Heart said.
Behemoth's gaze was fixed upon us, and his mouth was slowly opening, but that wasn't going to stop us.
Yuuno cast his third spell. A moment later, the distinct purple haze of a bounded field expanded out in a sphere around us, swept over Behemoth and kept going for another half kilometer in every direction.
Behemoth took a slow step forward, moving as if through water and not through air.
[Dragon,] I called telepathically. [We have Behemoth inside the Bounded Field. Can you confirm?]
Dragon's reply sounded oddly synthetic, but that stood to reason; she wasn't actually a telepath, she had just built a sort of telepathic emulator: [Cannot confirm, Starfall. Behemoth was not taken up by the Bounded Field. His movements are slower, however.]
I blinked. He was clearly there below us inside the Bounded Field. I moved a sensor sphere in close outside the field, and sure enough, there he was, moving out of the crater at maybe half the speed he had been moving before. He was adjusting for it, slowly moving faster, but it was clearly affecting him.
"He was already in the Dimensional Sea..." I muttered thoughtfully.
[Taylor, get out of there!] Lisa shouted.
A point of light too bright to look at bloomed in the back of Behemoth's throat, and then he breathed out a lance of I have no fucking idea what, a beam like a laser forged from nuclear fire that cut through everything it touched as he swept it up towards Yuuno and me.
"Protection!" Raising Heart cried, and she only had time to do so because Behemoth started the beam at ground level and then swept it upwards with a move of his head.
The shields Yuuno and I had put in place shattered into fragments of light, the beam punctured through Raising Heart's emergency defense, hit me in the chest, and had burned halfway through my barrier jacket before I managed to maneuver out if the way. "Oh, shit!" I yelped, and both Yuuno and I went into immediate evasive action, weaving down from the sky, desperately avoiding beams that sliced through buildings like they were made of paper.
I took a glancing hit that sheared off my shoulder pauldron and seared the flesh beneath it with second degree burns before I managed to get out of the two kilometer range of Behemoth's new attack.
Behind us, the upper portions of most of the downtown skyline tumbled down towards the streets. In my strategic analysis partition, Lisa and I watched as the wreckage slammed into the street, sending up huge plumes of dust and ashes into the rain-soaked night that the downpour swiftly beat back to the earth, and motes of light representing living humans began to go out. A thousand, and the tally kept climbing. Three thousand. Four thousand. The tally climbed higher. Seven thousand. Nine thousand. The number reached its total: ten thousand and thirty seven people, dead in an instant.
In the sky, I stared at the wanton, reckless destruction with wide, horrified eyes. "... Oh God," I whispered.
[... I think we made him mad,] Yuuno said.
All around the combat zone, parahumans with powers unsuitable to combat with Behemoth threw themselves into the rescue operations. The PRT arrived soon after, pouring out of a mix of vans and armored personnel carriers as Tinkers set up defensive lines in the path of Behemoth's advance.
He was marching for the coast; if he continued on the course he had been following since he arrived and he didn't speed up, he would reach the Medhall building in twenty minutes, Brockton Bay General Hospital in an hour, and the PRT building in an hour and a half.
Every few seconds, another handful of lights went out on my holo-map as human beings died.
[He exists across multiple realities,] I said, more thinking out loud than anything else. [He was inside the Bounded Field and in the real world and in the Dimensional Sea...]
In my strategic analysis partition, I looked Lisa in the eye. [We need Vista,] we both said at once.
[And Chrono,] Lisa added.
I nodded, seeing where she was going. So I turned to Alexandria in the real world and said, "Nimue and I have a plan. We need as many blasters as you can spare, plus any Shakers who have the ability to warp space or to access other worlds."
"What's the plan?" Legend asked.
I hit a button on the console in my strategic analysis partition, and Lisa's voice became audible in the real world. "Based on the sensor data we've gotten and my power filling in the blanks, we think Behemoth exists across multiple realities," she said. "His body is impossibly dense, dense enough to seriously fuck with time and space, and the only reason him even being on the planet doesn't fuck us all up is that most of him isn't actually here; his body is spread across multiple universes, with material drawn into our universe as needed around a central point."
"Where?" Eidolon asked.
"The base of the throat," Lisa replied. "Between his shoulders. But not only is he extremely tough, there's also a limit to how much you can damage him just because only so much of him is ever here at a time. What we need to do is either hit him with an attack that affects every part of him across every universe he's connected to, which I doubt anyone will be able to do, or..."
Alexandria blinked. "We hit him across multiple universes at the same time?" she asked.
"Basically," Lisa said. "We don't have nearly enough power to hit him everywhere he is, but we do have capes who can warp space and a bunch of mages who can create Bounded Fields, and if we combine the two to layer multiple bounded fields on top of each other, we might be able to circumvent his defenses and actually hit him where it hurts."
Alexandria frowned. "Wouldn't he be just as tough in each universe you attack him in?"
"That's where the Bounded Fields come in," I said.
"They fold space-time into a pocket dimension that exists in the same place as our universe," Lisa said, "A pocket dimension that didn't exist before we created it, but that Behemoth exists within. If I'm right, then each one we make and layer on top of him will reduce his overall mass and density, making him easier to hurt. And we hit him in as many different universes as possible to make sure he can't just concentrate on defending himself in one of them."
"Have you tested this?" Alexandria asked.
Inside my strategic partition, Lisa glared at Alexandria's image, but none of the Triumvirate saw it. "We haven't had time, or the means. But it should work, and if it doesn't we aren't any more screwed than we were before we tried."
Legend looked at Eidolon. "Would that work?" he asked.
Eidolon frowned thoughtfully. "I'm not sure," he said. "It's something I've never tried, at least."
"Wanna find out?" Lisa asked.
The Triumvirate exchanged glances. "Do it," Alexandria said.
-----------------
The PRT Armored Personnel Carrier screeched to a halt in front of the apartment high-rise, and Sergeant Rodriguez and his squad made a quick exit, six PRT officers in total. Four other APCs pulled up behind them, and six troopers came out of each one.
"Move it, people!" Rodriguez shouted, "This block is directly in Behemoth's path and we've got civilians trapped on floors two, three, five, six, and nine. The buses will be here in ten minutes, and I want them full the second they stop!"
Jensen and a pair of troopers used their laser rifles to cut through the debris blocking the entrance to the building, cracked open the door, and four and a half of the five squads went in.
Rodriguez was with the half squad that stayed on the street. His fellow troopers -- a fresh faced, newly graduated officer named McDowell and a prematurely grey thirty-three year old officer named Barker -- exchanged nervous looks as the rumble of Behemoth's approach drew slowly closer.
Elsewhere in the city, Mover capes were assisting in the evacuation of civilians; this apartment building didn't have high enough priority to warrant movers, but there were three hundred and sixty three people in here, and thirty three more in the building across the street, and if no one else was going to get them out, the PRT sure as hell would.
Prior to Behemoth's death laser attack, there had been over a thousand people in this block. Now, the sensors Dragon had hooked up said there were less than five hundred. The streets were strewn with rubble and wreckage, and they'd had to blast their way through in some places, but now they were here, and there was nothing for Rodriguez, McDowell and Barker to do but hurry up and wait.
The buses rumbles into sight just as the first civilians came rushing out of the building. Jensen and her two troopers came next, with Jensen carrying a toddler and the other two helping an elderly couple down the steps to the curb.
The heavy footfalls of the Endbringer grew louder. There was a heavy buzzing crackle that sounded a little like a Tesla coil followed by flashes of light and heavy impacts and distant shouting; capes were engaging Behemoth, trying to slow him down, and Rodriguez spoke a silent prayer for them.
The first bus was loaded up and pulled away from the curb, and Behemoth's footsteps drew nearer. There was another bright flash and a whole bunch of explosions that were way too close for comfort.
"Shield barricades!" Rodriguez called.
The second bus was loaded up, pulled away from the curb, and began to navigate the precarious passage they'd cut through the debris on the way in.
More and more people were coming out of the building, and a handful had started emerging from the building across the street. And the PRT officers began to deploy one of Armsmaster and Dragon's newest toys: portable force-field generators. It looked like a softball-sized metal sphere and it weighed about three pounds, and if you put it in place and turned it on, it formed a dome-shaped force-field that could be deployed however you pleased and held it in place for five minutes.
Each squad had two, and as people continued to load onto the busses, the five PRT squads deployed their shield barricades.
With a crack, a terrible rumble, and the clatter of brownstone hitting the street, Behemoth came through the building a hundred and twenty feet away from their position just as the third bus of six finished loading its passengers.
The civilians screamed in terror. Some ran, some cowered in place, a few stared in total disbelief.
Rodriguez glanced at his fellow PRT troopers, hefted his rifle and called out, "All right you apes, you wanna live forever?"
That was all he needed to say; the other PRT troopers raised their guns and engaged their shield barricades. Beehive-barrier style force fields sprang to life, each angled to provide as much protective surface as possible for those who sheltered behind them.
The third bus pulled away from the curb; the fourth was quickly filling up as panicked civilians rushed aboard, but even more than rushed aboard simply ran for their lives.
Behemoth extended an arm towards them, lightning leaped from his claws, and all 30 PRT troopers opened fire, lasers peppering Behemoth's head as the containment foam sprayers targeted his feet.
Behemoth's lightning grounded itself against the shield barricades, and the shields held. The monster slowed but didn't stop as the containment foam solidified around his feet.
The fourth bus pulled away from the curb.
Behemoth leaped, bounding fifty feet forward. It didn't look like much, but a few more steps would put them all inside his kill radius. Rodriguez grit his teeth and kept firing, and Behemoth's face was quickly pockmarked with glowing scars from concentrated laser fire.
A pattern of activity played itself out three times over: Behemoth would step forward and the PRT troopers retreated as a unit, all of them moving back at once, carrying their shields with them. Lightning lashed against them, one of the shields fell, and two troopers didn't have time to scream before lightning cooked them alive. Another step and three more troopers died. Another, and this time Rodriguez's shield fell, and a bolt of lightning blazed through Barker's body, and if he had been even a centimeter further to the left, Rodriguez would have been killed, too.
A light bloomed in the back of Behemoth's throat, too bright to look at, and a wave of unbelievable heat came with it, and Rodriguez knew that they were all about to die.
Then a dark blur smashed into Behemoth from the side with a boom like a tank cannon firing. The blur resolved itself into the form of Alexandria, like a goddess of war, who seized Behemoth by the horns and savagely wrenched his head skywards just as the beam fired; the heat redoubled, and Rodriguez was sure his eyeballs were drying out, but the beam of nuclear light shot straight up into the sky, and the storm clouds it touched seemed to evaporate into nothing.
The fifth bus pulled away full of civilians, and then there were no more people at the curb.
"We are leaving!" Rodriguez bellowed. "Move or lose it!"
The PRT moved it.
------------
Groups of parahumans were coming in, more and more being teleported to the battlefield, and once we actually started putting people into position, it got really obvious really quickly that there was just no way we'd be ready in time to save the Medhall building. The idea of just letting Behemoth crush one of the biggest employers in Brockton Bay did not sit well with me, but there wasn't much we could do about it. The Triumvirate engaged Behemoth along with those few brutes who could survive his death radius, doing their best to buy us the time we needed while we moved back the first main defensive line to beyond the Medhall campus.
The rain hadn't eased at all, but continued in a steady, punishing torrent. I guess I should be grateful; without the rain, the fires would be much, much worse, and Behemoth would be spreading radioactive material across half the city. The wind howled, and thunder roared, and another bolt struck the tip of the Medhall building. The wreckage left in Behemoth's wake was quickly turning to a thick, ashy sludge of muck, mud, pulverized concrete and ashes, and the rescue efforts slowed accordingly.
Chrono arrived on the scene while we were setting everything up halfway between the hospital and the Medhall campus, and I let out a breath when he landed nearby, but I didn't have it in me to smile. "Chrono," I said in greeting.
"Starfall," he said. "I'm here to help."
"Have you fought something like this before?" I asked.
Chrono nodded, hefting his Device -- Durandal -- as he did so. "I have," he said.
"Okay," I said. "What are you bringing to the table besides the obvious?"
As we spoke, Dragon's armband dutifully reported the death of a parahuman combatant and the downing of three more.
"It might not work," Chrono said, "but Durandal is optimized for a powerful form of sealing magic. It's called Eternal Coffin. It's a spell intended to freeze the target and seal it away for all eternity."
Another parahuman died. It was a distant thing, something that buzzed on the edge of my awareness.
My eyebrows went up. "Okay, yeah, we can use that."
More and more capes arrived as the seconds went by; Vicky set down between me and Chrono, and a moment later she was joined by Laserdream, Lady Photon, Shielder, Manpower, Brandish and Flashbang. A dozen of Dragon's suits arrived, each seemingly acting independently of the others, and a distant part of me wondered if she'd managed to work out how to create mental partitions from the math I'd given her; each was glowing with mana to my sight, though the supply within each suit was slowly -- almost too slowly to be perceptible -- decreasing. Mana batteries?
Tinkers were setting up weapon batteries side by side with the National Guard; Kid Win had an oversized laser rifle, and as Armsmaster arrived on his motorcycle I noted that his halberd was radiating a hell of a lot of mana.
Vicky's arrival buoyed up my flagging spirits, and I almost smiled. I didn't know how much of it was her aura and how much was just having my friend with me, but I also didn't care. "Where's Amy?" I asked.
"Panacea is with the other healer capes at the infirmary by the mobile command center," Brandish replied.
"Oh," I said, and felt a little foolish for asking. [Bet she hates that,] I told Vicky telepathically.
[You're not wrong,] Vicky answered, but there was little cheer in her telepathic voice.
I didn't ask if she was okay. Instead, I filled her in on the plan.
[... So you plan to beat Behemoth with cross-dimensional technobabble,] Vicky surmised.
[Basically,] I said.
[I'm excited about this plan,] Vicky said.
I didn't roll my eyes, but I came close. [Liar.]
The rain eased off a little, and the wind died down. A minute later, a fleet of city and school buses went by, thirty busses in total, each full of evacuees: the first convoy from Downtown Brockton Bay. The convoy had an escort of six police cars, lights flashing but without sirens. The downtown Endbringer shelters were now full, and they were bussing people to the others. A huge Tinker-tech vehicle that looked like a cross between a big rig and a tank cleared the road for the convoy, smashing derelict cars and debris aside with equal ease, belching black smoke as it went.
A few minutes later, a tiny convoy of six buses and five PRT APCs zoomed past. Seven minutes later, another full sized convoy followed the first, though this one lacked a big rig tank thing to lead the way. But then, that absurd Mad Max looking thing had done its job well, and the second and third convoys made it through without difficulty.
Charges were being set in the buildings that lined the approach to the defensive line, and as we prepared, Behemoth reached the Medhall campus.
Through my sensor spheres I watched as he strode across the campus, crushing the guard post with the casual sweep of his obsidian-encrusted arm. He went into the main building diagonally through the south wall, crashed through support pillars and interior walls with equal, careless ease, carving a path that took off the ceiling of the ground floor as his shoulders and head plowed through it. Rubble rained down on him from above, and still he marched. Once Behemoth reached the lobby, his body flared so brightly that it seemed pure white, bathing the entire structure in horrifyingly lethal levels of radiation.
Of the group that had broken into the building during the riots, forty-seven of the self-described anarchists had refused evacuation even in the face of the Endbringer sirens; a few seconds after Behemoth's flare of power, they dropped dead one by one.
Behemoth gave them no more regard than he did the ants beneath his feet. He walked through the lobby and out the front doors of the building. On the steps in front of the Medhall building, he brought his hands together in a monstrous, deafening clap that was like an explosion, and every window in the building shattered; the faux Roman pillars along the front of the building collapsed, blasted backward through the building like matchsticks in a hurricane.
The Medhall building listed dangerously off to the side as more supports broke free, and more, and then the building fell over sideways with a slow, ponderous grace that seemed almost unreal, and it brought ruin to its surroundings, crushing cars and buildings and anyone unfortunate enough not to have been evacuated.
As the dust plume warred with the wind and rain, Behemoth continued his slow march towards our defensive line; and though destruction followed in his wake, our preparations were complete.
We were ready for him.
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- Location
- Illinois
The PRT troopers in this are fucking badass
Edit: Can you imagine the kinds of metal a heavily decorated PRT dude would have? Like, "I stared down an Endbringer and lived while a normie award," "I fought the S9 and lived," "I grabbed a villain by the throat and chokeslammed him into the pavement," they have to have medals for that shit somewhere. Can you even imagine that?
Edit: Can you imagine the kinds of metal a heavily decorated PRT dude would have? Like, "I stared down an Endbringer and lived while a normie award," "I fought the S9 and lived," "I grabbed a villain by the throat and chokeslammed him into the pavement," they have to have medals for that shit somewhere. Can you even imagine that?
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- Location
- Here
Even Behemoth knows that neo-Nazism is not cool.
Steelhooves
Star Paladin
- Location
- Maripony-Damn it.
This chapter has me doing something I have not done for any worm story in a while....Hoping. This has to work, if not he is gonna ramp up and If he does we are gonna lose someone important or they are gonna learn something or a million different things could happen, but the biggest sticker for me is that is more magic we and by extension the Simurgh gets to see here is gonna bring her one step closer to figuring us out, and after that the entire world better start hoping the TSAB get here fast, because as much as I enjoy the idea of Pretty Magical Girl Simurgh-chan we ain't got enough gun for that.
Not a quest.
Marsyas
Surprisingly Jellicle
- Location
- Undimensioned and Unseen
You are correct: this is not a quest.
It was probably just a slip of the fingers. People get into habits of speech and thought that can slip through at odd times. It's a thing that happens, and while talking as if a story were a quest can certainly go in toxic directions, I think in this case it's mostly harmless.
Mandabar
Waifu of choice is Rem. Give that girl some hugs!
- Location
- Florida, USA [Yes. Florida *FacePalm*]
The PRT are mooks yes. But they are brave and have fucking balls of pure adamantium!
It's a good sign I think. People are just so invested in it. That and the POV as well
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Still not a quest.
- Location
- Illinois
I feel like all of you are completely misinterpreting @Steelhooves remark. Go re-read it, with "hoping" replaced with "empathizing." I believe he's simply stating that he has become emotionally invested in this story.
Trooper1023
Look, sir! Droids!
- Location
- NYC USA
You... you... That line...
rofl:Tried it, reaction: STILL not a quest.
- Location
- California
Mmkay, but I'm gonna have to say that your opinion here really doesn't matter. People are allowed to be invested in non-quest stories. People are allowed to hope that their favorite characters make it out okay in non-quest stories. And people are most certainly allowed to be terrified of Pretty Magical Girl Simurgh-chan in non-quest stories. Having never actually read a quest myself, I have certainly been involved enough in a story (Worm itself is a great example, actually) to start thinking in terms of "we" with the characters.
On the subject of the chapter! I'm enjoying the way that they're testing how different things work against Behemoth, it makes for an interesting puzzle factor. I'm also enjoying the adventures of already-retired Rodriguez and the PRT. Looking forward to the next chapter!
This bit was a little unclear to me. Is the Bounded Field still up? I'm not sure if Yuuno dropped the Bounded Field, or if Behemoth punctured the field and dropped everyone back into realspace, or if Behemoth just launched the attack in both dimensions so that Taylor is still in the Bounded Field but Behemoth is also slaughtering people in realspace.
Marsyas
Surprisingly Jellicle
- Location
- Undimensioned and Unseen
He made one attack that occurred in both dimensions.
Mandabar
Waifu of choice is Rem. Give that girl some hugs!
- Location
- Florida, USA [Yes. Florida *FacePalm*]
And this is still a dickish reply.
Yep still no change.
I mean honestly if people were actually trying to tell Marsyas what to do, like in a quest, I could understand the complaint. But they aren't. Just pronouns issues. Go replace all those 'we' with 'they' or something.
Just bugs me when people say this before there is an issue.
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- Location
- California
Nitewind is trolling for the luvz
- Location
- Ural, Russia, Earth
Not the hero we want, but the one that we deserve.
Sure why not, I luvz you all very much. *Projects luvz.*
XOXOXO
#AvatarPicSuperRelevant
Warning: Warning
- Location
- Australia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Mizu
Software Developer
- Location
- Victoria, Australia
...What did we do to deserve that? Well, unless it's counting what we've done on this side of the fourth wall, then yeah, we likely do deserve Magical Girl Simurgh, given what the fandom has put the cast of Worm through.
- Location
- Ural, Russia, Earth
Pretty Magical Girl Simurgh-chan, Scatterbrained Warrior of Shipping and SCIENCE!
In the name of the Chart, I'll ship you!
Rajvik_wolfboy
Wolf amongst the stars.
- Location
- Florida
Why do you say that, Simmie-chan is a good girl
Lol