Hm, yes. Let`s fix that.
Fair warning : I do not write a lot, or well. Quality is not assured.
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The fight against Leviathan had not been going well.
The second Endbringer was a daunting opponent at the best of times, but his attack this time had come with a ferocity and ruthlessness previously unwitnessed. In the face of its raging waves, rending strikes and crushing blows even the many, many gathered parahumans seemed like so much wheat before the reaper.
The initial attack had quite literally decimated the defenders, and even now, with the Triumvirate fully engaging the beast the list of casualties did not seem to even slightly abate.
Aegis down. Chubster deceased. Kaiser deceased. Narwhal down. Dauntless deceased.
Grim and determined, Colin fought on. While he felt a certain, sick satisfaction at enduring where Dauntless had failed, he did not allow that to distract him. Even with all his technology and skill he was physically only human, and the slightest distraction, the faintest error, would have been potentially deadly against even the previous, more subdued, less merciless Leviathan. Against the current attack it was all he could do to not die immediately, sacrificing gear, bones, even an arm to stay alive, stay in the fight, present a credible threat, wait for his chance.
Clockblocker down. Fenja deceased. Velocity deceased.
'There !'
A crushing blow by Alexandria, along with a coordinated ranged strike from Legend and Eidolon left Leviathan momentarily distracted. The combat algorithm gave the best chance for a succesful, survivable strike it had throughout the battle; 34%.
His wordless battlecry drowned in the rain and waves, Armsmaster struck, shearing the Nanothorn blade clean through a third of Leviathans tail. He paid for it almost immediately, the water shadow on him in a sundering torrent, but even as pain exploded throughout his chest, his weapon torn away by the waters force, the satisfaction of hearing the Endbringer roar in pain and fury was as all encompassing as the darkness of unconciousness.
Armsmaster down.
A automatic stimulant injection system returned his awareness in short order, but Armsmaster knew he was out of the fight. One arm missing, the other broken so thoroughly it may as well be paste, no feeling in his legs.
As he noted the absence of the Endbringer, Armsmaster utilized rarely used muscles to smile. It was gone. He`d driven it off. Not just him, of course, but his weapon, his technology and his skill had been instrumental in dealing a hitherto unmatched blow to Leviathan, and the beast had fled with its now much shorter tail between its legs.
Leviathan in retre... Leviathan attacking again. Tidal wave incoming.
At first he didn`t, couldn`t believe it. Far from driven off, Leviathan had simply momentarily disengaged only to return on the crest of a towering wall of water, rising high into the sky and deceptively slowly but inexorably finally rushing towards the demoralized defenders. Armsmaster had made his peace already, so he simply stared defiantly at his end, unwilling to give in.
Then he saw her. Pretender.
Somehow she`d appeared, quite suddenly, on the water between the oncoming wall of death and what remained of the city and its defenders, almost relaxed, like she was simply having a sunday stroll in her resplendent blue dress and silvery cap.
He wanted to scream, to chastise her, that there was nothing even she could do here, not to throw her life away in such a foolish, doomed endeavour, but his throat was unwilling to cooperate, so all he could do was watch and behold a young womans brave, final stand.
And then everything changed. What happened next was so fundamentally impossible, so unbelievable that Armsmaster, no, Colin knew he would never look at anything quite the same way.
Pretender spoke, and it resounded throughout the battleground. Not loud as such, but as if the sound had simply bypassed the normal mechanisms of hearing to resound directly in his sou... brain.
"No."
And against all odds the wave calmed and receeded, Leviathan seemingly puzzled before it was charging through the water at Pretender for the insult of daring to supercede its authority over water.
It did not get far; a endless shower of starlight struck its mass, while its greatest ally, greatest tool, the waters themselves rose and carried it off in defiance of its will.
"Begone."
Under the unceasing stellar assault, denied its hydrokinesis, Leviathan obeyed, and this time it stayed gone.
And as Pretender fell backwards into the ocean, Alexandria already swooping down to rescue her from an ignoble drowning death, Colin Wallis, for the first time in a long, long while,
believed.
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Oracles are natively W1S2 after all.