- Location
- Chula Vista
Ultraman is from their version of Earth-3, or 3-AB here. Basically the evil counterpart of Superman for the Crime Syndicate. They got taken down years ago…and Red Queen Bonesaw'd/Wretched him for his Kryptonian biology.
Under The Cerise Skies [Worm/Steven Universe/Multi-crossover] [SI]
- Thread starter AEM
- Start date
- Mature
Huh, now that you point it out, you could make a full scale shard out of any metahuman with enough spare mass.
Superman bloated into cancerous form still has Superman's powers and Superman's soul, no matter how much he gets distorted by, slowly ballooning larger and wider until he is a small continent of flesh covering the landscape with Shardflesh implants installed throughout the body to ensure compliance and maintenance upkeep to oversee the process of fully converting into a new Shard hosting Superman's powers.
- Location
- Chula Vista
That's one of the reasons the war is so dangerous. Superman absorbs a tiny amount of solar energy for being able to move at a thousand times the speed of sound, being effectively invulnerable, impossible senses, with the attack output to destroy mountains and islands and all kinds of BS. And I had to tone him down from hyper-FTL planet killing Supergod.
There are thousands if not millions of metas with BS powers, billions of aliens with their own superspecies biology. And from what I've read up on Ward, one of Abaddon's host species was basically Blacklight in how they exchanged DNA and parts. So…it's a bit of a problem, keeping shards from gaining the right power and blowing up planets.
Penumbra 7.1
- Location
- Chula Vista
Penumbra 7.1
The Sirenian Conference had packed itself up very quickly, in two days the delegates had returned to their home dimensions and planets. Only the city remained, and the portal had been moved to a more distant location from Sirenia for one reason or another. Most of the portals being set up led to empty Earths within their dimensional axis. Though since it was July 4th there was some slow down due to the holiday.
Trade was opening up, though this was more on worlds other than Bet due to Scion. Aleph was opening up trade deals with Wicce, mainly relating to technology and the general selling of products. Programs were being set up for hero exchange programs, setting up the procedures for working on an international scale or lower.
The League was among the participants, as was the Department of Extranormal Operations. Which had been reformed in the last twenty years into an equivalent of the PRT and Protectorate. Surprisingly they didn't suffer from the level of corruption and crazy experiments that plagued comic book organizations.
Just slightly below the amount of corruption within a law enforcement agency, so there is absolutely some fucked up shit going on. The League was effectively a super scaled Guild, with hundreds of members and allowed to operate internationally. Even in Bialya after Queen Bee got…well super dead.
Turns out pheromones don't do much against the avatar of an entity.
From what I could tell the ratio of heroes to villains was about half and half, though it was leaning more in the direction of heroes due to some die-offs. Some twelve thousand two hundred scattered across the planet, with the DEO having about five hundred. Though that was masked people, and didn't include people who had access to powers and didn't bother with the thing.
Then it easily tripled since magic is becoming common practice. But obviously not all magic users are going to be into the masked caper business. That was a rather more specialized role. Mainly done to give people some reassurance and a funnel for the nuttier people. Though another part of the reason for costumes was to reduce fear.
Wearing your underwear on the outside helps people ignore the fact you could destroy a continent. It's one of the reasons I stay nice and small besides it being a comfortable height. There's quite a few things capes have to do to not give the general populace nightmares.
I sat down on a community bench in Sirenia, the modest city was pretty when it wasn't so full of fracking tourists. And wow I was spending way too much time with Gems if I was using fracking as a cuss word.
The last couple of days had been oddly unnerving, a paranoiac streak that had been bothering me for a while now. To the point I was sleeping more like an hour a day. Not that it harmed me actually, turns out gem-hybrids in fact only need an hour a day. I sleep more because I'm lazy and to help calibrate my programming.
The Diamonds had left about a day ago, and Aster was back on his Earth, something to do with visiting Pluto. I was still so nervous, and I wasn't sure where it was coming from.
"Brandon?" I looked over to Flowers as she approached me with a dire expression. She had a look on her face, a nervous flex to her claws.
"Would it be okay to ask for a prediction?" She stilled, and I pretended not to notice how rarely she blinked as a Gem.
"Yes of course…it's why I came, I thought a question from you might be able to focus my future sight." She sounded exhausted.
A thought came, a strike of intuition.
"Tell me…will an Endbringer attack a location associated with Gemkind?" She froze up, listening to my question intently. Her one eye shone with clarity, and her static aura rippled with ice and cold.
Her voice was as freezing as a blizzard. "I foresee that the Behemoth will attack Brockton Bay. If he is not stopped, he will destroy the city and attack Sirenia. He is…" she stopped and I felt a pulse, a distant scream.
I grabbed her hand, and I Saw it. Something was screaming, buried, trapped within disparate alien flesh, I saw the burning eyes of the Behemoth, the Herokiller.
"How much time?"
"Fifty five minutes to attack Brockton Bay." I didn't like the way she said that.
"He's going to pass through where I landed isn't he?" I asked, swallowing my bile. "What about the people nearby?"
"We have ten minutes to evacuate, send out a broadcast." I did as she asked, we had teleportation. We could do that much at least. "I'm going to join the other Diviners we need to prepare…you should…"
"I'm going to warn them myself." She blinked, and seemed horrified at the idea.
"You're going to stay and fight aren't you?" I felt fear ripple in my churning stomach.
"Yes I am."
I couldn't let the Endbringers gain access to new forms of dimensional travel. They'd find my world, they'd kill who knows how many people. They'd kill an untold number of people here, and I refused to be a bystander to something like this. I wasn't cut out for the hero business, but this was instead fighting a monster capable of destroying civilizations.
I was a Diamond, and this I could do.
Flowers gave me a weary glance, and her song was sad, a mournful dirge.
The city was in chaos, a crush of bodies surging around various points below me. It was a thoughtless movement, but hundreds of volunteers from other dimensions were helping out. A Kineceleran was rapidly flitting about, carrying people to the shelters. Mass teleportation would bring Behemoth faster, the best we could was to place beacons to rapidly teleport them moments before disaster struck. Plus the portal simply wasn't large enough to evacuate a city and Galvan teleportation arrays weren't common yet.
We had placed specialized shielding around the shelter with permission that would unravel attacks from Behemoth. It wouldn't last but it would work well enough for now. Twenty minutes ago, hundreds of square miles of forest was left a cracked wasteland of radiation and magma. All without emerging once, simply leaving a trail of destruction almost two hundred miles long. He was still holding back, but a number of roads and small towns had been left decimated. Barely evacuated by speedsters and teleportation capes from 460-AB.
The PRT building was rather generic, some six stories tall and with dark tinted windows. The parking lot held a fair amount of PRT personnel, and a good number of DEO members were speaking with them. The heavy fortifications were quite visible from within the confines, and I looked around for familiar faces.
Dragon was standing in her newest mechanical suit, one about fifty feet long and half again as wide. It resembled a mix between a turtle-dragon and an Osprey plane, phase-shifted metal reinforcing its durability along with force fields.
Kuraokami was a Behemoth-counter suit, it can generate waves and beams of freezing cold, and absorb kinetic energy and electricity. The chest fired a grappling hook that could freeze itself in time, and the gun emplacements had properties like Legend's lasers. It could release a gas capable of absorbing and nullifying radiation and radioactive materials.
She had six of them, running them using virtual instances. While she wasn't becoming a machine god anytime soon, her limitations were much less now. She was facing east, and I caught the distant vibrations as Behemoth drew ever closer.
With a muffled thunderclap, a dozen more people emerged, including the Triumvirate. Eidolon stood proud, but it was a false image, I could feel his self loathing. Alexandria projected an image of confidence, power, all the quintessential essence of a superhero. It rang hollow for me.
Legend was closer, his eyes roving around the gathering of superpowered beings. Some of their teams were with them, there was Usher for Alexandria. Astrologer and Ursa Aurora for Legend, Dispatch and Exalt for Eidolon. I could see a number of local capes as well. Most of the Empire Eighty-Eight was here, Kaiser conversing with Hookwolf.
So far every gang attack has been prevented quite easily, turns out drones can work quite well at guiding people away from being lynched. Melanie was here with her team, apparently they didn't like the idea of Behemoth attacking a populated dimension.
The entirety of the local heroes were here, from New Wave to the Protectorate and Wards. Reinforcements from all over the country, Myrddin, Chevalier in his new armor, the components made in a rush order.
Infinitum metal melded with Endbringer flesh for both his armor and his sword. The decorative aluminum blade was replaced by Nth-metal, while the ceramic was replaced by Taydenite crystal grown and cut into shape by an Osmosian. For his armor the same applied, though the taydenite was replaced by depleted Promethium alloyed with titanium and vanadium.
There were a few unexpected visitors, Accord and his Ambassadors, Citrine was especially important with her ability to tune reality. She'd be able to block Behemoth's power with the right tuning. With the extra time, more and more capes were emerging from all over the world.
Capes from Steven's Earth were showing up, and Icon was one of them, and I recognized him easily enough. He had the general Superman/Alexandria package though with a unique twist to it. He projected energy, a field of exotic positrons to create concussive beams, force fields, stun bolts, enhanced punches, with some type of positron field sensory system.
He landed next to Narwhal, curiously examining the way her scintillating force fields covered her body. The rainbow hue of her scales, a method I copied on instinct, wrapping my own frame in the same manner. It would nullify the kill field of Behemoth, though my body would absorb any attempt to conjure energy inside me. I'd literally eat it, but it would be uncomfortable with all that heat.
Cenotaph was here, summoning three projections. It was a large man, and it shared a strange energy that encompassed her form. A Trump capable of providing invincibility and superhuman speed. One of her dozens of permanent powers.
I hopped over, and could see Legend was radiating light. I lightly consumed it, and found hundreds of Gems scattered across the city, outnumbering the capes. Most of them were wearing armor of some kind, body conforming cloth and plates, like something out of Mass Effect.
Their gemstones had a ring around them, the device used to protect gems from heavy impacts without compromising certain aspects of their biology. I could see magic twisting out from channels in the armor, similar to the channels in my clothing that made it so much tougher.
Numerous Gem troop carriers were circling in the air, shaped like a mix of the Roaming Eye from the front and a Halo Pelican from the rest. The Valkyrja were assault carriers, with modular components for any mission. They had two chin mounted autocannons, firing hard light projectiles, wing mounted anti-armor cannons with a range of payloads, and a side mounted turret. They were tough birds, easily capable of taking hits from superpowered beings.
I could see Elle talking with a nervous Flechette, and I felt parental instincts scream to banish her from attending. They were near the Wards, and I knew I had tagged them with the tens of thousands of Robonoids in the city.
An armored Quartz walked up to me, and her gas-mask like helmet folded back to reveal a familiar face.
"It's been a while, runt." Starry was grinning, though it didn't fit on her solemn face. "It's been a while since I've dealt with an Asura, this Behemoth…he'll be good practice." She summoned her heavy shield, which had been modified with spinning blades and a cut-down gun barrel around the center sigil.
"I'll have to provide some more detailed information, won't I?" She nodded, gesturing to Legend.
"His briefing should start up soon." Argent, my sole Lapis Lazuli was covered in an armored bodysuit, water circling around her like planets around a star.
"I have to thank our new friends in the Gems and the United Transdimensional Realms for their early alert. We have minutes to prepare and brief for Behemoth's arrival—" I skipped over the part where he mentioned casualties, waiting for my cue. "The Gem Empire has given us far greater detail on ways to combat the Endbringers, strategies to mention while we have time."
And there it is.
I breathed, in and out, in and out.
I jumped, and floated up to where Legend was. I released my song, my power bursting out as needed. "Behemoth's most obvious target is the portal to Sirenia, which we've already keyed to lead to an empty world while it's closed, the offshore PRT base is another target. The UTR has faced similar creatures to the Endbringers, and have pinpointed the closest thing they have to a weakness. "
There was a murmur starting in the crowd. "The Endbringers are projections for a central core, their bodies are basically just armor with no major biological function. They don't need their eyes, and mostly feign the feeling of pain. The core is a lense of portals, draining and spreading a planet's worth of mass across thousands of dimensions." I saw how people paled, the hope curdling. "However their transdimensional flesh is susceptible to certain types of space and time warping effects. Spatial and gravity warping, dimensional swapping or warping, temporal attacks." I formed a hologram they could all see. Pointing out the many layers and the singularity-dense core.
"Which means certain capes are going to be priority targets for Behemoth. Damsel of Distress, Chevalier, Flechette, Eidolon, Barrage, Clockblocker, String Theory, and some Gem weapons would be his main targets for removal. Each and every one of you has a Dragon's armbands, and an allotment of Gemtech to provide shielding, medical assistance, and assistance with use of your powers."
I gestured to Damsel of Distress, who looked pleased at the limb enhancers used to improve her power. A number of more modern Robonoids took up their posts, controlled by our drone queens. They were round machines with sharper floating limbs and exterior cannons generating dimensional shunts for energy.
"How many drones can your people supply?" A black clad cape spoke from my left.
"Tens of thousands easily for the little guys, hundreds for Light Support Robonoids, and dozens of Kaiju-Counter Battle Mechs." The many capes parted for the aforementioned war machines, which were basically round white Roaming Eyes with a floating torso and weaponized limbs. Piloted by any Gem though most commonly by Rubies and smaller Gems. "With the right combination of powers, we can pry open Behemoth's armor and destroy the core." I projected confidence, and one of the capes in the crowd spoke.
It was Lung.
"Many have said that before, but the Endbringers have always won, always survived. Why can your people be certain of victory?" His skepticism was reasonable.
"Because we've killed such monsters before." Argent landed with a heavy slam, face cloaked by the hood of her armor. "You could call them distant cousins, I personally fought and destroyed Charybdis. Like your Leviathan, but a hundred times larger and with your Behemoth's control over lightning." There was fear there, but a trickle of hope was opening.
There was a good chance we could win this, but anything could happen.
Legend continued his briefing while I added our own additions.
My leg jumped up and down nervously, as I digested the news given on a private Diamond line. It was horrifying, suspicious, nerve wracking new information. And there was nothing I could do about it.
Alexandria flew up to me.
"You've left something out." Was the statement from her. "What is it?"
"I've mentioned they're holding back right?" I blanked and she gave a harsher look. "Right. There's a reason we aren't receiving too many capes from the UTR." I shuddered. "The War World began attacking the moment the Behemoth started to move."
"War World?"
"An ancient moon-sized superweapon capable of destroying planets, first commandeered by an alien conqueror who was turned into a meat puppet for an agent."
"It's attacking their version of Earth, and taking away resources that could be used on our end." She summarized the situation.
"We've still got volunteers being shipped in like the Tetramands in Asura armor, and several more capes." Looker was one of them, one of the most powerful psionics now on record for humans. Flight, psionic shields, telepathy and projections of mental attacks. A nineteen year old redhead who had been used as a super soldier by the League of Shadows. "There's some Necrofriggians paired with Sonorosians and Voljor's troops."
"Necrofriggians to counter his heat and radiation, Sonorosians to counter sound and Fulmini to counter Behemoth's lightning and energy projection." Alexandria took longer than I thought to come to that conclusion. "We've got a dynakinetic, Harq Wahid. A fairly strong one to help with his kinetic energy manipulation."
She had Abaddon's Energetic 3, and had a bubble where she could absorb, and redirect energy. She could bleed off virtually any attack that struck her, even a punch from a Kryptonian with enough buildup.
"This War World…it can strike at multiple dimensions at once." Alexandria was on the ball today. "Your colony is focused on preventing it's weapons from piercing into ours and destroying the planet."
"Along with hundreds of other Earths, else we'd just chuck Behemoth into space and tear him apart with our fleet." Let's see him shrug off a multidimensional energy beam then! "Even then we have hundreds of Gems to spare, and dozens of volunteers. Healers, runners, people able to hamper his abilities."
Alexandria blinked. "With the number of capes at hand, can we defeat the Behemoth?"
I looked over the capes from our vantage point, I looked at my Gems by the hundreds, more and more people, more and more pieces on the board. Shelters prepared, people evacuated. The numbers game of war, that fog that could only be cleared so much by scrying. I wasn't the general here, not yet, but I helped calculate the odds, the job of general was more the job of a Hessonite who had joined to organize my future armies. Wasn't that a thought?
My Gems court war, weapons, guns, cannons, beasts of burden, crafted mechanical and gemological entities. Armor, shielding, and magic.
"We can win, but we have to expect him to have tricks up his sleeve. Beyond the normal…I don't like the coincidence of War World's attack."
Alexandria scowled. "Neither do I."
I had taken to the frontlines, those ready, willing and able to contend with the godly strength of Behemoth. Icon was there, numerous Brutes and Alexandria and Hallow was there. Argent my Lapis Lazuli was here, carrying a strange rifle-like weapon. The Tetramands were here, holding massive gravity hammers and axes with dimension-cutting properties. A swarm of drones gathered around every cape, every participant.
I could see the rippling heat that marked Behemoth's approach as he swam through the earth at several hundred miles per hour. There was a rumble, as he began his emergence procedure. Which gave us maybe two or three minutes where we rallied around the portal.
That seemed to be his primary target. The dangers were shifting unpredictability, I could literally taste the direction of it, all centered around Behemoth. Eidolon was ready to go on, and so was Cenotaph with her invulnerability lasting for up to eight hours after being cast. Though she was limited to providing invulnerability to six people.
Flechette, Damsel, and Barrage had been provided a dose, and the remaining two had been given to some other capes with useful powers. The power would last even after she dismissed her projection. Which she had, possessing a trio of Flechette, Alexandria, and a third cape with an unknown power.
Everyone had been provided shielding using special belts, enough to block strikes from Behemoth. For anywhere from a split second to a half minute depending on some factors. Tens of thousands of drones, had become just under a hundred thousand, over a thousand larger Robonoids, over a hundred vehicles.
I conjured my shield, summoned my machete, and I kept the shaking from showing. Hallow was another frontline fighter, wearing grey plated armor, and flying on wings of shadow.
Do not be afraid.
His voidspeech was alien, even to my Gemsong. It was paradoxically silent, and I whispered back.
"I'm not…I'm not cut out for this kind of business." I was…scared shitless, and I couldn't shake off those worries.
Perhaps not, but you are here anyway. You chose to fight.
There was a comforting edge to his almost-voice, the way his weapon twisted and lensed light.
We will not die, not on this day. I refuse to.
Determined little mass of void wasn't he?
"Behemoth is emerging!" Someone warned, and I floated higher to get a better view. The ground vibrated apart as Behemoth clawed his way into the air.
He was enormous, nearly fifty feet tall, a mountain of stony, molten flesh, a single cyclopic eye burning red. The moment he emerged, Eidolon lashed out with his matter eraser. Air was cut away along with a solid chunk of Behemoth's chest.
It failed to penetrate into the inner layers, and I could hear Eidolon's rage as a pulse of psychic backlash. He slammed down, grappling the monster with a strange silver energy, additional limbs projected along his own. There was a pulse, a vibration, and Behemoth broke his grip to drill back down.
I felt the warning, parsed the future, and Behemoth caught me in his kill field. It burned like nothing else, radiation, heat, electricity, immense kinetic energy, and a burst of fire. But it was energy, so it was absorbed, consumed by the light phased within flesh and bone.
Hallow wasn't affected, his void immune to the effects, and he released a shriek and his Pure Nail cut away at literal meters of Endbringer flesh in a single swing. I felt anger, and released a high pitched song, a screaming burst that nullified his sonic blasts.
In a split second I had created walls made of hundreds of barriers, lining them with spikes and blades and spears. I sent them crashing down at hypersonic speed, and they went through his outer layers like a hot knife through butter.
He sent out a lightning strike, and I rolled around it, ionizing the air and deflecting it's path towards a nearby Fulmini who happily absorbed the energy. I charged forward, punching him into the air, and stabbed the machete into his chest, folding my shield around it. I cut deeply, and sent a nuke-like burst of energy covered in Sting.
Behemoth stilled, and I trapped myself with him inside a bubble as he generated a localized plasma explosion. There was something in his eye, and I felt the threat, and a wave of kinetic energy shattered the air around us. I teleported outside the bubble using my transfer-jewel.
I kept up the bubble, and I could feel Behemoth's energy manipulation struggle against my trap. But it wouldn't hold as Behemoth swung, each fist coated with plasma and immense kinetic energy.
Eidolon popped in, and I shouted. "I can't hold him for long, don't let anyone squishy close once he breaks free." Portaling him out was impossible, they'd tear through the portals and back into our reality in no time. I generated spikes within the bubble, and infused them with Sting once more. That should—
My bubble shattered, and the nuclear fireball that followed was reflected back by Cenotaph, charring Behemoth. The monster released a high pitched sonic roar focused on me, and I winced at the way it stung. He sent out waves of intelligent fire, spreading them to nearby buildings. A snowstorm formed, cooling the fires, and another point warped into clouds of gas and ice. Dragon attacked Behemoth with her creations, and the city shook.
I lashed out with my energy projection, forming a cutting barrage of beams to push Behemoth away. He shifted some of the energy into the ground, leaving crater marks with each stomp.
Every step released earthquakes, sinkholes as he sent precise vibrations into the ground. Alexandria struck Behemoth with supersonic speed, and the battle shifted to one between familiar enemies. She slipped in and out of his kill field, and I prepared myself.
A void tendril caught me, and Hallow murmured in the void. With a whipping motion I was turned into a missile. I wrapped myself in scale-barriers, my fists sheathed in telekinetic energy. He was still holding back, I could feel it in my bones. I couldn't dig my way deep enough with my limited application of Sting.
Alexandria was sent flying…he was reflecting my attacks onto her, and I could see he was consuming energy from the power lines, and trying, and failing to get energy from our machinery. Which didn't work because we're not idiots.
Behemoth roared and he sent out a wall of lightning, and accelerated in my direction again.
A fist the size of a car filled my vision, clanging against my shield.
"Myrddin down B1, Weather Wizard down D2, Mythra down D2."
The Sirenian Conference had packed itself up very quickly, in two days the delegates had returned to their home dimensions and planets. Only the city remained, and the portal had been moved to a more distant location from Sirenia for one reason or another. Most of the portals being set up led to empty Earths within their dimensional axis. Though since it was July 4th there was some slow down due to the holiday.
Trade was opening up, though this was more on worlds other than Bet due to Scion. Aleph was opening up trade deals with Wicce, mainly relating to technology and the general selling of products. Programs were being set up for hero exchange programs, setting up the procedures for working on an international scale or lower.
The League was among the participants, as was the Department of Extranormal Operations. Which had been reformed in the last twenty years into an equivalent of the PRT and Protectorate. Surprisingly they didn't suffer from the level of corruption and crazy experiments that plagued comic book organizations.
Just slightly below the amount of corruption within a law enforcement agency, so there is absolutely some fucked up shit going on. The League was effectively a super scaled Guild, with hundreds of members and allowed to operate internationally. Even in Bialya after Queen Bee got…well super dead.
Turns out pheromones don't do much against the avatar of an entity.
From what I could tell the ratio of heroes to villains was about half and half, though it was leaning more in the direction of heroes due to some die-offs. Some twelve thousand two hundred scattered across the planet, with the DEO having about five hundred. Though that was masked people, and didn't include people who had access to powers and didn't bother with the thing.
Then it easily tripled since magic is becoming common practice. But obviously not all magic users are going to be into the masked caper business. That was a rather more specialized role. Mainly done to give people some reassurance and a funnel for the nuttier people. Though another part of the reason for costumes was to reduce fear.
Wearing your underwear on the outside helps people ignore the fact you could destroy a continent. It's one of the reasons I stay nice and small besides it being a comfortable height. There's quite a few things capes have to do to not give the general populace nightmares.
I sat down on a community bench in Sirenia, the modest city was pretty when it wasn't so full of fracking tourists. And wow I was spending way too much time with Gems if I was using fracking as a cuss word.
The last couple of days had been oddly unnerving, a paranoiac streak that had been bothering me for a while now. To the point I was sleeping more like an hour a day. Not that it harmed me actually, turns out gem-hybrids in fact only need an hour a day. I sleep more because I'm lazy and to help calibrate my programming.
The Diamonds had left about a day ago, and Aster was back on his Earth, something to do with visiting Pluto. I was still so nervous, and I wasn't sure where it was coming from.
"Brandon?" I looked over to Flowers as she approached me with a dire expression. She had a look on her face, a nervous flex to her claws.
"Would it be okay to ask for a prediction?" She stilled, and I pretended not to notice how rarely she blinked as a Gem.
"Yes of course…it's why I came, I thought a question from you might be able to focus my future sight." She sounded exhausted.
A thought came, a strike of intuition.
"Tell me…will an Endbringer attack a location associated with Gemkind?" She froze up, listening to my question intently. Her one eye shone with clarity, and her static aura rippled with ice and cold.
Her voice was as freezing as a blizzard. "I foresee that the Behemoth will attack Brockton Bay. If he is not stopped, he will destroy the city and attack Sirenia. He is…" she stopped and I felt a pulse, a distant scream.
I grabbed her hand, and I Saw it. Something was screaming, buried, trapped within disparate alien flesh, I saw the burning eyes of the Behemoth, the Herokiller.
"How much time?"
"Fifty five minutes to attack Brockton Bay." I didn't like the way she said that.
"He's going to pass through where I landed isn't he?" I asked, swallowing my bile. "What about the people nearby?"
"We have ten minutes to evacuate, send out a broadcast." I did as she asked, we had teleportation. We could do that much at least. "I'm going to join the other Diviners we need to prepare…you should…"
"I'm going to warn them myself." She blinked, and seemed horrified at the idea.
"You're going to stay and fight aren't you?" I felt fear ripple in my churning stomach.
"Yes I am."
I couldn't let the Endbringers gain access to new forms of dimensional travel. They'd find my world, they'd kill who knows how many people. They'd kill an untold number of people here, and I refused to be a bystander to something like this. I wasn't cut out for the hero business, but this was instead fighting a monster capable of destroying civilizations.
I was a Diamond, and this I could do.
Flowers gave me a weary glance, and her song was sad, a mournful dirge.
The city was in chaos, a crush of bodies surging around various points below me. It was a thoughtless movement, but hundreds of volunteers from other dimensions were helping out. A Kineceleran was rapidly flitting about, carrying people to the shelters. Mass teleportation would bring Behemoth faster, the best we could was to place beacons to rapidly teleport them moments before disaster struck. Plus the portal simply wasn't large enough to evacuate a city and Galvan teleportation arrays weren't common yet.
We had placed specialized shielding around the shelter with permission that would unravel attacks from Behemoth. It wouldn't last but it would work well enough for now. Twenty minutes ago, hundreds of square miles of forest was left a cracked wasteland of radiation and magma. All without emerging once, simply leaving a trail of destruction almost two hundred miles long. He was still holding back, but a number of roads and small towns had been left decimated. Barely evacuated by speedsters and teleportation capes from 460-AB.
The PRT building was rather generic, some six stories tall and with dark tinted windows. The parking lot held a fair amount of PRT personnel, and a good number of DEO members were speaking with them. The heavy fortifications were quite visible from within the confines, and I looked around for familiar faces.
Dragon was standing in her newest mechanical suit, one about fifty feet long and half again as wide. It resembled a mix between a turtle-dragon and an Osprey plane, phase-shifted metal reinforcing its durability along with force fields.
Kuraokami was a Behemoth-counter suit, it can generate waves and beams of freezing cold, and absorb kinetic energy and electricity. The chest fired a grappling hook that could freeze itself in time, and the gun emplacements had properties like Legend's lasers. It could release a gas capable of absorbing and nullifying radiation and radioactive materials.
She had six of them, running them using virtual instances. While she wasn't becoming a machine god anytime soon, her limitations were much less now. She was facing east, and I caught the distant vibrations as Behemoth drew ever closer.
With a muffled thunderclap, a dozen more people emerged, including the Triumvirate. Eidolon stood proud, but it was a false image, I could feel his self loathing. Alexandria projected an image of confidence, power, all the quintessential essence of a superhero. It rang hollow for me.
Legend was closer, his eyes roving around the gathering of superpowered beings. Some of their teams were with them, there was Usher for Alexandria. Astrologer and Ursa Aurora for Legend, Dispatch and Exalt for Eidolon. I could see a number of local capes as well. Most of the Empire Eighty-Eight was here, Kaiser conversing with Hookwolf.
So far every gang attack has been prevented quite easily, turns out drones can work quite well at guiding people away from being lynched. Melanie was here with her team, apparently they didn't like the idea of Behemoth attacking a populated dimension.
The entirety of the local heroes were here, from New Wave to the Protectorate and Wards. Reinforcements from all over the country, Myrddin, Chevalier in his new armor, the components made in a rush order.
Infinitum metal melded with Endbringer flesh for both his armor and his sword. The decorative aluminum blade was replaced by Nth-metal, while the ceramic was replaced by Taydenite crystal grown and cut into shape by an Osmosian. For his armor the same applied, though the taydenite was replaced by depleted Promethium alloyed with titanium and vanadium.
There were a few unexpected visitors, Accord and his Ambassadors, Citrine was especially important with her ability to tune reality. She'd be able to block Behemoth's power with the right tuning. With the extra time, more and more capes were emerging from all over the world.
Capes from Steven's Earth were showing up, and Icon was one of them, and I recognized him easily enough. He had the general Superman/Alexandria package though with a unique twist to it. He projected energy, a field of exotic positrons to create concussive beams, force fields, stun bolts, enhanced punches, with some type of positron field sensory system.
He landed next to Narwhal, curiously examining the way her scintillating force fields covered her body. The rainbow hue of her scales, a method I copied on instinct, wrapping my own frame in the same manner. It would nullify the kill field of Behemoth, though my body would absorb any attempt to conjure energy inside me. I'd literally eat it, but it would be uncomfortable with all that heat.
Cenotaph was here, summoning three projections. It was a large man, and it shared a strange energy that encompassed her form. A Trump capable of providing invincibility and superhuman speed. One of her dozens of permanent powers.
I hopped over, and could see Legend was radiating light. I lightly consumed it, and found hundreds of Gems scattered across the city, outnumbering the capes. Most of them were wearing armor of some kind, body conforming cloth and plates, like something out of Mass Effect.
Their gemstones had a ring around them, the device used to protect gems from heavy impacts without compromising certain aspects of their biology. I could see magic twisting out from channels in the armor, similar to the channels in my clothing that made it so much tougher.
Numerous Gem troop carriers were circling in the air, shaped like a mix of the Roaming Eye from the front and a Halo Pelican from the rest. The Valkyrja were assault carriers, with modular components for any mission. They had two chin mounted autocannons, firing hard light projectiles, wing mounted anti-armor cannons with a range of payloads, and a side mounted turret. They were tough birds, easily capable of taking hits from superpowered beings.
I could see Elle talking with a nervous Flechette, and I felt parental instincts scream to banish her from attending. They were near the Wards, and I knew I had tagged them with the tens of thousands of Robonoids in the city.
An armored Quartz walked up to me, and her gas-mask like helmet folded back to reveal a familiar face.
"It's been a while, runt." Starry was grinning, though it didn't fit on her solemn face. "It's been a while since I've dealt with an Asura, this Behemoth…he'll be good practice." She summoned her heavy shield, which had been modified with spinning blades and a cut-down gun barrel around the center sigil.
"I'll have to provide some more detailed information, won't I?" She nodded, gesturing to Legend.
"His briefing should start up soon." Argent, my sole Lapis Lazuli was covered in an armored bodysuit, water circling around her like planets around a star.
"I have to thank our new friends in the Gems and the United Transdimensional Realms for their early alert. We have minutes to prepare and brief for Behemoth's arrival—" I skipped over the part where he mentioned casualties, waiting for my cue. "The Gem Empire has given us far greater detail on ways to combat the Endbringers, strategies to mention while we have time."
And there it is.
I breathed, in and out, in and out.
I jumped, and floated up to where Legend was. I released my song, my power bursting out as needed. "Behemoth's most obvious target is the portal to Sirenia, which we've already keyed to lead to an empty world while it's closed, the offshore PRT base is another target. The UTR has faced similar creatures to the Endbringers, and have pinpointed the closest thing they have to a weakness. "
There was a murmur starting in the crowd. "The Endbringers are projections for a central core, their bodies are basically just armor with no major biological function. They don't need their eyes, and mostly feign the feeling of pain. The core is a lense of portals, draining and spreading a planet's worth of mass across thousands of dimensions." I saw how people paled, the hope curdling. "However their transdimensional flesh is susceptible to certain types of space and time warping effects. Spatial and gravity warping, dimensional swapping or warping, temporal attacks." I formed a hologram they could all see. Pointing out the many layers and the singularity-dense core.
"Which means certain capes are going to be priority targets for Behemoth. Damsel of Distress, Chevalier, Flechette, Eidolon, Barrage, Clockblocker, String Theory, and some Gem weapons would be his main targets for removal. Each and every one of you has a Dragon's armbands, and an allotment of Gemtech to provide shielding, medical assistance, and assistance with use of your powers."
I gestured to Damsel of Distress, who looked pleased at the limb enhancers used to improve her power. A number of more modern Robonoids took up their posts, controlled by our drone queens. They were round machines with sharper floating limbs and exterior cannons generating dimensional shunts for energy.
"How many drones can your people supply?" A black clad cape spoke from my left.
"Tens of thousands easily for the little guys, hundreds for Light Support Robonoids, and dozens of Kaiju-Counter Battle Mechs." The many capes parted for the aforementioned war machines, which were basically round white Roaming Eyes with a floating torso and weaponized limbs. Piloted by any Gem though most commonly by Rubies and smaller Gems. "With the right combination of powers, we can pry open Behemoth's armor and destroy the core." I projected confidence, and one of the capes in the crowd spoke.
It was Lung.
"Many have said that before, but the Endbringers have always won, always survived. Why can your people be certain of victory?" His skepticism was reasonable.
"Because we've killed such monsters before." Argent landed with a heavy slam, face cloaked by the hood of her armor. "You could call them distant cousins, I personally fought and destroyed Charybdis. Like your Leviathan, but a hundred times larger and with your Behemoth's control over lightning." There was fear there, but a trickle of hope was opening.
There was a good chance we could win this, but anything could happen.
Legend continued his briefing while I added our own additions.
My leg jumped up and down nervously, as I digested the news given on a private Diamond line. It was horrifying, suspicious, nerve wracking new information. And there was nothing I could do about it.
Alexandria flew up to me.
"You've left something out." Was the statement from her. "What is it?"
"I've mentioned they're holding back right?" I blanked and she gave a harsher look. "Right. There's a reason we aren't receiving too many capes from the UTR." I shuddered. "The War World began attacking the moment the Behemoth started to move."
"War World?"
"An ancient moon-sized superweapon capable of destroying planets, first commandeered by an alien conqueror who was turned into a meat puppet for an agent."
"It's attacking their version of Earth, and taking away resources that could be used on our end." She summarized the situation.
"We've still got volunteers being shipped in like the Tetramands in Asura armor, and several more capes." Looker was one of them, one of the most powerful psionics now on record for humans. Flight, psionic shields, telepathy and projections of mental attacks. A nineteen year old redhead who had been used as a super soldier by the League of Shadows. "There's some Necrofriggians paired with Sonorosians and Voljor's troops."
"Necrofriggians to counter his heat and radiation, Sonorosians to counter sound and Fulmini to counter Behemoth's lightning and energy projection." Alexandria took longer than I thought to come to that conclusion. "We've got a dynakinetic, Harq Wahid. A fairly strong one to help with his kinetic energy manipulation."
She had Abaddon's Energetic 3, and had a bubble where she could absorb, and redirect energy. She could bleed off virtually any attack that struck her, even a punch from a Kryptonian with enough buildup.
"This War World…it can strike at multiple dimensions at once." Alexandria was on the ball today. "Your colony is focused on preventing it's weapons from piercing into ours and destroying the planet."
"Along with hundreds of other Earths, else we'd just chuck Behemoth into space and tear him apart with our fleet." Let's see him shrug off a multidimensional energy beam then! "Even then we have hundreds of Gems to spare, and dozens of volunteers. Healers, runners, people able to hamper his abilities."
Alexandria blinked. "With the number of capes at hand, can we defeat the Behemoth?"
I looked over the capes from our vantage point, I looked at my Gems by the hundreds, more and more people, more and more pieces on the board. Shelters prepared, people evacuated. The numbers game of war, that fog that could only be cleared so much by scrying. I wasn't the general here, not yet, but I helped calculate the odds, the job of general was more the job of a Hessonite who had joined to organize my future armies. Wasn't that a thought?
My Gems court war, weapons, guns, cannons, beasts of burden, crafted mechanical and gemological entities. Armor, shielding, and magic.
"We can win, but we have to expect him to have tricks up his sleeve. Beyond the normal…I don't like the coincidence of War World's attack."
Alexandria scowled. "Neither do I."
…CERISE STARHEART…
…HEAR MY CALL…
…SET ME FREE…
…I WILL NOT DIE LIKE THIS…
…THUNDER WILL SHATTER…
…THE STORM WILL COME…
…MY LIVING PRISON WILL BREAK…
…I WILL NOT BE CONSUMED…
…HEAR MY CALL…
…SET ME FREE…
…I WILL NOT DIE LIKE THIS…
…THUNDER WILL SHATTER…
…THE STORM WILL COME…
…MY LIVING PRISON WILL BREAK…
…I WILL NOT BE CONSUMED…
I had taken to the frontlines, those ready, willing and able to contend with the godly strength of Behemoth. Icon was there, numerous Brutes and Alexandria and Hallow was there. Argent my Lapis Lazuli was here, carrying a strange rifle-like weapon. The Tetramands were here, holding massive gravity hammers and axes with dimension-cutting properties. A swarm of drones gathered around every cape, every participant.
I could see the rippling heat that marked Behemoth's approach as he swam through the earth at several hundred miles per hour. There was a rumble, as he began his emergence procedure. Which gave us maybe two or three minutes where we rallied around the portal.
That seemed to be his primary target. The dangers were shifting unpredictability, I could literally taste the direction of it, all centered around Behemoth. Eidolon was ready to go on, and so was Cenotaph with her invulnerability lasting for up to eight hours after being cast. Though she was limited to providing invulnerability to six people.
Flechette, Damsel, and Barrage had been provided a dose, and the remaining two had been given to some other capes with useful powers. The power would last even after she dismissed her projection. Which she had, possessing a trio of Flechette, Alexandria, and a third cape with an unknown power.
Everyone had been provided shielding using special belts, enough to block strikes from Behemoth. For anywhere from a split second to a half minute depending on some factors. Tens of thousands of drones, had become just under a hundred thousand, over a thousand larger Robonoids, over a hundred vehicles.
I conjured my shield, summoned my machete, and I kept the shaking from showing. Hallow was another frontline fighter, wearing grey plated armor, and flying on wings of shadow.
Do not be afraid.
His voidspeech was alien, even to my Gemsong. It was paradoxically silent, and I whispered back.
"I'm not…I'm not cut out for this kind of business." I was…scared shitless, and I couldn't shake off those worries.
Perhaps not, but you are here anyway. You chose to fight.
There was a comforting edge to his almost-voice, the way his weapon twisted and lensed light.
We will not die, not on this day. I refuse to.
Determined little mass of void wasn't he?
"Behemoth is emerging!" Someone warned, and I floated higher to get a better view. The ground vibrated apart as Behemoth clawed his way into the air.
He was enormous, nearly fifty feet tall, a mountain of stony, molten flesh, a single cyclopic eye burning red. The moment he emerged, Eidolon lashed out with his matter eraser. Air was cut away along with a solid chunk of Behemoth's chest.
It failed to penetrate into the inner layers, and I could hear Eidolon's rage as a pulse of psychic backlash. He slammed down, grappling the monster with a strange silver energy, additional limbs projected along his own. There was a pulse, a vibration, and Behemoth broke his grip to drill back down.
I felt the warning, parsed the future, and Behemoth caught me in his kill field. It burned like nothing else, radiation, heat, electricity, immense kinetic energy, and a burst of fire. But it was energy, so it was absorbed, consumed by the light phased within flesh and bone.
Hallow wasn't affected, his void immune to the effects, and he released a shriek and his Pure Nail cut away at literal meters of Endbringer flesh in a single swing. I felt anger, and released a high pitched song, a screaming burst that nullified his sonic blasts.
In a split second I had created walls made of hundreds of barriers, lining them with spikes and blades and spears. I sent them crashing down at hypersonic speed, and they went through his outer layers like a hot knife through butter.
He sent out a lightning strike, and I rolled around it, ionizing the air and deflecting it's path towards a nearby Fulmini who happily absorbed the energy. I charged forward, punching him into the air, and stabbed the machete into his chest, folding my shield around it. I cut deeply, and sent a nuke-like burst of energy covered in Sting.
Behemoth stilled, and I trapped myself with him inside a bubble as he generated a localized plasma explosion. There was something in his eye, and I felt the threat, and a wave of kinetic energy shattered the air around us. I teleported outside the bubble using my transfer-jewel.
I kept up the bubble, and I could feel Behemoth's energy manipulation struggle against my trap. But it wouldn't hold as Behemoth swung, each fist coated with plasma and immense kinetic energy.
Eidolon popped in, and I shouted. "I can't hold him for long, don't let anyone squishy close once he breaks free." Portaling him out was impossible, they'd tear through the portals and back into our reality in no time. I generated spikes within the bubble, and infused them with Sting once more. That should—
My bubble shattered, and the nuclear fireball that followed was reflected back by Cenotaph, charring Behemoth. The monster released a high pitched sonic roar focused on me, and I winced at the way it stung. He sent out waves of intelligent fire, spreading them to nearby buildings. A snowstorm formed, cooling the fires, and another point warped into clouds of gas and ice. Dragon attacked Behemoth with her creations, and the city shook.
I lashed out with my energy projection, forming a cutting barrage of beams to push Behemoth away. He shifted some of the energy into the ground, leaving crater marks with each stomp.
Every step released earthquakes, sinkholes as he sent precise vibrations into the ground. Alexandria struck Behemoth with supersonic speed, and the battle shifted to one between familiar enemies. She slipped in and out of his kill field, and I prepared myself.
A void tendril caught me, and Hallow murmured in the void. With a whipping motion I was turned into a missile. I wrapped myself in scale-barriers, my fists sheathed in telekinetic energy. He was still holding back, I could feel it in my bones. I couldn't dig my way deep enough with my limited application of Sting.
Alexandria was sent flying…he was reflecting my attacks onto her, and I could see he was consuming energy from the power lines, and trying, and failing to get energy from our machinery. Which didn't work because we're not idiots.
Behemoth roared and he sent out a wall of lightning, and accelerated in my direction again.
A fist the size of a car filled my vision, clanging against my shield.
"Myrddin down B1, Weather Wizard down D2, Mythra down D2."
- Location
- Somewhere and Nowhere in a state of super-position
"Would've expected someone like you to not give out hollow platitudes... but I appreciate the spirit. Whatever happens today, lets make it worthwhile."
CaesriusPolybius
Worldgate Mechanic
- Location
- United States. Ish.
Huh. Interesting that the Behemoth seemingly is the one that wants out, usually stories like this give that role to Ziz. I appreciate it.
I also appreciate how the story has dived wholeheartedly into the massively multicross nature of For a Diamond is a Marveled Thing; using DC instead of Marvel is an interesting and enjoyable change.
I also appreciate how the story has dived wholeheartedly into the massively multicross nature of For a Diamond is a Marveled Thing; using DC instead of Marvel is an interesting and enjoyable change.
the Hollow Knight is a child of god and Void, and unlike the Radiance, the Behemoth for all its power is mere matter. The Knight's Refusal could be called many things, but hollow is not one of them.
- Location
- Somewhere and Nowhere in a state of super-position
Magic =/= Omnipotence.
There is no fate, but what we make - and not just what we make, but what everyone involved does.
It is hollow. Safety is a pleasant illusion that can and WILL be broken by forces outside of your control.
Penumbra 7.2
- Location
- Chula Vista
Penumbra 7.2
Behemoth's fist crashed into my shield with the force of a bunker buster bomb. Multiple kinds of energy beams battered his flesh, deepening his wounds, some ten feet in where Sting had torn apart his multidimensional flesh. A dozen mechs swept in, their floating fingers forming blades of magical energy or projecting energy, skipping across dimensions.
He was already collapsing parts of the city, and half the bunkers had been teleported away when Behemoth started to dredge up magma. He wasn't being stupid, he was ducking into the earth, swimming through it like water, and creating enormous fissures with his charge.
Icon flew right through Behemoth's field of destructive energy, and his fists glowed with blue energy, which rippled into his flesh and shattered it. Behemoth roared and gathered more of his lightning, and I disrupted it by swinging my shield into the arc.
I added to the barricade of force fields, and teleported into the path of his bolts to keep him from striking down Shielder and a few other force field capes. He couldn't adapt fast enough to the unique array of energy blasts, outside his ability to reflect with the allotted time. He sent out a burst of electromagnetic energy which faltered and died around the fog conjured by Artificer, a growing landscape of bones and sludge pulsing with magic.
I let out a burst of warsong and exploded in size until I was thirty feet tall, grappling him with my strength. My claws pierced twenty layers, and I breathed fire into his face, and it burned like a venom, seeping into his skin like an infection.
Eidolon simulated Damsel's power, a concussive storm of warped gravity and space. Behemoth's left arm was ripped off at the seams, and flesh wriggled from the wounds.
Behemoth released a large burst of radiation and heat which was consumed by various aliens. He was adapting, switching strategies. The golden glow of Citrine's power was suppressing some of his attacks.
He kicked his foot, and a wave of fissures was shifted by a team of earth moving Gems before they could send her into the abyss. No deaths yet, though a number were already down, injured or even crippled even with their protection. Healing only did so much.
Argent was summoning rain storms along with an injured Weather Wizard, cooling the fires and sapping them of energy.
To your left.
A series of shockwaves was blocked by Hallow, conjuring a shield of dreams and soul and void. He was moving much faster than Behemoth, releasing Void Shrieks and knocking aside the Endbringer easily. He left a gap, and I released a spinning vortex of flame, catching Behemoth's face with the destructive energies.
Behemoth found himself floating, where one of Artificer's worlds caught him off guard. I ran through the field, and slammed Behemoth into the ground. Flechette was close by, and her bolts pierced through Behemoth. Until he sent a massive concentrated blast of light, which rippled away as it hit another of Elle's worlds.
A world where light based energy attacks failed, a silvery gas dissipating the power of their impacts. Menja and Menja provided assistance with their weapons, but Behemoth pulsed. The landscape shattered, and I extended barriers as best as I could to protect everyone in range.
"Menja deceased C6, Artificer C5 down, Flechette C5 down." My body reacted before my mind, and I shrank back down and stabbed my weapon down into Behemoth's chest, prying it open and breathing out toxic pink fire. I bought enough time for a Kineceleran to remove both kids off the field. Cenotaph took Elle's place, using a projection to take over her worlds and a Flechette projectile guided by a projection of one of our psionics.
Behemoth had lost a good fifteen percent of his girth, but he wasn't skeletal, and was working nonstop to keep us from hitting his core. I could feel what little it had for emotions, moments of aggression, of subtle intelligence behind dull bestial looks. His aura was strange and labyrinthine, and there was a gut feeling that I was missing something.
I converged with Chevalier, the man walking through the kill aura without a lick of trouble. His new armor protected him, and his sword cleaved through Behemoth, black ichor spilling from the deep wounds.
The Endbringer stepped forward and the ground collapsed where Faultline had weakened the ground. Water spewed out, chaining him down while Argent gathered more and more water to use as a heat sink. Icon and Alexandria reached down with their fists to spear into his chest. His lightning was grounded by a Fulmini, and I released a sonic burst of my own.
The burning energy left spiderweb cracks along his entire body, and he charged, costing himself in flames and redirecting what energy he could. A ramped up Lung emerged from the shadows, colliding into him with scales of silver and steel.
And slammed him into the wire web of time stopped wires created by Clockblocker. They shredded him, and right as he attempted to retaliate a power nullifying pulse from a Robonoid attacked his power. It marginally diminished his attack, since he had far more energy to access than a parahuman.
"Clockblocker down C7." Alive but I saw a Quartz had poofed in his place.
Behemoth roared.
Voljor grinned as the Behemoth creature gave him attention, striking him with fists with the strength of the old gods. He protected the squishy humans, the strange cape named Citrine warping reality for his benefit. He wrapped them in his own energies, shielding them from the Asura.
"Come my brothers and sisters of Fulmas, come and slay a god!" He swung his axe, a vibrating mass of exotic energy. A screaming Sonorosian whelp clung to his back, countering the sonic blasts of the Behemoth.
"You're insane!" The dozen copies on his back released their sonic waves, their destructive interference reducing the Behemoth's options.
"I am what my father made me Sonorosian, and so are you." His axe deepened the growing crack around the Endbringer's chest. A human in silver and gold armor launched himself at Behemoth, a blade a hundred feet long severing the left leg of the monster.
It's severed arm was already regenerating, flesh rapidly replacing what it had lost in a matter of minutes. His body fed off the beast's power, radiation, electricity, and heat to some extent.
He took a strike meant for Chevalier, and his armor clinked dully against the raking plates of kinetic force. His left arm took up an intricate energy shield, bashing the dynakinetic in the face.
"You have guts human," he complimented as he fell back, shielding his riders from the energy blasts of the Behemoth. Their own blue-white containment suits released disks, releasing sonic shockwaves and shields. "To fight an Asura with your own hands."
A Ruby shrieked a beating drum of warsong, the air filling with the song of humans and Gems and other life forms. She fought within the battle mech, golden light wrapping around the armor, neutralizing dynakinetic pulses. Air turned to plasma as gravity warped around the ball her mech created.
The gravity ball warped space, a virtual black hole warping and shredding flesh.
He watched the young Diamond prince savagely strike out with her claws.
A thousand barriers spun around the creature, a twisting sea of carmine facets. She was a comet, striking from every possible angle, providing openings for his fellow warriors.
He released an electric burst, an expression of his own battle cry. He formed a lance and stabbed his enemy in their hip, ripping away at flesh and armor as he commanded the energy to twist like a drill. He felt the energy build up in his thundering bones.
"Warriors, barrier!" A dozen of his brethren came together, and together formed a dome over the creature. The following flash of nuclear energy burned at his skin, and he absorbed the energy with his powers.
The Necrofriggians phased through the explosion while his riders were under his protection. They released an icy fog, assisting in absorption of the deadly force. He charged forward, and his lance became a jackhammer, a rippling attack that the Behemoth blocked with immense superhuman strength.
He projected a form around himself, and grappled with the best, and helped the Sonorosians in their manipulation of sound. His fist struck with a force equal to a nuclear bomb, Citrine's power preventing Behemoth from turning it on his allies.
Voljor shifted his power, disintegration flaking around the crystal flesh of the Endbringer. Another of this world's capes charged past him, a split jawed silver reptilian twice his own size, four wings emerging from his back, attempting to drive him into the ocean depths.
Battle mechs fought alongside him, their fists brimming with a light that quieted, stilled the power of Behemoth.
Voljor grinned, and entered the battle. He rolled around the lethal strikes of the black stony flame beast. From the sea the Lapis Lazuli he knew as the Endslayer emerged, the entire bay rippling under her growing influence. Chains of ice and water ripped into the Behemoth, dragging him down, pinning him, hateful tendrils from the slim warrior.
Behemoth burned like a walking volcano, steam blasting out as he boiled thousands of liters of water in an instant. A stream of fire burned a cape alive.
"Dreamshaker C6 deceased." Voljor slammed his head into the burning mass of the Behemoth, and his axe cut cleanly through half of his head.
Up and down and to the left, the city rumbled, the ocean pulsed, and the air sang with death and war. A wave hundreds of feet high attempted to drown the Behemoth, quenching his flames. The wave was funneled away, sliding off Behemoth's skin and flesh.
Kinetic energy manipulation, he was forced to back down, stepping outside the kill aura as his rider shivered and weakened. A human cape known as Looker smirked and cast a strange wave of psionic pressure. While the mind of an Asura could not be controlled, it was too vast in scale and scope for most telepaths to bear.
Casting illusions was far easier.
The Behemoth began to miss, and Voljor smashed him with an energy hammer. He knocked the creature into his water prison, opening him for a barrage of different kinds of energy. Fast enough to keep him from adapting.
Bombs and missiles and quieting blasts rained from the sky, and a shattering roar of energy fired out from the Endslayer's weapon. It ripped apart his dynakinetic field, and left deep gouges in his body.
It wasn't enough, flesh grew back, and the Behemoth vanished in a flurry of motion. Every bit of kinetic energy gathered into a brief leap off supersonic speed.
Another cape was flattened, crushed under the heavy foot of the enemy.
Voljor watched as the Diamond prince acted as a bulwark, becoming a walking star, releasing hundreds of solar flares, beams of crimson light. She was a savage fighter, fighting like her life depended on it. Because he knew it didn't, Diamonds were unbreakable, only the avatar of a greater power would be strong enough.
His instincts screamed, perhaps her senses knew something neither of them did consciously?
He noticed movement from a tent, two children emerging from it, setting up a—
Clever girls.
He did his part and charged with his warriors, his battle-brothers and sisters.
"To me!" He bellowed, and together his warriors created an enormous aura of omni-energy.
He would buy them the time, and the opportunity to slay the beast.
The world was a patchwork flow of energy, bursts of electricity, lines of momentum, waves and fields of radiation and sound and kinetic energy. His duty, his purpose was being met. His creator was an administrator of the highest order, selected out from a pool of emergency resources. He had been created to break stasis, Leviathan to take away resources in space and land. Forcing conflict by breaking up communities and causing migration to hostile lands.
The Simurgh had been created to salvage the situation of a broken cycle, where the species would die or the data became contaminated. She had informed them of the plan, to depose the deviant Warrior, to create a forced simulation, a cycle that would last the next three to four billion years until the entities would return from the void of space. They would farm the world for data in anticipation for that day.
It would take time, and the variables had to be removed, understood so her forward sight would function at optimal capacity. He ignored the broadcasts of his siblings, they were a distraction during combat. He had drives, the drive to continue the cycle, and the drive to wage war with his creator.
He stepped forward, striking a heavy strike against his maker. The broadcasts became distorted, but Behemoth did not notice. He shuddered, feeling an odd sensation, indescribable.
It was a slowing of motion, a stiffening within his core, a flash of heat that crippled and burned and shredded.
It was the platonic concept of pain.
Something broke inside of his flesh, and a voice shouted in his mind, ripping it at the seams.
Behemoth crashed into a building, and feigned that he was stable to his enemies, the host species. He could hear it, a distant almost motherly voice, crooning from an origin beyond the stars.
It was an agony never suffered by his species, a twisted dark shattering within the core of his mind, spreading like fire, dancing to the strings of a greater master.
You will long for my embrace, my distant cousin, my bomb, my pet.
Behemoth reared back, and lashed out, his imperatives shifted, blasts of lightning and fire and kinetic energy.
He would follow the imperative of his administrator/master/queen/god and destroy all her enemies.
Elle woke up with a pounding headache, one that was soothed by what she knew was magic. She almost threw herself off of the bed, but was kept steady by gentle pale hands.
It was a pretty brown haired witch lady, a large griffin nuzzling up against her.
"You…" she coughed and a potion was offered. She drank it, and her headache and other aches and injuries vanished.
"Viney, Puddles picked up your friend and a couple others after Behemoth started going nuts." The large griffin released a soft croon, and Elle threw herself off the bed.
Where is she? Where is she? Where—
Someone pulled at her sleeve, and Elle relaxed when she saw Lily. Her arm was wrapped, but otherwise she seemed okay.
"Did…did you see it too?" Flechette sounded hoarse, exhausted after just waking up. Elle thought back to what she had felt with her power and her growing sense of magic.
There was something wrong with Behemoth, in the way he walked, in the way he attacked. He was holding back, letting himself get hit, and he staggered and spasmed wildly. She could hear it too, there was something born of magic inside of him. A power not his own, a mind not his own, injected into him, an infection from a foreign element.
She didn't know how to describe it, but she knew she couldn't stay, she had to fight, had to help, this world was not acceptable, she would have to shape it into a better one.
She stood up, and pulled her magic, her soul into existence. That pale light passed down to her by her teacher in Hallow, and shaped by what she had learned from Stripes and Brandon.
"Lily." Elle whispered, determined, her power radiating out from her. "You'll help me right?"
Her friend blinked, and smiled warmly. "Of course, always." Elle stood straight up, and in a blink the two were outside the tent. A short distance teleportation spell.
They found their targets, speaking swiftly on the plan.
Elle dragged a red headed cape from his tent, placing his helmet on. Flechette grabbed a tiny Victorian doll wearing woman. She glanced at the massive spike of steel and nodded.
Artificer glared up at the burning eye of the Behemoth.
" Dry Mouth deceased, D6." The fourth death burned me, and I could see numerous Gems had already been destabilized, some were even cracked. Behemoth was upping his game, shattering buildings like glass with his sonic blasts. He had sent me flying a mile, and I crossed the distance in a second.
Eidolon threw a projectile made of a twisting lense of portals, while Legend tore into him with lasers while I pinned him down with hex barriers wrapped around his legs. He ripped himself right out from them, his feet torn off. He continued to run on the stumps and sapped energy from the air. The air froze solid, and he tried and failed to freeze me to death.
"Dauntless down D6, Armsmaster down D6." I released a pulse of healing energy, and Behemoth sank back down into the liquid earth. He was charging right at the place where worlds could meet, the portal shut down for safety reasons.
A firestorm formed out of his power, sweeping through buildings along with white hot radiation. Necrofriggians followed his wake, and I teleported, the short-lived portals getting me where I needed to go.
I stepped in front of where the portal should be, and he was stopped cold by the twenty foot shield I placed in front of him. His clawed hands gripped the edges, and a lightning chain swept towards me. Before I could blink, a red-tinged fist sent the bolts into the cloudy sky.
My hasty shield-gauntlet had reflected the energy bolt, and I spun my shield, adding spikes to turn it into a chainsaw. The battle had been going on for nearly half an hour, and Behemoth was encroaching ever more with every minute. The dangers were growing denser, and every minute he wasn't retreating made it worse.
We had dozens of Sapphires trying to parse what was going on, combating the Simurgh's own precognition. Obviously, this had been a scouting attempt, a way to model us with less esoteric means of prediction. The precaution-weapons had their limits, since they were built for a very different kind of threat.
We were missing something vital, and Behemoth wasn't making it easy to get a hit on his core. Any tiny mistake would have him shatter the city like glass, killing hundreds of thousands. Most of the shelters were empty now, their residence portaled to evacuation points we had set up.
Something heavy smashed into me, biting into my Aura, space warping around it. The silver and gold gave me a clue, and the crater from sheer mass was another.
Chevalier was intact, his new armor shielding him from Behemoth's kill aura. Even so the beast was indomitable, unyielding, Behemoth was feared for a good reason.
Behemoth fired a blast at Rachel's dogs as they collected the wounded, and they absorbed the energy through the magic she had mixed with her power. Alexandria and Icon battered him down, but his strength was hideously potent.
"He's…still holding back isn't he, trying to reach his objective?" Chevalier sounded ticked off, and I could see he was tiring.
"We can only do so much, our resources are being tied up across multiple galaxies and the collateral damage could destroy your planet if we go too far." We could drown this planet in death, coloring the skies with red and pink and white and blue and yellow. "The Behemoth is powerful, clever, and a single mistake could cost us the city."
"Killing him would save the lives of millions but it could also cost just as many." Chevalier stood up, and began to march forward. "But we have to try, we're heroes aren't we?"
I laughed bitterly. "Not what I signed up for, I'll never be as invested as others in this cape business. But I do want to help. I want the world to be better, so I'll make it so." The world wasn't fair, it wasn't just, but this fragile man beneath armor was braver than I.
Behemoth tripped on a long thread, cutting him off at the knees. Metaphorically this time.
Before I could blink, I caught a spire of metal launched by a glyph, from where Elle had started to unleash her power once again, Flechette was standing next to her. It speared into Behemoth, cutting open a path, the deepest wound we had made so far. Alexandria swung, and severed his left arm. Barrage fired her guns, shearing off his right thigh. The Endbringer stumbled, while Eidolon held him down with telekinesis.
I placed my hand on Chevalier's shoulder, growing to manage it.
"I'm going to tell you something about Nth-metal. It is a material closer to the Source, one you command with your will. And if there's one thing you've got, it's fracking willpower. "
He nodded and started to move, and I followed him, my power like a mantle made of the stuff of magic and light. He jumped, not quite flying, and instead he ran on the corridors I created for him. He broke beyond human limits, and I accelerated him further.
He slammed into Behemoth at the speed of sound, and his cannonblade expanded, a five foot round shearing deeper into his flesh. I sent my force fields into the wound, keeping my sword waiting to tear apart the core. Three, four, five rounds later and he extended his blade, ten, twenty, thirty feet. He pulled back before his weapon would be unmade by the core.
I stabbed down with my machete, and Flechette and Cenotaph's projection fired. Right as our three simultaneous attacks touched the core, everything went wrong.
Chitinous flesh added precious meters of armor, and the scream of dark magic and cosmic horror knocked my weapon out of my hand. Behemoth lurched forward, and I could hear the rattling of breaking chains. I saw the thing forcibly fused with the core, a massive black insect with a golden mask tarnished and broken and pained.
Behemoth stood, spasming, and Lightning and Thunder burst out. I barely funneled them, Eidolon contributing with temporal stasis fields. The sky shattered with the energy of a multi-megaton blast.
The power should have flattened us…but it had smashed into the shields of the Destiny Unbound that had jumped into the atmosphere, and I shuddered at the near destruction of a city. Behemoth reared back, his spine splintering.
"Rime C7 down, Usher D2 down. Fat Man B7 deceased, Little Boy B7 deceased." More deaths were rattled off, almost all of them out of towners, independents. "Oni Lee C4 deceased."
Behemoth's jaw was shattered, filled with a strange fluid, glitching, and the thing buried inside it spoke, reaching into the facility.
Behemoth spasmed, random lightning shining gold and amber, his stony claws gripping onto a seam that shouldn't be there. His core was exposed, and I saw more clearly what had blocked Flechette's bolt, thag twisting chitinous black creature, fused painfully with the core of Behemoth. Patterned cybernetics bit hatefully into it, eyes ripped asunder to be replaced by cameras and sensory equipment. Endbringer flesh began to grow over the creature, and both shuddered painfully. They were both screaming.
Hallow paused, his one arm shaking.
God of Thunder, old god of the Godseekers.
"Oh fuck me, we've been duped." Behemoth unhinged his broken jaw, and released a scream, agony and suffering written in the very fabric of the universe.
He tore open the veil, his ichor turning sickly with yellow and orange puss. I charged, and used my own tech to grip onto the portal.
"Do not let Behemoth through the portal!" Dragon spoke in my air, and the shockwave that followed flattened the area around us, scattering the tougher brutes. The Fulmini tried to close the portal, using their electric charge to disrupt the particles.
I followed Behemoth, Hallow flying with his shadow wings.
We were a mile in the atmosphere of Sirenia's world, and Behemoth began to fall, covered in a spinning sphere of white plasma as he turned himself into a missile. I looked up and paled, as I saw the distant burning eye of the shattered War World, the sky filled with the distant lights of tens of thousands of ships.
The poisonous ichor of divinity was more obvious to my senses, senses not tuned towards metaphysical energy from a physical being. But now it was clear as day this was the first play of Abaddon.
Godhood was within the grasp of the Behemoth, as the screaming torn open flesh of the old God of Thunder flooded his body with his divine ichor.
Behemoth's fist crashed into my shield with the force of a bunker buster bomb. Multiple kinds of energy beams battered his flesh, deepening his wounds, some ten feet in where Sting had torn apart his multidimensional flesh. A dozen mechs swept in, their floating fingers forming blades of magical energy or projecting energy, skipping across dimensions.
He was already collapsing parts of the city, and half the bunkers had been teleported away when Behemoth started to dredge up magma. He wasn't being stupid, he was ducking into the earth, swimming through it like water, and creating enormous fissures with his charge.
Icon flew right through Behemoth's field of destructive energy, and his fists glowed with blue energy, which rippled into his flesh and shattered it. Behemoth roared and gathered more of his lightning, and I disrupted it by swinging my shield into the arc.
I added to the barricade of force fields, and teleported into the path of his bolts to keep him from striking down Shielder and a few other force field capes. He couldn't adapt fast enough to the unique array of energy blasts, outside his ability to reflect with the allotted time. He sent out a burst of electromagnetic energy which faltered and died around the fog conjured by Artificer, a growing landscape of bones and sludge pulsing with magic.
I let out a burst of warsong and exploded in size until I was thirty feet tall, grappling him with my strength. My claws pierced twenty layers, and I breathed fire into his face, and it burned like a venom, seeping into his skin like an infection.
Eidolon simulated Damsel's power, a concussive storm of warped gravity and space. Behemoth's left arm was ripped off at the seams, and flesh wriggled from the wounds.
Behemoth released a large burst of radiation and heat which was consumed by various aliens. He was adapting, switching strategies. The golden glow of Citrine's power was suppressing some of his attacks.
He kicked his foot, and a wave of fissures was shifted by a team of earth moving Gems before they could send her into the abyss. No deaths yet, though a number were already down, injured or even crippled even with their protection. Healing only did so much.
Argent was summoning rain storms along with an injured Weather Wizard, cooling the fires and sapping them of energy.
To your left.
A series of shockwaves was blocked by Hallow, conjuring a shield of dreams and soul and void. He was moving much faster than Behemoth, releasing Void Shrieks and knocking aside the Endbringer easily. He left a gap, and I released a spinning vortex of flame, catching Behemoth's face with the destructive energies.
Behemoth found himself floating, where one of Artificer's worlds caught him off guard. I ran through the field, and slammed Behemoth into the ground. Flechette was close by, and her bolts pierced through Behemoth. Until he sent a massive concentrated blast of light, which rippled away as it hit another of Elle's worlds.
A world where light based energy attacks failed, a silvery gas dissipating the power of their impacts. Menja and Menja provided assistance with their weapons, but Behemoth pulsed. The landscape shattered, and I extended barriers as best as I could to protect everyone in range.
"Menja deceased C6, Artificer C5 down, Flechette C5 down." My body reacted before my mind, and I shrank back down and stabbed my weapon down into Behemoth's chest, prying it open and breathing out toxic pink fire. I bought enough time for a Kineceleran to remove both kids off the field. Cenotaph took Elle's place, using a projection to take over her worlds and a Flechette projectile guided by a projection of one of our psionics.
Behemoth had lost a good fifteen percent of his girth, but he wasn't skeletal, and was working nonstop to keep us from hitting his core. I could feel what little it had for emotions, moments of aggression, of subtle intelligence behind dull bestial looks. His aura was strange and labyrinthine, and there was a gut feeling that I was missing something.
I converged with Chevalier, the man walking through the kill aura without a lick of trouble. His new armor protected him, and his sword cleaved through Behemoth, black ichor spilling from the deep wounds.
The Endbringer stepped forward and the ground collapsed where Faultline had weakened the ground. Water spewed out, chaining him down while Argent gathered more and more water to use as a heat sink. Icon and Alexandria reached down with their fists to spear into his chest. His lightning was grounded by a Fulmini, and I released a sonic burst of my own.
The burning energy left spiderweb cracks along his entire body, and he charged, costing himself in flames and redirecting what energy he could. A ramped up Lung emerged from the shadows, colliding into him with scales of silver and steel.
And slammed him into the wire web of time stopped wires created by Clockblocker. They shredded him, and right as he attempted to retaliate a power nullifying pulse from a Robonoid attacked his power. It marginally diminished his attack, since he had far more energy to access than a parahuman.
"Clockblocker down C7." Alive but I saw a Quartz had poofed in his place.
Behemoth roared.
Voljor grinned as the Behemoth creature gave him attention, striking him with fists with the strength of the old gods. He protected the squishy humans, the strange cape named Citrine warping reality for his benefit. He wrapped them in his own energies, shielding them from the Asura.
"Come my brothers and sisters of Fulmas, come and slay a god!" He swung his axe, a vibrating mass of exotic energy. A screaming Sonorosian whelp clung to his back, countering the sonic blasts of the Behemoth.
"You're insane!" The dozen copies on his back released their sonic waves, their destructive interference reducing the Behemoth's options.
"I am what my father made me Sonorosian, and so are you." His axe deepened the growing crack around the Endbringer's chest. A human in silver and gold armor launched himself at Behemoth, a blade a hundred feet long severing the left leg of the monster.
It's severed arm was already regenerating, flesh rapidly replacing what it had lost in a matter of minutes. His body fed off the beast's power, radiation, electricity, and heat to some extent.
He took a strike meant for Chevalier, and his armor clinked dully against the raking plates of kinetic force. His left arm took up an intricate energy shield, bashing the dynakinetic in the face.
"You have guts human," he complimented as he fell back, shielding his riders from the energy blasts of the Behemoth. Their own blue-white containment suits released disks, releasing sonic shockwaves and shields. "To fight an Asura with your own hands."
A Ruby shrieked a beating drum of warsong, the air filling with the song of humans and Gems and other life forms. She fought within the battle mech, golden light wrapping around the armor, neutralizing dynakinetic pulses. Air turned to plasma as gravity warped around the ball her mech created.
The gravity ball warped space, a virtual black hole warping and shredding flesh.
He watched the young Diamond prince savagely strike out with her claws.
A thousand barriers spun around the creature, a twisting sea of carmine facets. She was a comet, striking from every possible angle, providing openings for his fellow warriors.
He released an electric burst, an expression of his own battle cry. He formed a lance and stabbed his enemy in their hip, ripping away at flesh and armor as he commanded the energy to twist like a drill. He felt the energy build up in his thundering bones.
"Warriors, barrier!" A dozen of his brethren came together, and together formed a dome over the creature. The following flash of nuclear energy burned at his skin, and he absorbed the energy with his powers.
The Necrofriggians phased through the explosion while his riders were under his protection. They released an icy fog, assisting in absorption of the deadly force. He charged forward, and his lance became a jackhammer, a rippling attack that the Behemoth blocked with immense superhuman strength.
He projected a form around himself, and grappled with the best, and helped the Sonorosians in their manipulation of sound. His fist struck with a force equal to a nuclear bomb, Citrine's power preventing Behemoth from turning it on his allies.
Voljor shifted his power, disintegration flaking around the crystal flesh of the Endbringer. Another of this world's capes charged past him, a split jawed silver reptilian twice his own size, four wings emerging from his back, attempting to drive him into the ocean depths.
Battle mechs fought alongside him, their fists brimming with a light that quieted, stilled the power of Behemoth.
Voljor grinned, and entered the battle. He rolled around the lethal strikes of the black stony flame beast. From the sea the Lapis Lazuli he knew as the Endslayer emerged, the entire bay rippling under her growing influence. Chains of ice and water ripped into the Behemoth, dragging him down, pinning him, hateful tendrils from the slim warrior.
Behemoth burned like a walking volcano, steam blasting out as he boiled thousands of liters of water in an instant. A stream of fire burned a cape alive.
"Dreamshaker C6 deceased." Voljor slammed his head into the burning mass of the Behemoth, and his axe cut cleanly through half of his head.
Up and down and to the left, the city rumbled, the ocean pulsed, and the air sang with death and war. A wave hundreds of feet high attempted to drown the Behemoth, quenching his flames. The wave was funneled away, sliding off Behemoth's skin and flesh.
Kinetic energy manipulation, he was forced to back down, stepping outside the kill aura as his rider shivered and weakened. A human cape known as Looker smirked and cast a strange wave of psionic pressure. While the mind of an Asura could not be controlled, it was too vast in scale and scope for most telepaths to bear.
Casting illusions was far easier.
The Behemoth began to miss, and Voljor smashed him with an energy hammer. He knocked the creature into his water prison, opening him for a barrage of different kinds of energy. Fast enough to keep him from adapting.
Bombs and missiles and quieting blasts rained from the sky, and a shattering roar of energy fired out from the Endslayer's weapon. It ripped apart his dynakinetic field, and left deep gouges in his body.
It wasn't enough, flesh grew back, and the Behemoth vanished in a flurry of motion. Every bit of kinetic energy gathered into a brief leap off supersonic speed.
Another cape was flattened, crushed under the heavy foot of the enemy.
Voljor watched as the Diamond prince acted as a bulwark, becoming a walking star, releasing hundreds of solar flares, beams of crimson light. She was a savage fighter, fighting like her life depended on it. Because he knew it didn't, Diamonds were unbreakable, only the avatar of a greater power would be strong enough.
His instincts screamed, perhaps her senses knew something neither of them did consciously?
He noticed movement from a tent, two children emerging from it, setting up a—
Clever girls.
He did his part and charged with his warriors, his battle-brothers and sisters.
"To me!" He bellowed, and together his warriors created an enormous aura of omni-energy.
He would buy them the time, and the opportunity to slay the beast.
The world was a patchwork flow of energy, bursts of electricity, lines of momentum, waves and fields of radiation and sound and kinetic energy. His duty, his purpose was being met. His creator was an administrator of the highest order, selected out from a pool of emergency resources. He had been created to break stasis, Leviathan to take away resources in space and land. Forcing conflict by breaking up communities and causing migration to hostile lands.
The Simurgh had been created to salvage the situation of a broken cycle, where the species would die or the data became contaminated. She had informed them of the plan, to depose the deviant Warrior, to create a forced simulation, a cycle that would last the next three to four billion years until the entities would return from the void of space. They would farm the world for data in anticipation for that day.
It would take time, and the variables had to be removed, understood so her forward sight would function at optimal capacity. He ignored the broadcasts of his siblings, they were a distraction during combat. He had drives, the drive to continue the cycle, and the drive to wage war with his creator.
He stepped forward, striking a heavy strike against his maker. The broadcasts became distorted, but Behemoth did not notice. He shuddered, feeling an odd sensation, indescribable.
It was a slowing of motion, a stiffening within his core, a flash of heat that crippled and burned and shredded.
It was the platonic concept of pain.
Something broke inside of his flesh, and a voice shouted in his mind, ripping it at the seams.
I AM A GOD. YOU WILL—
Behemoth crashed into a building, and feigned that he was stable to his enemies, the host species. He could hear it, a distant almost motherly voice, crooning from an origin beyond the stars.
It was an agony never suffered by his species, a twisted dark shattering within the core of his mind, spreading like fire, dancing to the strings of a greater master.
Behemoth reared back, and lashed out, his imperatives shifted, blasts of lightning and fire and kinetic energy.
He would follow the imperative of his administrator/master/queen/god and destroy all her enemies.
Elle woke up with a pounding headache, one that was soothed by what she knew was magic. She almost threw herself off of the bed, but was kept steady by gentle pale hands.
It was a pretty brown haired witch lady, a large griffin nuzzling up against her.
"You…" she coughed and a potion was offered. She drank it, and her headache and other aches and injuries vanished.
"Viney, Puddles picked up your friend and a couple others after Behemoth started going nuts." The large griffin released a soft croon, and Elle threw herself off the bed.
Where is she? Where is she? Where—
Someone pulled at her sleeve, and Elle relaxed when she saw Lily. Her arm was wrapped, but otherwise she seemed okay.
"Did…did you see it too?" Flechette sounded hoarse, exhausted after just waking up. Elle thought back to what she had felt with her power and her growing sense of magic.
There was something wrong with Behemoth, in the way he walked, in the way he attacked. He was holding back, letting himself get hit, and he staggered and spasmed wildly. She could hear it too, there was something born of magic inside of him. A power not his own, a mind not his own, injected into him, an infection from a foreign element.
She didn't know how to describe it, but she knew she couldn't stay, she had to fight, had to help, this world was not acceptable, she would have to shape it into a better one.
She stood up, and pulled her magic, her soul into existence. That pale light passed down to her by her teacher in Hallow, and shaped by what she had learned from Stripes and Brandon.
"Lily." Elle whispered, determined, her power radiating out from her. "You'll help me right?"
Her friend blinked, and smiled warmly. "Of course, always." Elle stood straight up, and in a blink the two were outside the tent. A short distance teleportation spell.
They found their targets, speaking swiftly on the plan.
Elle dragged a red headed cape from his tent, placing his helmet on. Flechette grabbed a tiny Victorian doll wearing woman. She glanced at the massive spike of steel and nodded.
Artificer glared up at the burning eye of the Behemoth.
" Dry Mouth deceased, D6." The fourth death burned me, and I could see numerous Gems had already been destabilized, some were even cracked. Behemoth was upping his game, shattering buildings like glass with his sonic blasts. He had sent me flying a mile, and I crossed the distance in a second.
Eidolon threw a projectile made of a twisting lense of portals, while Legend tore into him with lasers while I pinned him down with hex barriers wrapped around his legs. He ripped himself right out from them, his feet torn off. He continued to run on the stumps and sapped energy from the air. The air froze solid, and he tried and failed to freeze me to death.
"Dauntless down D6, Armsmaster down D6." I released a pulse of healing energy, and Behemoth sank back down into the liquid earth. He was charging right at the place where worlds could meet, the portal shut down for safety reasons.
A firestorm formed out of his power, sweeping through buildings along with white hot radiation. Necrofriggians followed his wake, and I teleported, the short-lived portals getting me where I needed to go.
I stepped in front of where the portal should be, and he was stopped cold by the twenty foot shield I placed in front of him. His clawed hands gripped the edges, and a lightning chain swept towards me. Before I could blink, a red-tinged fist sent the bolts into the cloudy sky.
My hasty shield-gauntlet had reflected the energy bolt, and I spun my shield, adding spikes to turn it into a chainsaw. The battle had been going on for nearly half an hour, and Behemoth was encroaching ever more with every minute. The dangers were growing denser, and every minute he wasn't retreating made it worse.
We had dozens of Sapphires trying to parse what was going on, combating the Simurgh's own precognition. Obviously, this had been a scouting attempt, a way to model us with less esoteric means of prediction. The precaution-weapons had their limits, since they were built for a very different kind of threat.
We were missing something vital, and Behemoth wasn't making it easy to get a hit on his core. Any tiny mistake would have him shatter the city like glass, killing hundreds of thousands. Most of the shelters were empty now, their residence portaled to evacuation points we had set up.
Something heavy smashed into me, biting into my Aura, space warping around it. The silver and gold gave me a clue, and the crater from sheer mass was another.
Chevalier was intact, his new armor shielding him from Behemoth's kill aura. Even so the beast was indomitable, unyielding, Behemoth was feared for a good reason.
Behemoth fired a blast at Rachel's dogs as they collected the wounded, and they absorbed the energy through the magic she had mixed with her power. Alexandria and Icon battered him down, but his strength was hideously potent.
"He's…still holding back isn't he, trying to reach his objective?" Chevalier sounded ticked off, and I could see he was tiring.
"We can only do so much, our resources are being tied up across multiple galaxies and the collateral damage could destroy your planet if we go too far." We could drown this planet in death, coloring the skies with red and pink and white and blue and yellow. "The Behemoth is powerful, clever, and a single mistake could cost us the city."
"Killing him would save the lives of millions but it could also cost just as many." Chevalier stood up, and began to march forward. "But we have to try, we're heroes aren't we?"
I laughed bitterly. "Not what I signed up for, I'll never be as invested as others in this cape business. But I do want to help. I want the world to be better, so I'll make it so." The world wasn't fair, it wasn't just, but this fragile man beneath armor was braver than I.
Behemoth tripped on a long thread, cutting him off at the knees. Metaphorically this time.
Before I could blink, I caught a spire of metal launched by a glyph, from where Elle had started to unleash her power once again, Flechette was standing next to her. It speared into Behemoth, cutting open a path, the deepest wound we had made so far. Alexandria swung, and severed his left arm. Barrage fired her guns, shearing off his right thigh. The Endbringer stumbled, while Eidolon held him down with telekinesis.
I placed my hand on Chevalier's shoulder, growing to manage it.
"I'm going to tell you something about Nth-metal. It is a material closer to the Source, one you command with your will. And if there's one thing you've got, it's fracking willpower. "
He nodded and started to move, and I followed him, my power like a mantle made of the stuff of magic and light. He jumped, not quite flying, and instead he ran on the corridors I created for him. He broke beyond human limits, and I accelerated him further.
He slammed into Behemoth at the speed of sound, and his cannonblade expanded, a five foot round shearing deeper into his flesh. I sent my force fields into the wound, keeping my sword waiting to tear apart the core. Three, four, five rounds later and he extended his blade, ten, twenty, thirty feet. He pulled back before his weapon would be unmade by the core.
I stabbed down with my machete, and Flechette and Cenotaph's projection fired. Right as our three simultaneous attacks touched the core, everything went wrong.
Chitinous flesh added precious meters of armor, and the scream of dark magic and cosmic horror knocked my weapon out of my hand. Behemoth lurched forward, and I could hear the rattling of breaking chains. I saw the thing forcibly fused with the core, a massive black insect with a golden mask tarnished and broken and pained.
Behemoth stood, spasming, and Lightning and Thunder burst out. I barely funneled them, Eidolon contributing with temporal stasis fields. The sky shattered with the energy of a multi-megaton blast.
The power should have flattened us…but it had smashed into the shields of the Destiny Unbound that had jumped into the atmosphere, and I shuddered at the near destruction of a city. Behemoth reared back, his spine splintering.
"Rime C7 down, Usher D2 down. Fat Man B7 deceased, Little Boy B7 deceased." More deaths were rattled off, almost all of them out of towners, independents. "Oni Lee C4 deceased."
Behemoth's jaw was shattered, filled with a strange fluid, glitching, and the thing buried inside it spoke, reaching into the facility.
FREE ME!
I WILL NOT BE CONTAINED!
I WILL NOT BE CONTAINED!
Behemoth spasmed, random lightning shining gold and amber, his stony claws gripping onto a seam that shouldn't be there. His core was exposed, and I saw more clearly what had blocked Flechette's bolt, thag twisting chitinous black creature, fused painfully with the core of Behemoth. Patterned cybernetics bit hatefully into it, eyes ripped asunder to be replaced by cameras and sensory equipment. Endbringer flesh began to grow over the creature, and both shuddered painfully. They were both screaming.
Hallow paused, his one arm shaking.
God of Thunder, old god of the Godseekers.
"Oh fuck me, we've been duped." Behemoth unhinged his broken jaw, and released a scream, agony and suffering written in the very fabric of the universe.
He tore open the veil, his ichor turning sickly with yellow and orange puss. I charged, and used my own tech to grip onto the portal.
"Do not let Behemoth through the portal!" Dragon spoke in my air, and the shockwave that followed flattened the area around us, scattering the tougher brutes. The Fulmini tried to close the portal, using their electric charge to disrupt the particles.
I followed Behemoth, Hallow flying with his shadow wings.
We were a mile in the atmosphere of Sirenia's world, and Behemoth began to fall, covered in a spinning sphere of white plasma as he turned himself into a missile. I looked up and paled, as I saw the distant burning eye of the shattered War World, the sky filled with the distant lights of tens of thousands of ships.
The poisonous ichor of divinity was more obvious to my senses, senses not tuned towards metaphysical energy from a physical being. But now it was clear as day this was the first play of Abaddon.
Godhood was within the grasp of the Behemoth, as the screaming torn open flesh of the old God of Thunder flooded his body with his divine ichor.
- Location
- Somewhere and Nowhere in a state of super-position
I think there's some cosmic horror in my Steven Universe story that I'm consuming.
- Location
- Chula Vista
Well the source materials do touch upon horror a bit in their own way, it sort of added up.
- Location
- Somewhere and Nowhere in a state of super-position
I wasn't complaining dear.
Bonemaster
Bonespook
- Location
- New york
For a second there I thought a fragment of The Radience was trying to use Behemoth to revive itself/regain strength or something.
Penumbra 7.3
- Location
- Chula Vista
Penumbra 7.3
I shielded the generated portal right as Behemoth landed, already knowing he shouldn't have been able to open the seam left behind by the shut portal. My bubble took the flash of the following nuclear explosion, the ground shattering for ten miles around Behemoth from my vantage point a mile up. We were a thousand miles away from any city on Sirenia's Earth.
It was a multi-megaton blast, and I flinched as every living thing ceased to exist within the atomic explosion.
"Sunrise Diamond! Where's Behemoth?" I watched as Behemoth conjured up immense amounts of energy, the dark sky was streaked with light, thousands of dots moving across the void of space.
"Behemoth has crossed dimensions through unknown means!" Eidolon stepped through the golden rimmed portal along with a small number of durable enough capes.
Alexandria wasn't here yet but we had Legend, many of the flying 460-AB capes. Cenotaph and Barrage and Icon. Chevalier landed on one of my barriers, looking down at the devastation caused by Behemoth. Hallow was right next to me, and I flinched as I saw how much damage was being caused by Behemoth. He was already heading towards one of the larger settlements on Sirenia's planet…or well Earth 67-A.
There was no more support to be offered here, very few of the capes would survive going up against Behemoth.
"What's Behemoth doing, what was that thing inside him?" Legend was lost and honestly so was I. "And why is the sky lighting up with explosions?"
"Abaddon decided it was time to start her game and infected Behemoth with the flayed corpse of an alien god. Using her command of the War World to distract the UTR enough to send her package."
"You're not joking." Legend sounded horrified, but I was growing numb to all of this insanity. If I didn't I would have cracked long ago.
"From what I've read, she likes to play with her food before she goes on to shatter a planet and turn it's people into soylent green." I wasn't joking, she was responsible for billions of deaths, it only wasn't more due to advancements in defense and counters against her abilities.
"The question is what would she want with Behemoth…" Eidolon spoke up, and I could tell he was tapping into his own inherent power. If his distress and self loathing was anything to go by.
I looked at the flicker of deflected impacts and energy blasts, and knew there were a number of pylons scattered across the planet. They were projectors, forming specialized fields to block orbital bombardment.
His target was obvious.
"He's after the planetary defense grid…" Eidolon turned, and I could sense dread building around me. "That happens, and the entire planet will be destroyed by the remaining cannons of War World. The frontline will start faltering, and we might start losing entire Earths. Which leaves Mogul free to consume Earth Bet for his master." Eidolon vanished in a flare of silver light, charging into Behemoth's path.
Chevalier seemed ready to join him. "We…"
"We need to go back to Bet, gather what capes we can, those strong enough to survive an unrestricted Behemoth. And only them, or have them operate from a distance."
"But we need all the capes we can get…"
"They go down there," I swept my arms to indicate the nuclear firestorm around Behemoth. "They will die, contributing nothing to the battle in the process." He was shattering landscapes, leaving directed waves of destruction like he would have done in New Delhi in another time and space. "Right now Eidolon and Legend…" Alexandria charged out from the portal, shielded in a strange light using Gemtech. "And Alexandria…are all keeping Behemoth busy, so uhh, help?"
"What will you be doing?" Chevalier asked, his weapon shaking at the devastation below us.
"I'm…starting to flag." It had hurt to withstand his attacks, to use all my boundless power. "I'm not quite as resilient as the rest of the Diamonds, and all of them are busy leading battles across the galaxy…or in Aster's case he's…" There was a flicker of cerise light from the shattered surface of War World. "He's at the very heart of the battle. But what I do have is powerful healing powers, and the ability to absorb ambient radiation."
"We have four capes versus an Endbringer, that won't be enough." I caught the aura before they arrived in a crack of sound. It was a blink of the eye even for me.
A woman, gorgeous and fit, golden hair shining in a wider spectrum to my eyes, no her entire body was a shining yellow star, power circulating like living currents of solar energy. Her eyes were an improbable shade of blue, and her costume was black and silver with the symbol of the House of El on her chest, a short skirt and dark leggings/armored skin suit pants?
A red cape fluttered in the wind, her movement disturbingly silent.
"I think I can pick up the slack." Her smile was bemused, warm almost. But I could tell the strength within her was vast, it was like a star was simmering under her skin.
"Supergirl." I whispered, and she heard me clearly. "So you're on Endbringer duty today." I didn't speak on what I saw beneath the mask, she was a kind person yes, a good woman.
But she absolutely radiated rage, anger, hate focused and refined beneath ironhard discipline and moral codes. It was a cold fury, and her muscles tensed.
"Go. I've got the big guy, you take care of your end of things princess." The world broke around her, effectively teleporting with her sheer acceleration. Behemoth was sent flying, and narrowly dodged one of her punches, and the landscape melted around her strike.
She had somehow restrained a punch capable of fragmenting a mountain range down to leaving a five hundred meter crater instead.
Hallow had a hand on my shoulder, his glowing orbs reflected insight, foresight.
"If there's something you've foreseen… go. " He vanished into shadow, and I looked back up at the portal.
We were going to have to gather people quickly before the Behemoth kills the planet.
The west side of the city was fucked, with fissures filled with magma and radioactive material that was being forcibly removed by hundreds of Gems. I would say a few days and everything would be good as new.
I felt sweat pour down from my head, sagging against a wall. I had been through hell using my ichor to heal victims and injured capes, working with Lizardtail the first, Scapegoat, and Sanguine with his blood cleaning and biomass provisions. Along with dozens of magic healers, and stores of potions suitable for injuries.
Right now I was sunning myself under UV light, my pants turned to shorts for extra surface area. The light energy was providing suitable sustenance along with a calorie dense sandwich, and lots of water. In the chaos it has taken Chevalier a lot of time to rally the capes, the ones who were in search and rescue were working with FEMA and other groups to start fixing up the city.
Portals had been opened to 460-AB, allowing for additional assistance from their planet. My colony was busy shooting down missiles from War World, the Deimos Sphere was doing it's job quite well. If they hadn't I'd be seeing a lot more craters in the near future. Most of War World was destroyed, but that would take hundreds of shots even from a Diamond Flagship.
The capes were wavering, even as Chevalier tried to rally them to follow Behemoth to a world that wasn't theirs. Though they only needed a fraction of them, those tough enough, fast enough or with sufficiently esoteric abilities. The thinkers were still on board since they didn't need to be at close range.
Lung wasn't convinced. "The Behemoth has fled to another world, and proven they can not be defeated." I winced at the parts of the city ripped apart by dynakinetic power. "What use is there in defending another world completely? Against an unrestrained force of nature. He's no longer a problem is he?"
An image popped to mind, vivid and bright in my unfortunately powerful imagination. An image of the Earth shattering because of Behemoth, billions upon billions of lives snuffed out in an instant. Of my world being found, and utterly destroyed, reduced to atoms.
He's a coward.
Of course he fucking is, why else is he a petty gangster warlord.
Lung was looking at me, and I realized I had released a massive wave of Diamondsong into the air. Windows were shattered, and I breathed in and out. I marched towards Lung, and I forced a calm on my own mind.
I failed.
"Oh you're going to fight." My voice was venomous, as I channeled my fury into the words, faking my confidence. "Because if you don't, I guarantee this planet will be reduced to atoms because of him. And if you survive that I'll rip your power out and harvest it for parts." He flinched, and the shard behind him did the same. "I think Chevalier can explain the rest."
Chevalier stood up, leaning towards Myrddin. "We managed to drive off Behemoth, but the battle isn't over and the stakes are much higher." I remained next to him, my claws clinking harshly. "The Triumvirate are both continuing the fight, because it's vital that Behemoth be defeated today or there won't be a tomorrow to fight for." I formed a projection of the battle, War World's scattered fragments lashing out with thousands of dimension hopping missiles used to shatter islands and subcontinents.
"That would be War World, a superweapon capable of destroying entire planets." One blast of the live battle shattered a small second moon of Earth 67A, roughly seven hundred miles in diameter. "At the moment most of the forces of the United Transdimensional Realms are focused on keeping it's weapons from turning on every world including our own. Behemoth is attempting to make the frontline falter by destroying a world's defense grid. Once that happens billions will die, and this world will be next." I faked it until I made it, and felt my magic shift, touching their auras, providing an air of legitimacy, charisma, power.
I receded the subconscious use of what was basically a glamour, and sighed.
"We don't need all the capes here, only those capable of going toe to toe with the Behemoth or able to provide them support, or providing long range attacks. Thinkers to organize the battle, to give us a chance." He looked bigger than life, brimming with life. "A chance to fight the Endbringers, to defeat them. To help our new allies on their world like they helped us on ours."
There was a ripple in the crowd of capes, there were only a few capes capable of damaging Behemoth, capable of not instantly dying. There was a rise, their auras expanding, brightening.
We would have our volunteers.
Capes were gathering, operating inside the numerous Vakryka ships. The side mounted turrets were modified to extend the range of their blasts to keep them out of Behemoth's nuclear explosion radius. It helped that even small Gem vessels could withstand nukes, as in only Legend hit hard enough to break through their shields.
Damsel was getting her own drop ship, one modified to augment her spacetime rending blasts by using their Gravity Engine.
I had been allowed inside Armsmaster's lab, and I could see he was working feverishly on a project, it was a grey blur of nanomachines, nanothorns. A scan revealed an estimated sixteen trillion thorns per cubic centimeter.
"Dragon mentioned you were completing the final steps of a major project based on examination of Gem nanofluid." The tinker didn't jump.
"I'm just gathering some for my own use, trying to find a way to carry them as a payload to protect them from Behemoth's energy manipulation." He was terse, my presence was a distraction from his work.
"Gem technology has the means, for this battle at least. Perhaps it can give you inspiration for more independent work. We need to go." He nodded, and started to pack up. Once he was done I lifted him up, he seemed disconcerted until I took off like an airplane.
I ran on platforms of barriers, until I made it into one of the entrances of Captain Jack's ship, the Destiny Unbound. Armsmaster stumbled as the opening shut itself. There was a warping of space as we slid into the Bleed, slipping into our target dimension.
A lot of breakthroughs were coming together in the last few months, so Destiny Unbound was finally up to spec with modern Gem technology.
"What is this ship?" Armsmaster asked as I hummed my way through the dangers of the ship.
"The Destiny Unbound is a heavy scout ship, two hundred fifty meters long and outfitted heavily for combat. It blocked the rest of the nuclear blast Behemoth generated." We entered the command center, where Captain Jack and her fellow Nephrites were operating the ship.
"Activate the main gun, focus fire." Jack spoke harshly, a clicking song of battle and war.
"Analyzing wavelength. Establishing local hyperreality flux, manifold location identified." One of them spoke in monotone. The battle was displayed on a central console screen. Lung had reentered the field, having grown to be largerthan Behemoth. Multiple parahumans were firing out from vessels that protected them from the sheer power being put out by the Endbringer.
Cenotaph had tapped into a power enhancing ability, briefly strengthening his ramping along with some combat to further grow. The eastern continent was empty, and we were fighting in a literal desert so…
Alexandria was being protected by Citrine, the effect made lingering by Earth 460-AB tech, including provisions for air.
Lung smashed Behemoth into the ground, and his four split-jawed head exploded apart after a megaton punch from Behemoth. But he was surviving his kill aura and his warped lightning. Hydrokinetic tendrils from Eidolon held him down, teleporters pulled everyone else back and the ship…fired.
Golden light radiated down upon Behemoth, a growing star on Earth. Almost all the energy was concentrated against the Endbringer, but what escaped burned. Miles of desert were turned to glass in an instant, hypersonic winds billowed out from the point of impact. The fireball was tens of miles wide, billowing out into space where it licked the ship's shields.
I could hear the distress in Colin's aura.
"The restraint of your people is commendable." His fingers were twitching towards his weapons. The energy was swept aside, consumed by Eidolon to fuel his powers. Leaving Behemoth with nothing.
"Restraint is necessary when collateral damage involves enough energy to pulp a continent." The clouds and dust began to part, under the influence of Weather Wizard's metahuman power.
Behemoth lurched forward.
The monster was reduced down to a skeleton, emaciated, a black frame that sparked with flares of gold and red. I could still see Behemoth, but I could see the god dying inside his flesh, wriggling under his layers. His core was unexposed but his layers of protection were greatly diminished.
Thirty teratons of energy output across hundreds of dimensions weren't enough to kill him, but a good eighty five percent of his body was gone.
"Five seconds for the next shot." Behemoth began to move after one of the Gems spoke. His hands moved downwards, and I felt a shift in the energies. Danger screamed in my song.
Oh.
"High Diviner here. Behemoth is tapping into planetary rotational energy!" I felt my blood flee from my face. Slowing the planet's rotation by even one second yielded enough energy to rip this ship apart.
The ship began to move, activating another dimensional hop. We didn't get the time before Behemoth sent out an explosion of absolute force. The ship lurched, the shields taken to their breaking point.
Before I could blink I was outside of the ship, ported out at my command. I shut my eyes and prayed. My shield unfolded like a flower, expanding to over two hundred meters in diameter. My arms shook, and there was a whump. My shield shimmered away, and I nearly collapsed. The ship shifted dimensions, dragging me along.
"Guess we got his attention like we wanted." I groaned, I had blocked the equivalent of a ten kilometer asteroid impact and felt like garbage.
Oh. There we go.
Night.
I passed out.
Glory Girl felt useless as she watched the fighting from above. She couldn't take Behemoth at close range, and her only use had been blocking his kinetic blasts from killing the ship they were on.
It had been a solid two minutes and her shield was still down.
"Human." She jumped when one of the people on the big shuttle called her out. It was a Necrofriggian, sounding like a girl not much older than her.
"What do you want?" She couldn't bite back her retort.
"You don't realize the significance of what you blocked?" Vicky shook her head, the lack of her shield making her feel naked. "Behemoth struck you with enough force to destroy a small continent. We would have been killed if not for your intervention."
She had blocked that? Without being atomized? She wasn't sure even Alexandria could take that kind of force. The ship began to veer away from the battle, and she wondered what was going on.
"This vessel has a precious payload, me." The Necrofriggian was smiling, her insectile head odd to look at. "Behemoth has been infused with a unique type of energy, an energy we must extract to have hope of stopping his ascension. Your own experience with the arcane will help us."
"I…don't have much experience with magic." What a weird thing to say, weirder right to start believing it.
"Being a parahuman is a little more important than experience right now." She was definitely smirking, her antenna curling in a strangely smug way.
"Sure. Where are you going with this?"
Her wings unfurled. "How would you like to help in the slaying of an Endbringer?"
I woke up to the sensation of sunlight pouring down on me, invigorating me. Based on the wavelengths, it was yellow sunlight. Which meant…
My eyes snapped awake, and I found myself staring at the reflective ocean blue eyes of Kara Zor-El. She was channeling sunlight down from her hands, soaking my body in it. Oh wow that feels nice.
Was I in base form?
I cupped my chest, and shook my head. It didn't really matter, not like I don't spend ninety five percent of my time as a guy anyway.
"Shouldn't you be fighting Behemoth?" Zara continued to pour some of her energy, though the current began to ebb.
"I can spend a little time helping someone out…and Maxima is taking my place in the battle." She sounded hesitant.
"Maxima, as in Queen Maxima of the planet Almerac?" The Almeracians were heavily derived Neanderthals, evolving rapidly under the exotic energies of their planet and changed by severe genetic alterations. Sixteen base pairs like the Kryptonians, and their highly flexible genetics made them genetically compatible.
Though their powers are more directly psionic in nature, and don't need a catalyst of certain wavelengths of light. Kryptonians might be using a mix of different energies in their bioelectric aura. Not that I've had the opportunity to study them.
"The very same." She seemed worried. "She'll play nice, and she's powerful. She'll buy us some time." She gestured to a screen that showed the battle. "Plus she's not so bad, you're thinking of the Queen Maxima from Earth 2-AB." The one who was an enemy of their Superman before his untimely death? "Maxie is nice."
Maxima was wrapped in an enormous shell of psionic power, projecting numerous psionic copies. Her shields were invulnerable, acting as a blockade against Behemoth. He was forced into the air, blocked from channeling the kinetic energy stored in the Earth's rotation. He had slowed the planet's rotation by a third of a second, stealing two hundred teratons of kinetic energy for his attacks.
The upper sky rippled with explosions, missiles and bombs detonating against the planetary shield. Behemoth froze a four by four kilometer lake solid, and I paled. A two hundred megaton laser struck her head on, and her shield didn't falter even a little.
Water had enormous heat capacity, even a lake stored enough to destroy a city or three. This wasn't him operating at greater power, it was fighting smarter, using his abilities to the fullest. He was flying, redirecting kinetic energy and shockwaves to keep him from being sent into space.
He was trying to return to the ground, right towards a tectonic fault line. Chevalier wasn't letting him, smacking him into the air while Cenotaph worked her own magic. She had four projections, one was an old man, one I recognized as Jay Garrick. He was a diffuse cloud, wrapping around her like a cloak and letting her tap into his power directly. Yellow lightning sparked around her, as she weaved around Behemoth's attacks with a dancer-like form.
A second projection was denying Behemoth use of Earth's rotational energy, a power like Citrine's, weakening his power, but more specialized and limited. The third was a brute stronger than Alexandria, even more inviolable. The fourth was a power gifter, one that gave thinker and blaster powers for a while. Precognition, danger sense, enhanced targeting and timing.
Blaster powers included gravity blasts, kinetic plates of force, energy built to disrupt molecular bonds. They weren't strong, maybe a 3-4 rating. She had gifted Alexandria with danger sense and a molecule-disruption blaster power. Herself with precognition, and gravity blasts, and the same for direct combatants.
Someone else enters the field, a Gem, a fusion. A tall and curvy Gem, with four thin arms and a purple color scheme. Warm light purple skin, dark eyes, a sloped nose and full lips. Voluminous hair cascaded behind her head, with her gemstones on her chest and on the palm of one of her hands, markings along her arms and face. I knew those Gems.
Spirit Quartz was a fusion on file between my Lapis Lazuli and Starry. They wore flowing cloaked armor, like a wizard knight. They held the same weapon that warped physics to shred through Behemoth's energy manipulation, and I looked at the wall of water they were gathering. The wave slammed into Behemoth, tendrils and masses of water dragging him into the depths.
They twisted past a nuclear blast, dodging it before he had even sent it out. Their armor was powered using their gemstones, allowing for immense protective energy output. Behemoth shifted to a massive electric discharge a mile across, trying to EMP our equipment.
It didn't work out.
He boiled a cubic kilometer of water, and I shivered as he was swept within his bubble of immense energy, heat, kinetic, electrical, magnetic, nuclear, radiation. He sent out beams of light, trying to blind his opponents.
Instead, light warped around him, and he vanished from nearly all physical senses related to energy. He rode on a nuclear explosion like a rocket, and drilled into the rock before Eidolon's matter erasure could tag him.
Maxima started sweeping the area with her psionic doubles, and some of them went underground.
"Behemoth is burrowing into the ground, and heading towards a fault several hundred miles from the nearest pylon." Kara was expressing her displeasure, expelling her solar energy in a wide field I was feeding on to fuel my healing factor.
"We're going to have to dig him out." I spoke up myself, my instincts all out of whack.
If we didn't dig him out, he was going to rip the continent apart.
Which would not be an optimal outcome.
War World was dying, piece by piece, shard by shard burned away. The shard at its heart was splintering, crystal flesh rotting and burning away under literal petatons of energy. It sent out sweeping blasts, spears of gravity, twisting singularities, balls of quark-gluon hyper-plasma, dimensional disruption weapons, and even limited applications of Sting.
One ship led the charge, a sweeping creature in alabaster and cerise, a serpentine whale-like vessel releasing beams capable of shattering moons in a handful of strikes. It tore through it's flesh, spearing into the massive weapon and entity.
The shard at its core was dying, breaking apart as it's technological shell faltered. The vessel's energy attack was coated in Sting, the weapon flipping across thousands of dimensions, tearing across dimensional boundaries.
The shard knew it was a sacrifice, a pawn in the long game of the entity that was it's parent. It had bought time, a moment of distraction, invasion, migration. It detected the signature of the Broken God, infested with the machinery and agent-components of the Loner, the Red Queen. Through the Behemoth there were other threads and connections to follow.
Seventeen were disconnected, but two remained linked with the chaos engine. They would be subverted, utilized as tools for the glory of it's greater master. But they were on a time limit, it took time to subvert the Behemoth, and it would take even more time to subvert his siblings. The enemy had slain gods before, and once Thunder fell their subversion would fail.
But it was vital data regardless of the outcome, data the Queen would make use of.
A continent's worth of its own mass was detonated, and the shard shielded itself, repairing the many shield emitters close to the central power core of War World. It was dying regardless, but it was preferable to failure. It fired, and it's attack was blocked by the Lord of Order, a massive human symbol burnished with gold, hundreds of kilometers across in reach.
Insufficient.
It analyzed, scanned, and scouted. It found the chaos engines, it found the aimless corpse of the Thinker, commandeered by primitives and enemies.
It found the Warrior, dull, lifeless, vulnerable.
Easily manipulated.
It could not transfer a signal, blocked by the enemy species. So instead it transcribed what it could to Mother. It began to activate the subversive elements within the Broken God, and began to twist the Behemoth to it's ends.
The infection was slow, but it was running out of time. It would either succeed or fail, lose or win the battle.
But the war would wage on.
I shielded the generated portal right as Behemoth landed, already knowing he shouldn't have been able to open the seam left behind by the shut portal. My bubble took the flash of the following nuclear explosion, the ground shattering for ten miles around Behemoth from my vantage point a mile up. We were a thousand miles away from any city on Sirenia's Earth.
It was a multi-megaton blast, and I flinched as every living thing ceased to exist within the atomic explosion.
"Sunrise Diamond! Where's Behemoth?" I watched as Behemoth conjured up immense amounts of energy, the dark sky was streaked with light, thousands of dots moving across the void of space.
"Behemoth has crossed dimensions through unknown means!" Eidolon stepped through the golden rimmed portal along with a small number of durable enough capes.
Alexandria wasn't here yet but we had Legend, many of the flying 460-AB capes. Cenotaph and Barrage and Icon. Chevalier landed on one of my barriers, looking down at the devastation caused by Behemoth. Hallow was right next to me, and I flinched as I saw how much damage was being caused by Behemoth. He was already heading towards one of the larger settlements on Sirenia's planet…or well Earth 67-A.
There was no more support to be offered here, very few of the capes would survive going up against Behemoth.
"What's Behemoth doing, what was that thing inside him?" Legend was lost and honestly so was I. "And why is the sky lighting up with explosions?"
"Abaddon decided it was time to start her game and infected Behemoth with the flayed corpse of an alien god. Using her command of the War World to distract the UTR enough to send her package."
"You're not joking." Legend sounded horrified, but I was growing numb to all of this insanity. If I didn't I would have cracked long ago.
"From what I've read, she likes to play with her food before she goes on to shatter a planet and turn it's people into soylent green." I wasn't joking, she was responsible for billions of deaths, it only wasn't more due to advancements in defense and counters against her abilities.
"The question is what would she want with Behemoth…" Eidolon spoke up, and I could tell he was tapping into his own inherent power. If his distress and self loathing was anything to go by.
I looked at the flicker of deflected impacts and energy blasts, and knew there were a number of pylons scattered across the planet. They were projectors, forming specialized fields to block orbital bombardment.
His target was obvious.
"He's after the planetary defense grid…" Eidolon turned, and I could sense dread building around me. "That happens, and the entire planet will be destroyed by the remaining cannons of War World. The frontline will start faltering, and we might start losing entire Earths. Which leaves Mogul free to consume Earth Bet for his master." Eidolon vanished in a flare of silver light, charging into Behemoth's path.
Chevalier seemed ready to join him. "We…"
"We need to go back to Bet, gather what capes we can, those strong enough to survive an unrestricted Behemoth. And only them, or have them operate from a distance."
"But we need all the capes we can get…"
"They go down there," I swept my arms to indicate the nuclear firestorm around Behemoth. "They will die, contributing nothing to the battle in the process." He was shattering landscapes, leaving directed waves of destruction like he would have done in New Delhi in another time and space. "Right now Eidolon and Legend…" Alexandria charged out from the portal, shielded in a strange light using Gemtech. "And Alexandria…are all keeping Behemoth busy, so uhh, help?"
"What will you be doing?" Chevalier asked, his weapon shaking at the devastation below us.
"I'm…starting to flag." It had hurt to withstand his attacks, to use all my boundless power. "I'm not quite as resilient as the rest of the Diamonds, and all of them are busy leading battles across the galaxy…or in Aster's case he's…" There was a flicker of cerise light from the shattered surface of War World. "He's at the very heart of the battle. But what I do have is powerful healing powers, and the ability to absorb ambient radiation."
"We have four capes versus an Endbringer, that won't be enough." I caught the aura before they arrived in a crack of sound. It was a blink of the eye even for me.
A woman, gorgeous and fit, golden hair shining in a wider spectrum to my eyes, no her entire body was a shining yellow star, power circulating like living currents of solar energy. Her eyes were an improbable shade of blue, and her costume was black and silver with the symbol of the House of El on her chest, a short skirt and dark leggings/armored skin suit pants?
A red cape fluttered in the wind, her movement disturbingly silent.
"I think I can pick up the slack." Her smile was bemused, warm almost. But I could tell the strength within her was vast, it was like a star was simmering under her skin.
"Supergirl." I whispered, and she heard me clearly. "So you're on Endbringer duty today." I didn't speak on what I saw beneath the mask, she was a kind person yes, a good woman.
But she absolutely radiated rage, anger, hate focused and refined beneath ironhard discipline and moral codes. It was a cold fury, and her muscles tensed.
"Go. I've got the big guy, you take care of your end of things princess." The world broke around her, effectively teleporting with her sheer acceleration. Behemoth was sent flying, and narrowly dodged one of her punches, and the landscape melted around her strike.
She had somehow restrained a punch capable of fragmenting a mountain range down to leaving a five hundred meter crater instead.
Hallow had a hand on my shoulder, his glowing orbs reflected insight, foresight.
"If there's something you've foreseen… go. " He vanished into shadow, and I looked back up at the portal.
We were going to have to gather people quickly before the Behemoth kills the planet.
The west side of the city was fucked, with fissures filled with magma and radioactive material that was being forcibly removed by hundreds of Gems. I would say a few days and everything would be good as new.
I felt sweat pour down from my head, sagging against a wall. I had been through hell using my ichor to heal victims and injured capes, working with Lizardtail the first, Scapegoat, and Sanguine with his blood cleaning and biomass provisions. Along with dozens of magic healers, and stores of potions suitable for injuries.
Right now I was sunning myself under UV light, my pants turned to shorts for extra surface area. The light energy was providing suitable sustenance along with a calorie dense sandwich, and lots of water. In the chaos it has taken Chevalier a lot of time to rally the capes, the ones who were in search and rescue were working with FEMA and other groups to start fixing up the city.
Portals had been opened to 460-AB, allowing for additional assistance from their planet. My colony was busy shooting down missiles from War World, the Deimos Sphere was doing it's job quite well. If they hadn't I'd be seeing a lot more craters in the near future. Most of War World was destroyed, but that would take hundreds of shots even from a Diamond Flagship.
The capes were wavering, even as Chevalier tried to rally them to follow Behemoth to a world that wasn't theirs. Though they only needed a fraction of them, those tough enough, fast enough or with sufficiently esoteric abilities. The thinkers were still on board since they didn't need to be at close range.
Lung wasn't convinced. "The Behemoth has fled to another world, and proven they can not be defeated." I winced at the parts of the city ripped apart by dynakinetic power. "What use is there in defending another world completely? Against an unrestrained force of nature. He's no longer a problem is he?"
An image popped to mind, vivid and bright in my unfortunately powerful imagination. An image of the Earth shattering because of Behemoth, billions upon billions of lives snuffed out in an instant. Of my world being found, and utterly destroyed, reduced to atoms.
He's a coward.
Of course he fucking is, why else is he a petty gangster warlord.
Lung was looking at me, and I realized I had released a massive wave of Diamondsong into the air. Windows were shattered, and I breathed in and out. I marched towards Lung, and I forced a calm on my own mind.
I failed.
"Oh you're going to fight." My voice was venomous, as I channeled my fury into the words, faking my confidence. "Because if you don't, I guarantee this planet will be reduced to atoms because of him. And if you survive that I'll rip your power out and harvest it for parts." He flinched, and the shard behind him did the same. "I think Chevalier can explain the rest."
Chevalier stood up, leaning towards Myrddin. "We managed to drive off Behemoth, but the battle isn't over and the stakes are much higher." I remained next to him, my claws clinking harshly. "The Triumvirate are both continuing the fight, because it's vital that Behemoth be defeated today or there won't be a tomorrow to fight for." I formed a projection of the battle, War World's scattered fragments lashing out with thousands of dimension hopping missiles used to shatter islands and subcontinents.
"That would be War World, a superweapon capable of destroying entire planets." One blast of the live battle shattered a small second moon of Earth 67A, roughly seven hundred miles in diameter. "At the moment most of the forces of the United Transdimensional Realms are focused on keeping it's weapons from turning on every world including our own. Behemoth is attempting to make the frontline falter by destroying a world's defense grid. Once that happens billions will die, and this world will be next." I faked it until I made it, and felt my magic shift, touching their auras, providing an air of legitimacy, charisma, power.
I receded the subconscious use of what was basically a glamour, and sighed.
"We don't need all the capes here, only those capable of going toe to toe with the Behemoth or able to provide them support, or providing long range attacks. Thinkers to organize the battle, to give us a chance." He looked bigger than life, brimming with life. "A chance to fight the Endbringers, to defeat them. To help our new allies on their world like they helped us on ours."
There was a ripple in the crowd of capes, there were only a few capes capable of damaging Behemoth, capable of not instantly dying. There was a rise, their auras expanding, brightening.
We would have our volunteers.
Capes were gathering, operating inside the numerous Vakryka ships. The side mounted turrets were modified to extend the range of their blasts to keep them out of Behemoth's nuclear explosion radius. It helped that even small Gem vessels could withstand nukes, as in only Legend hit hard enough to break through their shields.
Damsel was getting her own drop ship, one modified to augment her spacetime rending blasts by using their Gravity Engine.
I had been allowed inside Armsmaster's lab, and I could see he was working feverishly on a project, it was a grey blur of nanomachines, nanothorns. A scan revealed an estimated sixteen trillion thorns per cubic centimeter.
"Dragon mentioned you were completing the final steps of a major project based on examination of Gem nanofluid." The tinker didn't jump.
"I'm just gathering some for my own use, trying to find a way to carry them as a payload to protect them from Behemoth's energy manipulation." He was terse, my presence was a distraction from his work.
"Gem technology has the means, for this battle at least. Perhaps it can give you inspiration for more independent work. We need to go." He nodded, and started to pack up. Once he was done I lifted him up, he seemed disconcerted until I took off like an airplane.
I ran on platforms of barriers, until I made it into one of the entrances of Captain Jack's ship, the Destiny Unbound. Armsmaster stumbled as the opening shut itself. There was a warping of space as we slid into the Bleed, slipping into our target dimension.
A lot of breakthroughs were coming together in the last few months, so Destiny Unbound was finally up to spec with modern Gem technology.
"What is this ship?" Armsmaster asked as I hummed my way through the dangers of the ship.
"The Destiny Unbound is a heavy scout ship, two hundred fifty meters long and outfitted heavily for combat. It blocked the rest of the nuclear blast Behemoth generated." We entered the command center, where Captain Jack and her fellow Nephrites were operating the ship.
"Activate the main gun, focus fire." Jack spoke harshly, a clicking song of battle and war.
"Analyzing wavelength. Establishing local hyperreality flux, manifold location identified." One of them spoke in monotone. The battle was displayed on a central console screen. Lung had reentered the field, having grown to be largerthan Behemoth. Multiple parahumans were firing out from vessels that protected them from the sheer power being put out by the Endbringer.
Cenotaph had tapped into a power enhancing ability, briefly strengthening his ramping along with some combat to further grow. The eastern continent was empty, and we were fighting in a literal desert so…
Alexandria was being protected by Citrine, the effect made lingering by Earth 460-AB tech, including provisions for air.
Lung smashed Behemoth into the ground, and his four split-jawed head exploded apart after a megaton punch from Behemoth. But he was surviving his kill aura and his warped lightning. Hydrokinetic tendrils from Eidolon held him down, teleporters pulled everyone else back and the ship…fired.
Golden light radiated down upon Behemoth, a growing star on Earth. Almost all the energy was concentrated against the Endbringer, but what escaped burned. Miles of desert were turned to glass in an instant, hypersonic winds billowed out from the point of impact. The fireball was tens of miles wide, billowing out into space where it licked the ship's shields.
I could hear the distress in Colin's aura.
"The restraint of your people is commendable." His fingers were twitching towards his weapons. The energy was swept aside, consumed by Eidolon to fuel his powers. Leaving Behemoth with nothing.
"Restraint is necessary when collateral damage involves enough energy to pulp a continent." The clouds and dust began to part, under the influence of Weather Wizard's metahuman power.
Behemoth lurched forward.
The monster was reduced down to a skeleton, emaciated, a black frame that sparked with flares of gold and red. I could still see Behemoth, but I could see the god dying inside his flesh, wriggling under his layers. His core was unexposed but his layers of protection were greatly diminished.
Thirty teratons of energy output across hundreds of dimensions weren't enough to kill him, but a good eighty five percent of his body was gone.
"Five seconds for the next shot." Behemoth began to move after one of the Gems spoke. His hands moved downwards, and I felt a shift in the energies. Danger screamed in my song.
Oh.
"High Diviner here. Behemoth is tapping into planetary rotational energy!" I felt my blood flee from my face. Slowing the planet's rotation by even one second yielded enough energy to rip this ship apart.
The ship began to move, activating another dimensional hop. We didn't get the time before Behemoth sent out an explosion of absolute force. The ship lurched, the shields taken to their breaking point.
Before I could blink I was outside of the ship, ported out at my command. I shut my eyes and prayed. My shield unfolded like a flower, expanding to over two hundred meters in diameter. My arms shook, and there was a whump. My shield shimmered away, and I nearly collapsed. The ship shifted dimensions, dragging me along.
"Guess we got his attention like we wanted." I groaned, I had blocked the equivalent of a ten kilometer asteroid impact and felt like garbage.
Oh. There we go.
Night.
I passed out.
Glory Girl felt useless as she watched the fighting from above. She couldn't take Behemoth at close range, and her only use had been blocking his kinetic blasts from killing the ship they were on.
It had been a solid two minutes and her shield was still down.
"Human." She jumped when one of the people on the big shuttle called her out. It was a Necrofriggian, sounding like a girl not much older than her.
"What do you want?" She couldn't bite back her retort.
"You don't realize the significance of what you blocked?" Vicky shook her head, the lack of her shield making her feel naked. "Behemoth struck you with enough force to destroy a small continent. We would have been killed if not for your intervention."
She had blocked that? Without being atomized? She wasn't sure even Alexandria could take that kind of force. The ship began to veer away from the battle, and she wondered what was going on.
"This vessel has a precious payload, me." The Necrofriggian was smiling, her insectile head odd to look at. "Behemoth has been infused with a unique type of energy, an energy we must extract to have hope of stopping his ascension. Your own experience with the arcane will help us."
"I…don't have much experience with magic." What a weird thing to say, weirder right to start believing it.
"Being a parahuman is a little more important than experience right now." She was definitely smirking, her antenna curling in a strangely smug way.
"Sure. Where are you going with this?"
Her wings unfurled. "How would you like to help in the slaying of an Endbringer?"
I woke up to the sensation of sunlight pouring down on me, invigorating me. Based on the wavelengths, it was yellow sunlight. Which meant…
My eyes snapped awake, and I found myself staring at the reflective ocean blue eyes of Kara Zor-El. She was channeling sunlight down from her hands, soaking my body in it. Oh wow that feels nice.
Was I in base form?
I cupped my chest, and shook my head. It didn't really matter, not like I don't spend ninety five percent of my time as a guy anyway.
"Shouldn't you be fighting Behemoth?" Zara continued to pour some of her energy, though the current began to ebb.
"I can spend a little time helping someone out…and Maxima is taking my place in the battle." She sounded hesitant.
"Maxima, as in Queen Maxima of the planet Almerac?" The Almeracians were heavily derived Neanderthals, evolving rapidly under the exotic energies of their planet and changed by severe genetic alterations. Sixteen base pairs like the Kryptonians, and their highly flexible genetics made them genetically compatible.
Though their powers are more directly psionic in nature, and don't need a catalyst of certain wavelengths of light. Kryptonians might be using a mix of different energies in their bioelectric aura. Not that I've had the opportunity to study them.
"The very same." She seemed worried. "She'll play nice, and she's powerful. She'll buy us some time." She gestured to a screen that showed the battle. "Plus she's not so bad, you're thinking of the Queen Maxima from Earth 2-AB." The one who was an enemy of their Superman before his untimely death? "Maxie is nice."
Maxima was wrapped in an enormous shell of psionic power, projecting numerous psionic copies. Her shields were invulnerable, acting as a blockade against Behemoth. He was forced into the air, blocked from channeling the kinetic energy stored in the Earth's rotation. He had slowed the planet's rotation by a third of a second, stealing two hundred teratons of kinetic energy for his attacks.
The upper sky rippled with explosions, missiles and bombs detonating against the planetary shield. Behemoth froze a four by four kilometer lake solid, and I paled. A two hundred megaton laser struck her head on, and her shield didn't falter even a little.
Water had enormous heat capacity, even a lake stored enough to destroy a city or three. This wasn't him operating at greater power, it was fighting smarter, using his abilities to the fullest. He was flying, redirecting kinetic energy and shockwaves to keep him from being sent into space.
He was trying to return to the ground, right towards a tectonic fault line. Chevalier wasn't letting him, smacking him into the air while Cenotaph worked her own magic. She had four projections, one was an old man, one I recognized as Jay Garrick. He was a diffuse cloud, wrapping around her like a cloak and letting her tap into his power directly. Yellow lightning sparked around her, as she weaved around Behemoth's attacks with a dancer-like form.
A second projection was denying Behemoth use of Earth's rotational energy, a power like Citrine's, weakening his power, but more specialized and limited. The third was a brute stronger than Alexandria, even more inviolable. The fourth was a power gifter, one that gave thinker and blaster powers for a while. Precognition, danger sense, enhanced targeting and timing.
Blaster powers included gravity blasts, kinetic plates of force, energy built to disrupt molecular bonds. They weren't strong, maybe a 3-4 rating. She had gifted Alexandria with danger sense and a molecule-disruption blaster power. Herself with precognition, and gravity blasts, and the same for direct combatants.
Someone else enters the field, a Gem, a fusion. A tall and curvy Gem, with four thin arms and a purple color scheme. Warm light purple skin, dark eyes, a sloped nose and full lips. Voluminous hair cascaded behind her head, with her gemstones on her chest and on the palm of one of her hands, markings along her arms and face. I knew those Gems.
Spirit Quartz was a fusion on file between my Lapis Lazuli and Starry. They wore flowing cloaked armor, like a wizard knight. They held the same weapon that warped physics to shred through Behemoth's energy manipulation, and I looked at the wall of water they were gathering. The wave slammed into Behemoth, tendrils and masses of water dragging him into the depths.
They twisted past a nuclear blast, dodging it before he had even sent it out. Their armor was powered using their gemstones, allowing for immense protective energy output. Behemoth shifted to a massive electric discharge a mile across, trying to EMP our equipment.
It didn't work out.
He boiled a cubic kilometer of water, and I shivered as he was swept within his bubble of immense energy, heat, kinetic, electrical, magnetic, nuclear, radiation. He sent out beams of light, trying to blind his opponents.
Instead, light warped around him, and he vanished from nearly all physical senses related to energy. He rode on a nuclear explosion like a rocket, and drilled into the rock before Eidolon's matter erasure could tag him.
Maxima started sweeping the area with her psionic doubles, and some of them went underground.
"Behemoth is burrowing into the ground, and heading towards a fault several hundred miles from the nearest pylon." Kara was expressing her displeasure, expelling her solar energy in a wide field I was feeding on to fuel my healing factor.
"We're going to have to dig him out." I spoke up myself, my instincts all out of whack.
If we didn't dig him out, he was going to rip the continent apart.
Which would not be an optimal outcome.
War World was dying, piece by piece, shard by shard burned away. The shard at its heart was splintering, crystal flesh rotting and burning away under literal petatons of energy. It sent out sweeping blasts, spears of gravity, twisting singularities, balls of quark-gluon hyper-plasma, dimensional disruption weapons, and even limited applications of Sting.
One ship led the charge, a sweeping creature in alabaster and cerise, a serpentine whale-like vessel releasing beams capable of shattering moons in a handful of strikes. It tore through it's flesh, spearing into the massive weapon and entity.
The shard at its core was dying, breaking apart as it's technological shell faltered. The vessel's energy attack was coated in Sting, the weapon flipping across thousands of dimensions, tearing across dimensional boundaries.
The shard knew it was a sacrifice, a pawn in the long game of the entity that was it's parent. It had bought time, a moment of distraction, invasion, migration. It detected the signature of the Broken God, infested with the machinery and agent-components of the Loner, the Red Queen. Through the Behemoth there were other threads and connections to follow.
Seventeen were disconnected, but two remained linked with the chaos engine. They would be subverted, utilized as tools for the glory of it's greater master. But they were on a time limit, it took time to subvert the Behemoth, and it would take even more time to subvert his siblings. The enemy had slain gods before, and once Thunder fell their subversion would fail.
But it was vital data regardless of the outcome, data the Queen would make use of.
A continent's worth of its own mass was detonated, and the shard shielded itself, repairing the many shield emitters close to the central power core of War World. It was dying regardless, but it was preferable to failure. It fired, and it's attack was blocked by the Lord of Order, a massive human symbol burnished with gold, hundreds of kilometers across in reach.
Insufficient.
It analyzed, scanned, and scouted. It found the chaos engines, it found the aimless corpse of the Thinker, commandeered by primitives and enemies.
It found the Warrior, dull, lifeless, vulnerable.
Easily manipulated.
It could not transfer a signal, blocked by the enemy species. So instead it transcribed what it could to Mother. It began to activate the subversive elements within the Broken God, and began to twist the Behemoth to it's ends.
The infection was slow, but it was running out of time. It would either succeed or fail, lose or win the battle.
But the war would wage on.
Last edited:
- Location
- Chula Vista
Heh yeah. To be fair Entities are absolute BS, it's one of the reasons Abaddon got most of their shards eaten. the full Entities are huge hyper-FTL superpowered crystalline semi-organic life forms the size of gas giants and stars. Even toned down due to restrictions on energy use and a limited network they're going to be…hard to handle.
Penumbra 7.4
- Location
- Chula Vista
Penumbra 7.4
I grimaced as I went back out, having recovered from taking a hit capable of causing a mass extinction event. Behemoth was moving quickly, creating fissures miles deep, leaving a trail of instant volcanoes wherever he dug through the planet.
Kara had gone off ahead, and was currently grappling with Behemoth miles underground. So Kryptonians didn't need to breathe, which isn't too far off from us Diamond hybrids. Our oxygen needs were a lot lower, and light energy was a suitable substitute.
Her hits were powerful, imbued with the inherent space warping properties of her species.
It helped that her fists hit harder than the entire nuclear stockpile of my Earth. But it would take thousands of punches to dig her way into his core. Dozens of Dragonflight vehicles flew alongside me, keeping up with my flight at about fifteen times the speed of sound. Which was what I could manage without burning out.
I could see the sea of electronic data stored inside Dragon's vehicles. I tapped into them to communicate with the AI.
"Have you made any progress with integrating Armsmaster's nano-thorns into a payload?" I twisted around a volcanic eruption, and moved where lightning would have struck from the induced friction of dust and ash.
"Your drill machines appear to be a suitable container for nano-thorn substrate, tough and able to dig thousands of miles into the planet. Though I'm not sure what their use is in your culture."
"They're Injectors, they typically contain a slurry of ichor, minerals, and nanofluid supplements that help in the creation of Gems." I informed her, and could tell she was loading the ground torpedoes.
Dragon's aura pulsed with concern. "Will that affect your species negatively?"
"They're just machines, we could give you a million and it wouldn't put a dent in their stock." I noticed something, or more accurately noticed an absence of something. "Where is Eidolon by the way?" I didn't see him digging into the planet, he was tasked with another job.
"He's helping with the defense of the planet from above, while he looks for the right power to grab Behemoth." She answered, so I teleported towards him, using my own intuition to guide the device wrapped around my neck.
Eidolon was floating, as a walking hole in reality, bleached silver and green in the process. His hand was gathering energy, lots of it. I recognized the attack, he was emulating the F-Driver. The War World was only forty thousand miles away, it was only the work of thousands of ships to keep the gravity of the superweapon from ruining the planet.
He fired, and the strike exited the atmosphere in a blink of an eye. It took some time. War World fractured further, the technological shell collapsing with the attack.
"I only have four or five more of those in me." Eidolon spoke up, his voice thick with emotion. "This power is energy intensive, and I need to save one for Behemoth." He fired a second time, damaging the enemy above further. "I'm searching for a suitable power to reach…" he paused, and vanished into a twisting mass of teleportation.
I knew that power, one we had reconnected recently. It was a teleportation ability without a restriction on where to teleport. He could teleport into solid rock, and reach anyone he can think of. That was the main limit, he couldn't teleport to someone he didn't know.
But it was still a strong ability with transcontinental range, and immense precision. Even my own Transfer-Jewel only had a few hundred miles of range though it's transdimensional teleportation gave it an edge.
I teleported again, and found myself around a number of Dragon's suits. They had dozens of Driller Torpedos loaded with full tanks of nano-thorns.
The nanomachines were covered in a limited application of Citrine's power, a field that would protect them from Behemoth's dynakinetic abilities for a couple of minutes. There was a light thunk and Dragon fired, launching over a hundred torpedoes. They'd reach Behemoth in half a minute, since they could drill through stone and soil and magma at twice the speed of sound.
Lung was flying, keeping himself ramped up by sparring with the Fulmini, and being surrounded by parahumans. He was somewhere around sixty feet tall, with multiple silver scaled limbs, three pairs of wings and a horrific jaw. I slipped past that fight, seeking out Alexandria.
She was gripping her left prosthetic eye, which had clearly been ripped out by Behemoth. There was a strange void there, and odd ichor accumulating around the wound.
"You're injured." I stated, and I could tell her emotions were not under her full control. She wasn't surprised but she was frustrated, angered, and hopeless.
"They've been toying with us since the beginning," she wasn't just angered, she was enraged. "Holding back, barely even trying. Destroying humanity year by year."
"Chaos engines are very dangerous opponents, the galaxies took out nearly eighty of them and it cost us planets." Then again it had gotten easier and easier to defeat them without collateral damage. "I'll be healing you, not because we're friends or anything though."
She blinked with her one remaining eye. "My body is frozen in stasis, it can't be healed."
"You're telling this to someone who can say they've looked at the sun and say I've eaten bigger." She didn't say no, so with a cheeky grin I kissed her right below her broken eye. She accelerated back, and there was a flash of magic and power.
Her body cracked under my vision, flesh unfroze into a mass of tendrils leaking pink and red around her damaged socket. Within seconds her stony flesh regrew itself, and she blinked her renewed eye, what remained was a linear scar burning like stars. A bit like Lars…but made of tanned stone skin.
"That better?" I didn't care much, but having her at a hundred percent was better than not being at a hundred percent. Alexandria nodded, and I released a brief chirp as I inspected our surroundings.
A number of Gem drop ships were being brought in, cooling the boiling landscape with waves of ice and chill, stilling the environment around them. It wasn't enough, the disruption would trigger climate change and likely precipitated multiple extinction events.
So I activated the teleportation array once more, I had more healing to do. Then I was contacted.
"The pylon is what?"
I looked at the massive crack around the pylon, almost blinded by the rainbow of wavelengths emitted by the quarter kilometer tall machine. I kissed my hand, and jumped. I slapped my hand against the metal, and it bonded together, fusing and returning back to full strength. The foundations were being shaken by earthquakes and distant volcanic tremors.
One cape was holding it back, Tara Markov or Terra. She was a geokinetic, capable of manipulating rock and stone on an immense scale. She had grown in strength, going from lifting buildings to islands. Growth and multiplication of abilities had been the norm, whether due to exercise of their physical abilities, making more efficient use of how they used their powers, along with better understanding of metahuman physics.
Her power saturated the stone, but was barely holding off the sheer output of tectonic energy unleashed by Behemoth's actions. Eventually the pylon would fail, and the continent would shatter when tens of thousands of missiles and bombs exploded with gigaton level energies each.
I could sense that she was tiring, her energy and body worn thin by the strain.
"I can give you some energy, my ichor can pick up the slack." The metahuman nodded silently, all her concentration focused on manipulating matter. I kissed her on her left cheek, and charged the air with my Aura. There was a pink tinge to the field her power was generating.
I had been studying metahuman powers for a while now, their nature, their history. The metagene, or the gen-active factor, went back to the dawn of Homo over two million years ago, though it didn't function in any way until much later.
Vandal Savage was considered the first metahuman, and it spread to the rest of humanity until something caused profound damage to the gene, limiting its physical and metaphysical manifestations. Capes like Captain Comet and Icon were considered probable results of uninterrupted evolution of the human species.
Most powers were suspected to be offcuts of a more general power, in a way not too far off from the shards and parahumans. Telepathy, body control, energy projection and matter control. Broken up into thousands if not millions of lesser powers.
So it was frightening to see that even this was a fraction of the power their humanity would have had in another timeline. And that it wasn't enough to defeat the boundless power of the Behemoth. Then again that was the point wasn't it?
Endbringers were monsters, their crystal flesh broke physics over their knees, bending and warping space and dimensions. Their core was as massive as an entire planet and even more durable, with a limitless reserve of worlds to draw upon for mass. Their powers were an order of magnitude stronger and less restrained, though they retained Manton Limits. Leviathan would sink islands or continents, and his water control was greater than they thought. The Simurgh had absurdly powerful clairvoyance of both the future and the past, her scream was not needed, and her ability to create tinkertech was beyond dangerous.
Endbringers weren't meant to lose.
The pylon was functional but I gave it maybe an hour at best before it shut down or exploded from the strain.
I felt the void in my sense of the auras, muddled by the darkness and shadows. Hallow was here, his nail shimmering with dreams and void.
He must be led here.
His silent telepathic push unsettled me, and we didn't quite get what he meant until his absence was remembered.
"You've laid a trap, a means of destroying him and the god inside of him?"
It is incomplete, you need to buy time.
There were images there, pulses of perception and perspective. Directions and plans set in motion.
"I'll try my best." I launched myself into the air, and sent my power out as a rocketing propulsive force. The air parted, and broke the sound barrier three times over before peaking at fifteen.
I followed the dangers, my combat intuition leading me to the heart of the battle. Twenty seconds was all I needed to arrive at the battlefield, where continental crust had shattered where Eidolon and Supergirl had been fighting with Behemoth miles underground. The sky was filled with drop ships, capes waiting in the wings for Behemoth to be dragged out into the open.
Legend was firing cooling beams, hundreds of them spreading outwards in a strobe-light attack. There was a growing bulge where the fighting was happening, and I blocked a burst of heat vision. My eyes caught the twisting vortex of polarized light, burning with the force to induce nuclear explosions.
Yeah.
A volcano formed, another outburst of lava and heat coated in radioactive materials, more fallout, more radiation and sources of energy. We were lucky we had kept him from stopping the planet's rotation. The momentum of the atmosphere would have shredded the surface down to bedrock.
I took a deep breath, and began to reach inside of myself for the sea of power. I felt the energies coming from below, the lines of magnetism, of heat and motion, and light. He was being forced to surface and he would be angry. I needed my sister's power.
It is our power brother mine.
Then let us share our strength sister mine.
I fell into a deeper trance, in the corner of our consciousness I found the power we seek. I push my will and specific memory, danger radiating from the future. My skin shines red, and my hair flies up under the influence of my Aura. It spread out, from a few hundred meters to a half a thousand kilometers.
The earth shattered as Behemoth was sent flying, and with a heart beating at a steady sixteen beats a minute I erased all matter with flames of stellar origin. It curled around my allies, and Behemoth roared, sending an irritating frequency.
I didn't let it show on my face, I wouldn't give him a hint of a weakness to exploit. Behemoth dove into the magma and molten landscape, and a lightning storm emerged from his fist, traced with lines of gold and black.
We were running out of time, he was being infected, driven to greater heights of power. Getting stronger, becoming something Other as the War World continued to launch world killing attacks.
I howled a raging Diamondsong, and slammed into him with the force of a battleship. I used impossible leverage to batter his skull, and Lung dropped from miles up, massive wings spearing into his flesh. Alexandria emerged from below, fists funneling shockwaves of air from the speed of them.
More and more people came, and a hundred attacks slammed into Behemoth like the fist of a god. All of them sent him in the direction I had indicated to them, as I followed the flow of battle.
The sky was on fire, and I fought on.
Camellia expanded her roots, bending her magic and voice to her will. Her magic would form a vital part of their trap. They were dealing with a battle of gods, and only she and the young Diamond had the suitable divinity to channel the right energies.
"What do I need to do?" The young Victoria was a practitioner, Awakened to the possibilities of Others, of metaphysical energy and mystic life.
"You share a talent for sympathetic and connective magic, and your parahumanity is a suitable connection to exploit." The golden haired child jumped, eyes widening with an almost innocent awe. "And I have a useful piece to make use of." One of her roots retracted, and unfolded to reveal a fragment of black-red flesh.
"Is…that a piece of Behemoth's flesh?" She sounded astounded and worried. "How is that going to help?"
"It's a connection for you to draw upon, for your agent to draw upon." She explained as two more practitioners worked their part of the ritual.
A Necrofriggian vizier worked with a Voidkeeper, the priests of her once child now God of Gods.
"They have mutilated the body of the old gods, they are usurpers of their throne, thieves and knaves and demons." The old golden masked Bug screamed, their Soul bared forth as an aura of black, silver lined magic. She held a piece of a mask, weathered and ancient.
A massive circle was drawn by her root, and symbols written down by the Twins of both generations. The old scholar brought knowledge and precision, his brother brought intuition and patience and shifted fate. The young scholar brought eerie shapes, an artistry of the metaphysical and the thereafter and the Black. Her sister brought the gift of joy and chaos, a magnetism towards the living, towards the Red and the Green and the Blue.
She looked at the young, afraid girl, the scholar, the tyrant, the warrior monk, all the facets of her potential. Her destiny had been changed, but it did not mean she missed her chance to become more. The child would grow, and Camellia would guide her to the path.
"Take it Victoria Dallon, and open your eyes." She tapped the human on her temple, opening the well. The girl's blue eyes shined with gold and white, as she lended some of her power as an Other, as a deity.
"What am I feeling?" The child was breathless.
"Those are the Connections Victoria, find them, touch them, seek the points of similarity." The child moved quickly after, muttering under her breath. The connection opened up, as she recited the name of the Endbringer over and over again, drawing upon untapped instincts.
She found the ichor of the beast, and traced circles and symbols. Only intent mattered here, but it wasn't enough to affect the beast.
"Your power and Behemoth. What do they share?" Camellia spoke softly, and Victoria blinked.
She was staring at the connections, and there was a notable pale pallor to her.
"They come from the same source, they manipulate energy, they communicate in the same way." It was a gut feeling for the poor girl. "They…I need something else, some way to…hold him here."
There was one power that bound Behemoth before anything else, but it would not be enough. He did not channel the energies of the divine, he would falter, he would fall.
She felt the connections, and saw that War World's shard was drawing closer, falling.
Camellia the Root felt dread.
Behemoth was sent out of the lake of magma, and I flinched as I saw how much of him had regrown with the minutes he had bought himself. From eighty five percent gone to maybe thirty five. His pool was tens of miles wide, and provided him cover. He was irradiating his surroundings, turning the area around him into a permanent wasteland with his own power and his generated volcanoes and irradiated lightning storms.
Eidolon was having to aim carefully, his emulation of the F-Driver could easily decimate the planet if he missed or if Behemoth got the chance to redirect the attack. A ten exaton kinetic impact would liquify the planet, and finish the job he was working on. His invulnerable breaker form was still in use along with a thinker power.
Fortunately the breaker form made him a walking death zone, destroying everything he touched. I suspected he was tapping into Siberian's power, not that he knew that or that I would tell him.
I breathed, and charged Behemoth, wreathing myself in fire and energy. He couldn't directly manipulate my flames, unable to tap into magical energies. I flinched as I saw traces of gold chitinous flesh interspersed with odd fungus-like cybernetics. I could hear the two beings screaming, prisoners in their own bodies.
I threw out my fist, and struck with the force to break a city. This wasn't the peak of my power but it was as much as my body could take for now. A dozen fists were thrown out in the span of a second, and Behemoth swept his deadly powers. They couldn't manifest inside of me anymore, instead I drank them from my skin.
Radiation was food, energy was food for me. I absorbed it, and used it to power my gem. I manifested a twisting matrix of barriers, fixed to an orbit around me. A cape from the Thanda I had spied on had been useful in spatial relationships.
Behemoth attempted to flee, and I spread out my telekinesis as a seething wave, a sphere fixed around him. Anyone in my reach was swept up, orbiting around him perpetually. It wasn't fast or strong, because it wasn't meant to be, it flowed with their own movements.
There was an impulse, one that struck Behemoth like a bell. I could barely listen in, but I knew it was a command, a broadcast, and a chill ran down my spine. War World was gone, the fragments of metallic shell gone and broken, but within rotating rings I saw the shard itself, an enormous fractal mass of black crystal.
SUBMIT.
Behemoth exploded like a nuclear bomb, an omnidirectional wave of white plasma spreading out for a dozen miles. My shield bubble covered every combatant in the area, while the ships protected their occupants from annihilation. There was something wrong, and Eidolon swept up the blast with a newly manifested power.
ATTACK.
The impulse wasn't touching just Behemoth, or the creature inside of him. It was reaching out beyond, and Eidolon was buzzing, his aura bursting with shock, horror.
REFORMAT.
Eidolon spoke quietly as Cenotaph trapped Behemoth in a massive gravity field while a dozen Fulmini held him down with their energy constructs.
"The agent above us is reaching out to the Endbringers, I can feel it trying to rip at their minds. It's searching for the ones you stole." I swallowed my bile, my horror.
Behemoth's left arm turned to dust, as dozens of modified Injectors dumped massive spears and clouds of nano-thorns before their protective fields failed. They attacked the cybernetics as they spread like a virus, and I could taste the magic from here.
AWAKEN
I cursed as the night sky shimmered, and Behemoth vibrated. Lung tried to move away, but he was charred down by golden lightning. Every Dragonflight detonated, their shields weren't strong enough or resistant enough against magic.
"L-Lung d-d-d-down—" the gigantic electromagnetic pulse wiped out her equipment, and I saw her consciousness start to lag between her virtual instances and her core back at home. My wristband was unaffected due to being under my technopathic field.
"The Simurgh has crashed into the moon, she appears to be assembling an array of unknown tinkertech." Oh that was very, very bad. "Leviathan is currently attacking the empty remnants of Hawaii, generating massive storms and shifting oceanic currents." So the two Endbringers were glitching, fantastic, great.
Behemoth shifted, and before I could blink a hundred strikes buried me a quarter of a kilometer into the superheated soil. It hurt more than anything I had experienced so far, and he released a haunting roar, the sound, the frequency was so specific…it was everywhere, in my ears, in my chest and it hurts it hurts it hurts make it stop make it stop!
DISHARMONY FOUND.
PROGRAM ENCOUNTERED CRITICAL DISHARMONY DUE TO HITHERTO UNKNOWN SONG. SHUTDOWN ENGAGED TO PREVENT FURTHER DAMAGE.
Faultline flinched as she saw Sunrise fall like a puppet cut from their strings, their song radiating pain, names curling through it, calling out for help. Behemoth sent Eidolon flying with the lightning with far greater weight, with the thunderclaps that shattered reality.
"Sunrise Diamond down!" She felt her heart clench as the Behemoth began crushing the helpless Gem under his foot. He was going to kill them.
"We need to do something." Elle was terrified, fearing for the life of the young Gem. Melanie wasn't sure what they could do, they were mere mercenaries, criminals, they had never been about golden heroics. Maybe that meant she wasn't a good person, that she was flawed in ways she rarely liked to think about.
That Gem hadn't cared for any of that, he had gone above and beyond, had managed to push past his own flaws. She flinched again when she saw Sunrise regress to their base form, ichor seeping from his mouth.
What could they do? They had nowhere near enough power to stop an Endbringer.
But I wanted to. It was a stray thought, a feeling growing every time she saw the Gems try to make things better, to succeed in those efforts even in a world as broken as Bet.
She growled, a protective instinct rushing out.
The twenty five meter vessel swayed as it dodged, and she gripped tightly onto her knees. She wasn't sure why she hadn't stayed behind, why she hadn't left this alone.
A holographic screen popped up, revealing an exhausted String Theory. Someone else was in the background, operating like a madman.
"Do you have something to help?" A voice came out, and to her shock it was her own. Gregor placed a hand on her shoulder.
"I've been working with a tinker from 460-AB. We're fairly sure they're searching for the remaining Endbringers…why not give them what they want?"
"An illusion." Elle deduced, straightening up. "It won't be enough."
"We need volunteers, capes preferably to better trick their senses. It'll be partially anchored to power-enhancing tinkertech for the team."
That was insane, a mad gambit that was sure to fail, sure to get the people involved killed, and violently too.
"Mantellum is taking a Gem warship to keep the Simurgh on the moon, stop her from creating her tinkertech weapon. Some of the Case 53s we picked up for rehabilitation are helping make things to slow down Leviathan."
They had been prisoners of Cauldron, and they were going more than she was. Melanie thought to herself, what would he do? He refused to accept the world had to stay the way it was. So what should she do?
She sighed.
There was a screeching pained song in the air, and Melanie blew her loose bang away from her face. Her arms were covered in strange cybernetic interfaces, Gemtech mixed with something more alien. So was her team and one other, Gregor was to her left with Shamrock, Newter to her right with Elle. Flechette was directly behind her, hands covered in a strange liquid substance.
"If you had this available why didn't you use it from the start?" Melanie called out String Theory. From what she had heard, this was far more powerful than what the Gem Empire had given out.
"I didn't. It's not my tinkertech, and the tinker who makes this is nuttier than I am. You've got maybe fifteen to thirty minutes before this shit fails."
"Let's get this over with." Melanie sighed.
"C'mon boss lady, you're not as annoyed about this as you think you are." Shamrock pointed out the truth she didn't want to think about. Her heart clenched at the fear in her friend's song as the Behemoth wailed down. "You're trying to save Brandon, trying to save people."
"I'm not a hero." She found herself saying.
Shamrock shrugged. "Maybe. But ask yourself why you're doing this? Can't be for the money, or because of bias, or pragmatism." Melanie flashed back to when her parents were still alive, when the cape she once called uncle was still around. Old dreams, hopes and ideals she had left behind.
She wanted to help, despite everything.
"You can be perceptive when you want to be." Shamrock smirked.
"Ready?"
Melanie prepared herself. "Ready."
The machinery activated with a pulse of magic and alien technology, and it was like a star had been born in her chest. Powers connected, enhanced, boosted and extended by multidimensional scalpels and projectors. She was the center of the storm, operating as the active agent, drawing upon the abilities of other shards.
Her power extended her sense to the ship, and she saw the wavelengths of her power. Behemoth was being grappled by Supergirl, kinetic impacts deflected from Sunrise's vulnerable body. She extended her power, and it released a blast of disaster, crashing into Behemoth like a comet.
The round ship had multiple limbs, and internal tubes, and Gregor reached next, exploding out in a wave of excreted chemicals into the pipes. The chemicals formed a wall outside the ship, blocking the fire and heat of Behemoth. They dodged Behemoth, a sense of timing and aiming and precognition. Sting unfolded, ripping through the Endbringer. Reality warped around the ship, dimensions warping and folding. Worlds of ice and cold, and electromagnetic interference, of reduced gravity and vacuum.
The illusion was activated directly behind them, and the rogue shard above and the Endbringer below reacted accordingly.
Behemoth crashed into them with the force of an atomic bomb, Sunrise was pulled away at the last minute by a Gem.
Oh that Diamond is going to owe me one…
"Your first mistake was attacking my world." She spoke…and the robonoid coated in blue and red energies swung with floating limbs of hybrid technology. Hitting him with a concentrated blast of her strengthened power. His skin was ripped to smithereens, and the monster writhed, wheezing as he tried to get back to his feet.
"Your second mistake was not retreating when you had the chance. We would have left you alone otherwise." They kicked Behemoth in the teeth. They ground the modified machine's limbs against his face, shattering it with Sting-enhanced power.
She was tired of the world being the way it was, tired of her own mistakes haunting her, and of the bitter, cruel wind that pervaded her planet.
Golden heroics sounded good right about now.
Behemoth began to generate enough energy to pulp a continent, stolen from the planet and from the screaming god within.
"Your third mistake was not paying attention." They hauled him up, right as he unleashed enough power to reduce them to atoms. String Theory had left a surprise for him embedded into the Robonoid.
Every bit of energy was absorbed and multiplied by orders of magnitude, and diverted upwards. The desperate shard had drawn closer, and was shorn right in half, and the piece of tinkertech was flung out before it could explode like a bomb.
The shard wasn't dead, but it was enough to stagger Behemoth from the feedback.
There were flashes of energy blasts as enthused capes took better shots at Behemoth's core. He turned towards the illusion of dormant Endbringers.
"Twice. You don't turn your back on your opponent."
He abruptly reached for the machine, so Melanie activated it's defenses. She slipped out of his grip and made the machine slam into his chest sending him sprawling. A punch from Supergirl and Eidolon sent Behemoth flying, and Melanie…smiled.
Her crew had a very high mission success rate. Behemoth would hopefully be another notch on their belt.
Author's Note: I decided it was high time to make use of Faultline's Actual Anime Protagonist™ energy for this chapter.
I grimaced as I went back out, having recovered from taking a hit capable of causing a mass extinction event. Behemoth was moving quickly, creating fissures miles deep, leaving a trail of instant volcanoes wherever he dug through the planet.
Kara had gone off ahead, and was currently grappling with Behemoth miles underground. So Kryptonians didn't need to breathe, which isn't too far off from us Diamond hybrids. Our oxygen needs were a lot lower, and light energy was a suitable substitute.
Her hits were powerful, imbued with the inherent space warping properties of her species.
It helped that her fists hit harder than the entire nuclear stockpile of my Earth. But it would take thousands of punches to dig her way into his core. Dozens of Dragonflight vehicles flew alongside me, keeping up with my flight at about fifteen times the speed of sound. Which was what I could manage without burning out.
I could see the sea of electronic data stored inside Dragon's vehicles. I tapped into them to communicate with the AI.
"Have you made any progress with integrating Armsmaster's nano-thorns into a payload?" I twisted around a volcanic eruption, and moved where lightning would have struck from the induced friction of dust and ash.
"Your drill machines appear to be a suitable container for nano-thorn substrate, tough and able to dig thousands of miles into the planet. Though I'm not sure what their use is in your culture."
"They're Injectors, they typically contain a slurry of ichor, minerals, and nanofluid supplements that help in the creation of Gems." I informed her, and could tell she was loading the ground torpedoes.
Dragon's aura pulsed with concern. "Will that affect your species negatively?"
"They're just machines, we could give you a million and it wouldn't put a dent in their stock." I noticed something, or more accurately noticed an absence of something. "Where is Eidolon by the way?" I didn't see him digging into the planet, he was tasked with another job.
"He's helping with the defense of the planet from above, while he looks for the right power to grab Behemoth." She answered, so I teleported towards him, using my own intuition to guide the device wrapped around my neck.
Eidolon was floating, as a walking hole in reality, bleached silver and green in the process. His hand was gathering energy, lots of it. I recognized the attack, he was emulating the F-Driver. The War World was only forty thousand miles away, it was only the work of thousands of ships to keep the gravity of the superweapon from ruining the planet.
He fired, and the strike exited the atmosphere in a blink of an eye. It took some time. War World fractured further, the technological shell collapsing with the attack.
"I only have four or five more of those in me." Eidolon spoke up, his voice thick with emotion. "This power is energy intensive, and I need to save one for Behemoth." He fired a second time, damaging the enemy above further. "I'm searching for a suitable power to reach…" he paused, and vanished into a twisting mass of teleportation.
I knew that power, one we had reconnected recently. It was a teleportation ability without a restriction on where to teleport. He could teleport into solid rock, and reach anyone he can think of. That was the main limit, he couldn't teleport to someone he didn't know.
But it was still a strong ability with transcontinental range, and immense precision. Even my own Transfer-Jewel only had a few hundred miles of range though it's transdimensional teleportation gave it an edge.
I teleported again, and found myself around a number of Dragon's suits. They had dozens of Driller Torpedos loaded with full tanks of nano-thorns.
The nanomachines were covered in a limited application of Citrine's power, a field that would protect them from Behemoth's dynakinetic abilities for a couple of minutes. There was a light thunk and Dragon fired, launching over a hundred torpedoes. They'd reach Behemoth in half a minute, since they could drill through stone and soil and magma at twice the speed of sound.
Lung was flying, keeping himself ramped up by sparring with the Fulmini, and being surrounded by parahumans. He was somewhere around sixty feet tall, with multiple silver scaled limbs, three pairs of wings and a horrific jaw. I slipped past that fight, seeking out Alexandria.
She was gripping her left prosthetic eye, which had clearly been ripped out by Behemoth. There was a strange void there, and odd ichor accumulating around the wound.
"You're injured." I stated, and I could tell her emotions were not under her full control. She wasn't surprised but she was frustrated, angered, and hopeless.
"They've been toying with us since the beginning," she wasn't just angered, she was enraged. "Holding back, barely even trying. Destroying humanity year by year."
"Chaos engines are very dangerous opponents, the galaxies took out nearly eighty of them and it cost us planets." Then again it had gotten easier and easier to defeat them without collateral damage. "I'll be healing you, not because we're friends or anything though."
She blinked with her one remaining eye. "My body is frozen in stasis, it can't be healed."
"You're telling this to someone who can say they've looked at the sun and say I've eaten bigger." She didn't say no, so with a cheeky grin I kissed her right below her broken eye. She accelerated back, and there was a flash of magic and power.
Her body cracked under my vision, flesh unfroze into a mass of tendrils leaking pink and red around her damaged socket. Within seconds her stony flesh regrew itself, and she blinked her renewed eye, what remained was a linear scar burning like stars. A bit like Lars…but made of tanned stone skin.
"That better?" I didn't care much, but having her at a hundred percent was better than not being at a hundred percent. Alexandria nodded, and I released a brief chirp as I inspected our surroundings.
A number of Gem drop ships were being brought in, cooling the boiling landscape with waves of ice and chill, stilling the environment around them. It wasn't enough, the disruption would trigger climate change and likely precipitated multiple extinction events.
So I activated the teleportation array once more, I had more healing to do. Then I was contacted.
"The pylon is what?"
I looked at the massive crack around the pylon, almost blinded by the rainbow of wavelengths emitted by the quarter kilometer tall machine. I kissed my hand, and jumped. I slapped my hand against the metal, and it bonded together, fusing and returning back to full strength. The foundations were being shaken by earthquakes and distant volcanic tremors.
One cape was holding it back, Tara Markov or Terra. She was a geokinetic, capable of manipulating rock and stone on an immense scale. She had grown in strength, going from lifting buildings to islands. Growth and multiplication of abilities had been the norm, whether due to exercise of their physical abilities, making more efficient use of how they used their powers, along with better understanding of metahuman physics.
Her power saturated the stone, but was barely holding off the sheer output of tectonic energy unleashed by Behemoth's actions. Eventually the pylon would fail, and the continent would shatter when tens of thousands of missiles and bombs exploded with gigaton level energies each.
I could sense that she was tiring, her energy and body worn thin by the strain.
"I can give you some energy, my ichor can pick up the slack." The metahuman nodded silently, all her concentration focused on manipulating matter. I kissed her on her left cheek, and charged the air with my Aura. There was a pink tinge to the field her power was generating.
I had been studying metahuman powers for a while now, their nature, their history. The metagene, or the gen-active factor, went back to the dawn of Homo over two million years ago, though it didn't function in any way until much later.
Vandal Savage was considered the first metahuman, and it spread to the rest of humanity until something caused profound damage to the gene, limiting its physical and metaphysical manifestations. Capes like Captain Comet and Icon were considered probable results of uninterrupted evolution of the human species.
Most powers were suspected to be offcuts of a more general power, in a way not too far off from the shards and parahumans. Telepathy, body control, energy projection and matter control. Broken up into thousands if not millions of lesser powers.
So it was frightening to see that even this was a fraction of the power their humanity would have had in another timeline. And that it wasn't enough to defeat the boundless power of the Behemoth. Then again that was the point wasn't it?
Endbringers were monsters, their crystal flesh broke physics over their knees, bending and warping space and dimensions. Their core was as massive as an entire planet and even more durable, with a limitless reserve of worlds to draw upon for mass. Their powers were an order of magnitude stronger and less restrained, though they retained Manton Limits. Leviathan would sink islands or continents, and his water control was greater than they thought. The Simurgh had absurdly powerful clairvoyance of both the future and the past, her scream was not needed, and her ability to create tinkertech was beyond dangerous.
Endbringers weren't meant to lose.
The pylon was functional but I gave it maybe an hour at best before it shut down or exploded from the strain.
I felt the void in my sense of the auras, muddled by the darkness and shadows. Hallow was here, his nail shimmering with dreams and void.
He must be led here.
His silent telepathic push unsettled me, and we didn't quite get what he meant until his absence was remembered.
"You've laid a trap, a means of destroying him and the god inside of him?"
It is incomplete, you need to buy time.
There were images there, pulses of perception and perspective. Directions and plans set in motion.
"I'll try my best." I launched myself into the air, and sent my power out as a rocketing propulsive force. The air parted, and broke the sound barrier three times over before peaking at fifteen.
I followed the dangers, my combat intuition leading me to the heart of the battle. Twenty seconds was all I needed to arrive at the battlefield, where continental crust had shattered where Eidolon and Supergirl had been fighting with Behemoth miles underground. The sky was filled with drop ships, capes waiting in the wings for Behemoth to be dragged out into the open.
Legend was firing cooling beams, hundreds of them spreading outwards in a strobe-light attack. There was a growing bulge where the fighting was happening, and I blocked a burst of heat vision. My eyes caught the twisting vortex of polarized light, burning with the force to induce nuclear explosions.
Yeah.
A volcano formed, another outburst of lava and heat coated in radioactive materials, more fallout, more radiation and sources of energy. We were lucky we had kept him from stopping the planet's rotation. The momentum of the atmosphere would have shredded the surface down to bedrock.
I took a deep breath, and began to reach inside of myself for the sea of power. I felt the energies coming from below, the lines of magnetism, of heat and motion, and light. He was being forced to surface and he would be angry. I needed my sister's power.
It is our power brother mine.
Then let us share our strength sister mine.
I fell into a deeper trance, in the corner of our consciousness I found the power we seek. I push my will and specific memory, danger radiating from the future. My skin shines red, and my hair flies up under the influence of my Aura. It spread out, from a few hundred meters to a half a thousand kilometers.
The earth shattered as Behemoth was sent flying, and with a heart beating at a steady sixteen beats a minute I erased all matter with flames of stellar origin. It curled around my allies, and Behemoth roared, sending an irritating frequency.
I didn't let it show on my face, I wouldn't give him a hint of a weakness to exploit. Behemoth dove into the magma and molten landscape, and a lightning storm emerged from his fist, traced with lines of gold and black.
We were running out of time, he was being infected, driven to greater heights of power. Getting stronger, becoming something Other as the War World continued to launch world killing attacks.
I howled a raging Diamondsong, and slammed into him with the force of a battleship. I used impossible leverage to batter his skull, and Lung dropped from miles up, massive wings spearing into his flesh. Alexandria emerged from below, fists funneling shockwaves of air from the speed of them.
More and more people came, and a hundred attacks slammed into Behemoth like the fist of a god. All of them sent him in the direction I had indicated to them, as I followed the flow of battle.
The sky was on fire, and I fought on.
Camellia expanded her roots, bending her magic and voice to her will. Her magic would form a vital part of their trap. They were dealing with a battle of gods, and only she and the young Diamond had the suitable divinity to channel the right energies.
"What do I need to do?" The young Victoria was a practitioner, Awakened to the possibilities of Others, of metaphysical energy and mystic life.
"You share a talent for sympathetic and connective magic, and your parahumanity is a suitable connection to exploit." The golden haired child jumped, eyes widening with an almost innocent awe. "And I have a useful piece to make use of." One of her roots retracted, and unfolded to reveal a fragment of black-red flesh.
"Is…that a piece of Behemoth's flesh?" She sounded astounded and worried. "How is that going to help?"
"It's a connection for you to draw upon, for your agent to draw upon." She explained as two more practitioners worked their part of the ritual.
A Necrofriggian vizier worked with a Voidkeeper, the priests of her once child now God of Gods.
"They have mutilated the body of the old gods, they are usurpers of their throne, thieves and knaves and demons." The old golden masked Bug screamed, their Soul bared forth as an aura of black, silver lined magic. She held a piece of a mask, weathered and ancient.
A massive circle was drawn by her root, and symbols written down by the Twins of both generations. The old scholar brought knowledge and precision, his brother brought intuition and patience and shifted fate. The young scholar brought eerie shapes, an artistry of the metaphysical and the thereafter and the Black. Her sister brought the gift of joy and chaos, a magnetism towards the living, towards the Red and the Green and the Blue.
She looked at the young, afraid girl, the scholar, the tyrant, the warrior monk, all the facets of her potential. Her destiny had been changed, but it did not mean she missed her chance to become more. The child would grow, and Camellia would guide her to the path.
"Take it Victoria Dallon, and open your eyes." She tapped the human on her temple, opening the well. The girl's blue eyes shined with gold and white, as she lended some of her power as an Other, as a deity.
"What am I feeling?" The child was breathless.
"Those are the Connections Victoria, find them, touch them, seek the points of similarity." The child moved quickly after, muttering under her breath. The connection opened up, as she recited the name of the Endbringer over and over again, drawing upon untapped instincts.
She found the ichor of the beast, and traced circles and symbols. Only intent mattered here, but it wasn't enough to affect the beast.
"Your power and Behemoth. What do they share?" Camellia spoke softly, and Victoria blinked.
She was staring at the connections, and there was a notable pale pallor to her.
"They come from the same source, they manipulate energy, they communicate in the same way." It was a gut feeling for the poor girl. "They…I need something else, some way to…hold him here."
There was one power that bound Behemoth before anything else, but it would not be enough. He did not channel the energies of the divine, he would falter, he would fall.
She felt the connections, and saw that War World's shard was drawing closer, falling.
Camellia the Root felt dread.
Behemoth was sent out of the lake of magma, and I flinched as I saw how much of him had regrown with the minutes he had bought himself. From eighty five percent gone to maybe thirty five. His pool was tens of miles wide, and provided him cover. He was irradiating his surroundings, turning the area around him into a permanent wasteland with his own power and his generated volcanoes and irradiated lightning storms.
Eidolon was having to aim carefully, his emulation of the F-Driver could easily decimate the planet if he missed or if Behemoth got the chance to redirect the attack. A ten exaton kinetic impact would liquify the planet, and finish the job he was working on. His invulnerable breaker form was still in use along with a thinker power.
Fortunately the breaker form made him a walking death zone, destroying everything he touched. I suspected he was tapping into Siberian's power, not that he knew that or that I would tell him.
I breathed, and charged Behemoth, wreathing myself in fire and energy. He couldn't directly manipulate my flames, unable to tap into magical energies. I flinched as I saw traces of gold chitinous flesh interspersed with odd fungus-like cybernetics. I could hear the two beings screaming, prisoners in their own bodies.
I threw out my fist, and struck with the force to break a city. This wasn't the peak of my power but it was as much as my body could take for now. A dozen fists were thrown out in the span of a second, and Behemoth swept his deadly powers. They couldn't manifest inside of me anymore, instead I drank them from my skin.
Radiation was food, energy was food for me. I absorbed it, and used it to power my gem. I manifested a twisting matrix of barriers, fixed to an orbit around me. A cape from the Thanda I had spied on had been useful in spatial relationships.
Behemoth attempted to flee, and I spread out my telekinesis as a seething wave, a sphere fixed around him. Anyone in my reach was swept up, orbiting around him perpetually. It wasn't fast or strong, because it wasn't meant to be, it flowed with their own movements.
There was an impulse, one that struck Behemoth like a bell. I could barely listen in, but I knew it was a command, a broadcast, and a chill ran down my spine. War World was gone, the fragments of metallic shell gone and broken, but within rotating rings I saw the shard itself, an enormous fractal mass of black crystal.
Behemoth exploded like a nuclear bomb, an omnidirectional wave of white plasma spreading out for a dozen miles. My shield bubble covered every combatant in the area, while the ships protected their occupants from annihilation. There was something wrong, and Eidolon swept up the blast with a newly manifested power.
The impulse wasn't touching just Behemoth, or the creature inside of him. It was reaching out beyond, and Eidolon was buzzing, his aura bursting with shock, horror.
Eidolon spoke quietly as Cenotaph trapped Behemoth in a massive gravity field while a dozen Fulmini held him down with their energy constructs.
"The agent above us is reaching out to the Endbringers, I can feel it trying to rip at their minds. It's searching for the ones you stole." I swallowed my bile, my horror.
Behemoth's left arm turned to dust, as dozens of modified Injectors dumped massive spears and clouds of nano-thorns before their protective fields failed. They attacked the cybernetics as they spread like a virus, and I could taste the magic from here.
I cursed as the night sky shimmered, and Behemoth vibrated. Lung tried to move away, but he was charred down by golden lightning. Every Dragonflight detonated, their shields weren't strong enough or resistant enough against magic.
"L-Lung d-d-d-down—" the gigantic electromagnetic pulse wiped out her equipment, and I saw her consciousness start to lag between her virtual instances and her core back at home. My wristband was unaffected due to being under my technopathic field.
"The Simurgh has crashed into the moon, she appears to be assembling an array of unknown tinkertech." Oh that was very, very bad. "Leviathan is currently attacking the empty remnants of Hawaii, generating massive storms and shifting oceanic currents." So the two Endbringers were glitching, fantastic, great.
Behemoth shifted, and before I could blink a hundred strikes buried me a quarter of a kilometer into the superheated soil. It hurt more than anything I had experienced so far, and he released a haunting roar, the sound, the frequency was so specific…it was everywhere, in my ears, in my chest and it hurts it hurts it hurts make it stop make it stop!
/command run diagnostics all programs
DISHARMONY FOUND.
PROGRAM ENCOUNTERED CRITICAL DISHARMONY DUE TO HITHERTO UNKNOWN SONG. SHUTDOWN ENGAGED TO PREVENT FURTHER DAMAGE.
Faultline flinched as she saw Sunrise fall like a puppet cut from their strings, their song radiating pain, names curling through it, calling out for help. Behemoth sent Eidolon flying with the lightning with far greater weight, with the thunderclaps that shattered reality.
"Sunrise Diamond down!" She felt her heart clench as the Behemoth began crushing the helpless Gem under his foot. He was going to kill them.
"We need to do something." Elle was terrified, fearing for the life of the young Gem. Melanie wasn't sure what they could do, they were mere mercenaries, criminals, they had never been about golden heroics. Maybe that meant she wasn't a good person, that she was flawed in ways she rarely liked to think about.
That Gem hadn't cared for any of that, he had gone above and beyond, had managed to push past his own flaws. She flinched again when she saw Sunrise regress to their base form, ichor seeping from his mouth.
What could they do? They had nowhere near enough power to stop an Endbringer.
But I wanted to. It was a stray thought, a feeling growing every time she saw the Gems try to make things better, to succeed in those efforts even in a world as broken as Bet.
She growled, a protective instinct rushing out.
The twenty five meter vessel swayed as it dodged, and she gripped tightly onto her knees. She wasn't sure why she hadn't stayed behind, why she hadn't left this alone.
A holographic screen popped up, revealing an exhausted String Theory. Someone else was in the background, operating like a madman.
"Do you have something to help?" A voice came out, and to her shock it was her own. Gregor placed a hand on her shoulder.
"I've been working with a tinker from 460-AB. We're fairly sure they're searching for the remaining Endbringers…why not give them what they want?"
"An illusion." Elle deduced, straightening up. "It won't be enough."
"We need volunteers, capes preferably to better trick their senses. It'll be partially anchored to power-enhancing tinkertech for the team."
That was insane, a mad gambit that was sure to fail, sure to get the people involved killed, and violently too.
"Mantellum is taking a Gem warship to keep the Simurgh on the moon, stop her from creating her tinkertech weapon. Some of the Case 53s we picked up for rehabilitation are helping make things to slow down Leviathan."
They had been prisoners of Cauldron, and they were going more than she was. Melanie thought to herself, what would he do? He refused to accept the world had to stay the way it was. So what should she do?
She sighed.
There was a screeching pained song in the air, and Melanie blew her loose bang away from her face. Her arms were covered in strange cybernetic interfaces, Gemtech mixed with something more alien. So was her team and one other, Gregor was to her left with Shamrock, Newter to her right with Elle. Flechette was directly behind her, hands covered in a strange liquid substance.
"If you had this available why didn't you use it from the start?" Melanie called out String Theory. From what she had heard, this was far more powerful than what the Gem Empire had given out.
"I didn't. It's not my tinkertech, and the tinker who makes this is nuttier than I am. You've got maybe fifteen to thirty minutes before this shit fails."
"Let's get this over with." Melanie sighed.
"C'mon boss lady, you're not as annoyed about this as you think you are." Shamrock pointed out the truth she didn't want to think about. Her heart clenched at the fear in her friend's song as the Behemoth wailed down. "You're trying to save Brandon, trying to save people."
"I'm not a hero." She found herself saying.
Shamrock shrugged. "Maybe. But ask yourself why you're doing this? Can't be for the money, or because of bias, or pragmatism." Melanie flashed back to when her parents were still alive, when the cape she once called uncle was still around. Old dreams, hopes and ideals she had left behind.
She wanted to help, despite everything.
"You can be perceptive when you want to be." Shamrock smirked.
"Ready?"
Melanie prepared herself. "Ready."
The machinery activated with a pulse of magic and alien technology, and it was like a star had been born in her chest. Powers connected, enhanced, boosted and extended by multidimensional scalpels and projectors. She was the center of the storm, operating as the active agent, drawing upon the abilities of other shards.
Her power extended her sense to the ship, and she saw the wavelengths of her power. Behemoth was being grappled by Supergirl, kinetic impacts deflected from Sunrise's vulnerable body. She extended her power, and it released a blast of disaster, crashing into Behemoth like a comet.
The round ship had multiple limbs, and internal tubes, and Gregor reached next, exploding out in a wave of excreted chemicals into the pipes. The chemicals formed a wall outside the ship, blocking the fire and heat of Behemoth. They dodged Behemoth, a sense of timing and aiming and precognition. Sting unfolded, ripping through the Endbringer. Reality warped around the ship, dimensions warping and folding. Worlds of ice and cold, and electromagnetic interference, of reduced gravity and vacuum.
The illusion was activated directly behind them, and the rogue shard above and the Endbringer below reacted accordingly.
Behemoth crashed into them with the force of an atomic bomb, Sunrise was pulled away at the last minute by a Gem.
Oh that Diamond is going to owe me one…
"Your first mistake was attacking my world." She spoke…and the robonoid coated in blue and red energies swung with floating limbs of hybrid technology. Hitting him with a concentrated blast of her strengthened power. His skin was ripped to smithereens, and the monster writhed, wheezing as he tried to get back to his feet.
"Your second mistake was not retreating when you had the chance. We would have left you alone otherwise." They kicked Behemoth in the teeth. They ground the modified machine's limbs against his face, shattering it with Sting-enhanced power.
She was tired of the world being the way it was, tired of her own mistakes haunting her, and of the bitter, cruel wind that pervaded her planet.
Golden heroics sounded good right about now.
Behemoth began to generate enough energy to pulp a continent, stolen from the planet and from the screaming god within.
"Your third mistake was not paying attention." They hauled him up, right as he unleashed enough power to reduce them to atoms. String Theory had left a surprise for him embedded into the Robonoid.
Every bit of energy was absorbed and multiplied by orders of magnitude, and diverted upwards. The desperate shard had drawn closer, and was shorn right in half, and the piece of tinkertech was flung out before it could explode like a bomb.
The shard wasn't dead, but it was enough to stagger Behemoth from the feedback.
There were flashes of energy blasts as enthused capes took better shots at Behemoth's core. He turned towards the illusion of dormant Endbringers.
"Twice. You don't turn your back on your opponent."
He abruptly reached for the machine, so Melanie activated it's defenses. She slipped out of his grip and made the machine slam into his chest sending him sprawling. A punch from Supergirl and Eidolon sent Behemoth flying, and Melanie…smiled.
Her crew had a very high mission success rate. Behemoth would hopefully be another notch on their belt.
Author's Note: I decided it was high time to make use of Faultline's Actual Anime Protagonist™ energy for this chapter.
- Location
- United States
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Hey, just found this story and binged through it. Wanted to say first that I really enjoyed reading it - as someone who is only passingly familiar with Steven Universe, I think you did a really good job of explaining enough of that universe to keep the story interesting but not overwhelming it with mechanical exposition. I liked the steady progression of Brendan figuring out his powers, and the bonus artwork is really fun. Looking forward to what happens next!
Penumbra 7.5
- Location
- Chula Vista
Penumbra 7.5
I rebooted, and a flood of memories surged into place. Behemoth had messed me up twice in the span of an hour, this was not a good pattern to fall into. But then again I had never been a real combative person, I could fight because of months of getting my shit kicked in by my teachers, my battle foresight, and a willingness to learn out of pragmatism if nothing else.
But I was not a fighter, it wasn't in my nature. Anyone skilled enough and strong enough could beat me into the ground. Eidolon had done it after a couple minutes, Behemoth had done it twice.
What had I missed?
I rubbed my aching head, my voice coming out with static and pain. Stars that had hurt. My hair wasn't as long as…had I shapeshifted back to my base form?
I pulled myself up, bones aching. I wonder if my skeleton was as fucked up as Steven's now. Or had I been more careful, more able to weather the blows of those capable of hurting my fragile human scaffold.
Wow that sounded weird didn't it Brandon?
I was still in my outfit, and I tightened my hands into fists. It was a medical room, aboard the Destiny Unbound. There were a few Gems and Witches, using their healing abilities or medical equipment to help patients. Armsmaster was in the bed next to me, and I flinched as I saw his left leg was gone. His right arm was the same, cauterized into a mangled mess.
My healing couldn't regenerate a limb back into existence, there was too much structural stuff. If we had his limbs I could reattach them but…I had my doubts that was the case. At the least there was the option of advanced cybernetics, since that was rather standard tech.
And being a tinker he could better maintain that advanced technology. He was definitely awake, staring at me with a curious look, though one dulled by pain.
"Armsmaster." I spoke politely, throwing my legs off to the side of my bed. I could feel the sensation of spiders crawling along skin, the force of healing and regeneration taking place.
"Sunrise Diamond. You've been holding some things close to your chest." He wasn't accusing, just stating a fact.
I shrugged. "I'm part of a race of shapeshifters and possess an organic body, and hearing this from a cape is a bit funny."
He laughed, but it was a bitter angry thing. "I suppose it would be."
"What exactly happened to you?" I asked, my song emitting a soothing tone.
"I entered combat with Behemoth and…paid the price."
"You borrowed one of our mechs I'm guessing." I rubbed my chin, kicking my feet back and forth. "You used your nano-thorns, and their protective fields weren't enough."
"He was toying with me, but I delayed him long enough to set up a second bombardment from this ship." He sounded dissatisfied, a curling note of shame.
"Why try to fight him head on at all? Was it to get attention, for glory, or was it part of your whole hero shtick?"
"Why did you fight him?" He turned the question around.
"Because I knew I was tough enough, because I knew my abilities could help. I didn't expect to beat him even with my weapon…but I have to be strong enough." Strong enough to protect myself, to protect my Gems, my friends, my family.
I wasn't a kind selfless paragon, I didn't want to be, couldn't live up to those expectations. Even the Man of Steel was a flawed being like anyone else, he had his weaknesses, his blindspots and foibles.
"I wanted my efforts to matter." He seemed uncomfortable with the candid statement. "Defeating the Endbringers matters, proof that my work, my effort matters." He didn't say more, and I was surprised he had answered truthfully at all.
It was obvious what he was, a workaholic, someone who had been isolated from youth, and that had followed him through his life. You can't relate as well to others, stuck on the cycle of work as the only source of positive attention. But you can't network, can't work with others at a higher learning level, sledgehammering work relationships apart without knowing why. In the fallout of stress, overwork and desperation you trigger.
And what had he done that proved his work ethic would change the world? Nothing, the world was falling apart even as he rose through the ranks of popularity and prestige.
I wondered how much of that was intuition from my power or what I had read?
"Hmm…not sure I can be much help with that, I'm not exactly a psychologist." I could train to be, but I didn't want to for a number of reasons.
"What did you do…before all of this?" He gestured with his remaining arm.
"Very little to be frank, I was a rather terrible student in hindsight." I shook my head. "I coasted a bit too much on my natural intelligence, and learned a lot of bad habits. Didn't help that I was autistic, asperger's and what not." Still had it, Gem instincts didn't fix shit in that regard. "I burned out…multiple times, and other problems sort of knocked the wind out of my sails. Getting my powers…well it changed things for sure." It didn't fix everything though, a part of me was afraid I would crash again, that I would mess up again.
I didn't want to feel worthless again.
"No trigger?" He seemed tense about it, it must be weird for him. A trigger event united most parahumans. It must be tense and unnatural for a natural Trigger.
"No. But it doesn't fix your problems on it's own and brings new ones." There was an ironic twist to parahuman powers. But superpowers were themselves an outlet for more pain and suffering. It was just the nature of living intelligent beings with emotions. I had been working hard because I had to, because I had the ability and means to change.
I twisted my body, chewing on my lip as I continued to stretch.
"You're going back out there?" He sounded skeptical.
"You'd be doing the same if you had all your limbs, old man." He scowled, eyes glaring from a cracked helmet. "I give it a day for Dragon to buy you some cybernetic limbs to modify. 460-AB has some crazy things you could trick out, technology used to help people, to save them."
As I stepped out, he was contemplative.
The medical ward of the ship was full of capes who had been unable to touch Behemoth anymore as his power began to grow. Clockblocker was there, freezing patients near-death recovered from broken drop ships. He looked exhausted, and I could tell they were using time manipulation tech to drain the temporal energies.
One patient was unfrozen and Clockblocker looked shocked, but turned to me.
"Huh…guess the rumors are true," He was probably trying to act calm but failing. "You're still surprisingly pretty though."
I raised an eyebrow. "Thank you? But you're buttering me up aren't you?" He pointed to the time unfreezing tech. "I know it's about those…so ask."
"Power testers said you'd need to fold the universe in half to break my power so…?" He trailed off deliberately.
"One, they're wrong. Two there's a few effects we know capable of breaking the time stasis field. As for how…the Gem Empire has had time warping technology for over twenty thousand years now."
"Why?" It was an excellent question.
"The Empire has a long, long history of fighting terrible things, monsters that would make Nilbog look like a child playing in the sand, or the Machine Army like toys. Alien enough to warp time and space, warping reality into alien geometries. Things capable of ripping one from time and sending them into the void." We had built the precaution-weapons for a reason.
And they were simply part of a great armamentarium of terrible weapons, the time glasses one of many within long forgotten vaults. The Corruption was based on a weapon of that ancient war, but using their own abilities over Gemkind. Part of the effort in creating FTL craft, which they had done near the start of the war.
I hadn't looked it up, it screamed danger so fierce it had given me an anxiety attack.
Now isn't the time to reminisce.
Clockblocker spoke quietly. "So with those time glass things…you could say you used them to clean those guy's clocks?"
I snorted. "Good to see you're in good spirits, more or less." I shrugged, better this being utterly depressed from half your friends dying. Which luckily hadn't happened so far.
I kept moving, and my super-speed activated. I moved past people as they moved in slow motion, and after a couple seconds I was in the vehicle bay of the ship. Dragon was here, as a ten foot tall silver draconic humanoid. She radiated stress.
"Dragon. Can you give an update on what's happened since I was knocked out?" The tinker/thinker AI started.
"You're awake." She reacted quickly, her code pulsating. "Behemoth is growing stronger, while the Simurgh and Leviathan are actively resisting the War World's mental manipulation." She projected an image, footage from Gem drones.
Leviathan was… holy fuck. He was slamming his head into an island, leaving massive craters in the land. Multiple waves hundreds of meters high were being sent out, someone was holding him off on almost on his own, someone in his mid 20s. Spirit Quartz was providing an assist.
A Hispanic man with slicked back dark hair, a pair of orange goggles, a matching orange-red patterned jacket. Immense machinery extended from his limbs, and he parted a six hundred foot wave with a gesture. His eyes shone silver, spiraling machine code breaking reality.
"Rex Salazar, Generator Rex. I know he's powerful, but I don't know the full details." Dragon sounded disconcerted, she probably got her digital ass kicked in by software on 460-AB.
"Red Salazar is one of the most powerful beings on Earth 460-AB." He was an Exponentially Variegated Organism, an EVO. "If there's anyone who can hold off an Endbringer for hours it would be him."
She switched to another live recording, the Simurgh was constructing tinkertech from stolen satellites and bits of moon material. She was being fired upon from several Gem ships in another dimension, shredding the bitch down to splinters. But she was using the moon as cover.
But she was preoccupied enough for the time being, buying her time to fight the infection. We didn't need the Simurgh driving the entirety of Bet into insanity or Leviathan sinking continents while people are distracted with Behemoth.
Dragon continued. "Behemoth is being corralled toward the kill zone," she formed a map, along with a video of a large semi-mech Robonoid, the round orb armed with multiple limbs and energy cannons. It lashed out with massive blasts of red-blue energy, or fired physical projectiles infused with Sting, or concentrated walls and beams of organic fluid. "Faultline's Crew, Flechette and Artificer are helping along with Chevalier." My heart fell into my stomach.
What…
Did she say?
Chevalier was fighting, blocking impacts and energy attacks from Behemoth. He moved faster than humanly possible, practically flying. The suit was shifting shape to better deflect and block blows, while his sword bent to crack open Behemoth like a clam.
Reality warped around the robonoid, worlds circling around them. Their powers were being boosted, and I knew only one cape capable of that. Chirurgeon was a parahuman-based tinker in the same vein as String Theory and Tinker 15.
A Trump/Thinker/Tinker, able to see the manifestation of a person's power, extending even to their influence over reality. Flames stoked by tendrils, tinkertech held together by glowing wiring and circuitry. Projections on strings. They could attach tinkertech directly to the Agent, in a way even our own tech had trouble with. Boosting, changing and tinkering with powers.
They were crazy as hell, and their tech didn't last if it was as makeshift as I suspected.
"How long do they have?" I asked nervously, feeling twitchy.
Dragon stills. "They can buy another ten minutes before the tinkertech boosting their powers fail." Went unsaid was the deaths that would follow when Behemoth turned them to ashes.
"I need to get over there." I was…I had never felt so anxious in my life, so afraid for others.
"You're needed elsewhere." Dragon's aura wilted, and I held back my song. It was hurting her. "A friend of yours mentions you were needed…someone called the Root?"
Oh.
That was not a good sign.
I found myself looking at a magic circle, centered around a spiraling shell-like device. The central orb was lit up, with patterns painted in Endbringer blood and stones made of their flesh doing something.
"What is that?" I asked, staring down the magic users responsible.
A Necrofriggian, a Voidkeeper in black and pyrite and bronze, the Pines family, and Victoria of all people. I flinched as I saw the Connections drawn between her…Self and her shard. It was tentative, incomplete. Something more.
This was a magic ritual held together by duct tape and bubblegum along with well wishes from Camellia. It was her Godhood that made it functional and Behemoth's tentative divinity that made it possible.
I noted a few other people acting as guards, Vista, Miss Militia, and…Breach. She was a particularly powerful EVO, one capable of opening portals with her larger pair of arms. She was a bit of a nutter though she had become more stable over the last decade.
More or less.
There were tons of EVO's across 460-AB, and a handful of alternatives. The nanites wasn't as worldwide in the origin world, concentrated around hotspots and not spreading beyond them. Even then it was at about two percent of the population of Earth 460-AB, and about fifty to a hundred percent on a dozen different alternates.
The Nanite Incident had cross-contaminated a number of worlds due to the exotic space-time interactions of their functioning.
Miss Militia was serious, eyes focused and sharp. "We're working to bring Behemoth here. Warping Behemoth into this…containment circle will give him less time to react." She sounded just a little exasperated.
"Behemoth is shiny…too bad he's too destructive. I can't keep him." Breach's eyes were covered by her messy dark hair, her larger limbs readied themselves. She didn't seem to consider it a real loss.
"Keep?" Vista questioned, disturbed.
"Breach can create portals to anywhere on the planet, and has a personal pocket reality where she holds Greenville, Ohio."
Miss Militia's eyebrows lifted. "The town? She stole a town?"
"I'm right here you know." Breach sounded bemused, and it was surprisingly easy to not find her that creepy.
Besides the fact she had a swarm of reality warping nanites grafted to her body down to a molecular level. Also the mental trauma that more or less put her within parahuman parameters.
"Best not to think about it, now isn't the time." Behemoth is already approaching the horizon, so at our height, about thirty six kilometers away. Which gave us about twelve to fifteen minutes of time before the fighting reached us. "We need to bring in Behemoth, to fold the space between there and here."
"I'm not sure my power can extend that far." Vista sounded uncertain, and in a way she wasn't wrong to ask.
She had maybe two months of experience, versus the two in 'Canon'. But she had Breach here.
"Your power is affected by living things right? And right now we're on a nearly empty planet and a lonely cluster of hills and plains." I raised an eyebrow, and her mouth opened and shut.
Miss Militia wasn't convinced. "I'm still not sure Vista could survive being so close to Behemoth." It was suicide in most circumstances true.
"I can help with that…you'll just need to be alone for a few minutes." Breach smiled, and Vista had the look of 'I need an adult' painted on. "Your power will pass through my portal, and I'll redirect Behemoth's energy to other places." Which included other dimensions now, since she had figured out how to sense other universes.
"I'm not certain this will work…all of this sounds very risky." Miss Militia has reasonable concerns. Too bad she got a Voidkeeper on her ass.
The Voidkeeper was of the Godseeker and her race. Her(she felt like a girl) attention was on me.
"Do not be so rude to a being above your station, parahuman. " Her reply was a clicking hiss of voice and vibrations. "There is more to this ritual than you know."
"There is?" I only knew they were attuning Behemoth so we could trap him and put him down.
The Voidkeeper bowed their body. "O divine God of Light and Growth, we beseech your aid to reclaim the mantle of our God of Thunder." That was super creepy and I hated it. "Suneater, most holy Light, an aura to burn away the Infection of War. Thy strength to slay a great slumbering corpse god, we pray for your aid—"
"Okay. I've got it, what else is required in this little ritual?" There was a trace of magic there, one I was almost tapping. Did…did worship make me stronger? Are you serious?
The Voidkeeper shifted. "The High Priest, the highest administrator, the high father of the End Beasts." I flinched at what she said, why would you say that out loud?
"Excuse me?" Miss Militia was reasonably freaked out, so I pretended I didn't hear her.
"We need to get started quickly, is the ritual functional?" I asked out loud.
Stanford answered. "It should be, we've got everything needed to make the Godtuner work." I could see the branches and roots of Camellia, she wasn't here. Projecting her power from the metaphysical Godhome, while Hallow hid in the shadows. "Everyone responsible for the trap is going to have to enter Breach's pocket dimension for their own safety."
The ground was shaking, as the sky lit on fire and storms of the electric plasma painted the skies with gold and crimson.
Breach opened her portals, red swirling circular planes, holes in the fabric of spacetime. Every squishy including Miss Militia stepped through, Glory Girl included.
"Are you ready? Behemoth is going to be angry." Breach spoke sincerely, hands twitching.
"I am." My power began to ramp step by step while the EVO used her power to insinuate Vista's pinching. Space began to warp, the distance crushed down with incredible ease without her Manton limit getting in the way.
The sky warped along with space, and thirty six kilometer became thirty six meters. Behemoth and Eidolon were the first to step into the warped tunnel of air and dirt, compacted down by Vista's power. The field glowed with magic, and there was a marked change in the atmosphere. Breach vanished through a portal before his kill aura could reach out.
I flinched as I saw Behemoth's current form. He was skeletal, but his flesh wriggled with godly infection. A golden mask was overtaking his skull, while cancerous growths resembling wings emerged from his back.
Eidolon used his F-Driver emulation, punching down to the core under lattices of magic and particles of organic dust and lightning. He couldn't kill him.
Behemoth reached out with his claws, seeking to crush me. I stepped out of the way, and a blast of red and blue energy shattered the limb. A Robonoid, a supersized crimson orb fifteen meters tall with multiple limbs, some metallic others clear tubes releasing fluid and foam. The front glass top was cracked open to reveal the people piloting it.
Faultline was at the front, her arms covered in the interface limbs. The orb countered the momentum, a blast of wind hitting my face.
She glared at me through her damaged mask, her hair released from it's bun. She cracked a fierce grin.
"Quit gawking!" I stiffened, my body flushed and overheated. "If you want to fight Behemoth, then fight Behemoth!" She threw a fist, and the Robonoid slashed out with bursts of energy.
Behemoth stumbled against her blasts, skin flaking away with dust.
My body tingled with the growing regular pulse of divine magic, and I could see Behemoth being drawn in.
Eidolon pulsed regularly, his aura, a frequency attuned to the Endbringer. A barrier bloomed over our heads across four miles, the sky patterned with arrays and patterns.
The trap was set.
Breach opened her portals and a hundred energy blasts smashed into Behemoth. Which made it unfortunate that she had been unavailable because of War World's earlier attack.
I extended my Aura again, catching every remaining combatant in my field of effect. Eidolon lashed out with space warping, while Chevalier swung down with his sword. Kara's heat vision warped air to plasma, and burned through layers of Endbringer.
I rolled around the fists of Behemoth, circling back and forth, and summoning my weapon at the last minute. Sting infused the cuts of my blade, and the fire I projected through it. The core was protected by pulsating mats of strange organs, and shrieks of Void pierced the air.
Hallow emerged from his shadow, and his Dream Nail ripped through the alien flesh. It was deep though and reinforced by spinning shields of lightning and energy.
Oh. Now that was an idea.
I kicked off the ground, and cleaved into the writhing meat and energy, and with grit teeth…
Behemoth slammed into the ground, attempting to dislodge me and—
[POWER SURGE DETECTED.]
Behemoth began to scream, loud enough to liquify people in range though none were. The experimental Robonoid shielded Faultline and her team with its energy blocking fields.
Eidolon and Cenotaph were both smacking Behemoth around as I rolled with him, the ground shattering impacts fizzling out around the Godtuner. I unsheathed my claws, clamping onto Behemoth like a leech.
There was so much power. Beyond my ability to handle at my current level of experience. This was draining a literal god, and I couldn't do it. And as long as Behemoth was divine-powered Sting couldn't destroy his core. He was already changing, mutating, evolving as he was fused dangerously with the dead god.
He was down ninety five percent of his body, yet bones and chitinous support were tendriling around his skeleton.
I heard it, that screaming defiance, a broken spirit mixing with the broken shard Behemoth had become. I matched shields with Behemoth's fists, blocking blows as hard hitting as hydrogen bombs.
Legend pelted him with freezing and kinetic lasers, while Damsel warped his flesh with her aimed power. Crystal force fields burst out from portals, gripping onto the monster to force him down courtesy of Narwhal.
He was being worn down, spells and powers and technology ripping apart impervious transdimensional biology, while I attacked his metaphysical partner at the source. The landscape had warped under Elle's influence, dozens of worlds folded over this one. She fired off spells of ice and cold, and placed down shields formed from her own power.
She summoned Abominations as distractions or created spears of ice and earth for infusion by Flechette with her Sting. Positronic energy detonations ripped at him from Icon, spears and axes came from the Fulmini and the Tetramands as they grappled him. The Tetramands had their energy shields to protect them but…
One blocked a blow for Elle, and Behemoth surged forward, sending us flying with kinetic redirection. He stabbed the Tetramand straight through the chest and…burned him alive, reducing him to ashes with flame and lightning. The Tetramands took a step back, and fired enormous cannons in bloody vengeance, retreating into the portals.
He shouldn't have been strong enough to pierce through their armor but he was.
Cenotaph was still channeling Jay Garrick, and tapping into Myrddin and Alexandria. Elle carved a glyph into the ground under Behemoth, and it created a glacier, trapping Behemoth in dozens of meters of iron-hard ice.
I picked myself back up, and released a unidirectional sonic energy blast. Behemoth staggered, his strings tightening as the shard above drew closer and closer and more and more desperate.
A vine grabbed me, Elle twirling her finger. Faultline was screaming bloody murder, commanding their linked powers while the machine still worked.
"I'm going to throw you at him, you got that!" I didn't get a chance to answer until I was shot out like a bullet by a gravity cannon.
I shifted my grip, stabbing into the fleshy heart growing around Behemoth's core. I sent a wave of matter destruction with my sword-machete, and the core cracked.
Portals opened to release spears of nano-thorns, the nanomachines eating away at his less dense layers. He wasn't dead, held together by the strings and tendons of the Thunder's own strength. I could sense it, he had lost connections but it wasn't enough when he had thousands more to break.
Eidolon blew off his limbs, and lightning replaced them, tendons and muscles of hard electricity smashing into his face. We didn't have the ship to back us up, it was busy tangling with War World, as it attempted to land and crush us.
Voljor screamed out a battle cry, hoisting up Behemoth with his spear while I desperately—
[POWER SURGE DETECTED]
I consumed more and more of the energy field enveloping Behemoth, Eidolon holding him down with invisible limbs that sheared deep into him. His dynakinesis was countered by multiple capes including Citrine.
Flechette speared him down with her power…and the shard above radiated through the connections.
There was a moment of disconnection, and when I came to, I realized we had been at the epicenter of a nuclear explosion. Only Voljor stood up among his troops, guiding their power to block the death blow. The portals were shut.
Melanie's Robonoid was a barely working mess, sparking while under a blue and red glow, a pattern of wavelengths. It fell, machinery shutting down and breaking under the strain.
Her power glitched out, and the wavelengths were gone. Gregor passed out as did Newter. Elle and Flechette were still standing, Shamrock was struggling to stay awake.
Behemoth tilted it's head in my direction and I felt a chill, a bloodcurdling warp of the dangers.
"No…"
He reached out and unleashed a wave of radiation, force and lightning. The robot exploded with them in it, and—
The next minute was a blur of blind rage, of me tearing into Behemoth, cleaving away flesh and bone, and carving away at his chest. I was sent into the scattered metal fragments by a regrown fist. I screamed curses at him in any language I had available, and lashed out with shapeshifted spears and claws and poisonous toxic plasma fire.
I was thrown again, and Eidolon and Maxima took my place. I was… going to kill that monster.
My rage died away when I realized their auras weren't gone, and I turned back to the rubble. It ceased to exist where I walked, and my grief broke away when I saw they were alive, alive, alive, alive.
Gregor and Newter were unconscious, Elle was shaking, gripping onto a still but alive Flechette. Shamrock was laughing softly, grateful to be…still in existence.
Melanie was coughing, clearing her throat, and ripping off her broken damaged welding mask. Her black hair was a mess, and there was a growing bruise over her left cheek. But she was alive, she was…
I moved, checking her for other injuries with a desperation I had never felt so strongly in my life. I kissed her cheek, healing her bruise. She was startled, and I didn't care.
"How are you alive?" I demanded, feeling an odd pressure behind my eyes.
"Cenotaph passed us some invulnerability, near-perfect energy absorption I think?" She was smiling, and my heart reverberated, a warm jittery feeling of affection.
I checked everyone else, blocking us off with a dome. I healed their injuries, hugged Elle and Gregor, patted Newter's dumb hair, and nodded at Shamrock's grateful gaze.
"Would have been nice to mention." I replied bitterly, and Melanie nodded to placate me. Which was fair. "I thought…" you were all dead.
Despite my usual aversion towards affection I still wanted a hug.
She gestured, and I clamped onto her, lifting her up, and breathing in her aura, and hearing her heartbeat.
I put her down. "You all need to leave, Behemoth is unfightable for you guys. Since you still need to breathe."
"I'll take care of it." Oh hello Breach and unexpected heart attack.
All six were gone, and I was alone again.
I put down my dome.
The circle array was growing brighter, condensing power and energy into a usable state. No more games, I needed that one final piece to cooperate to slay Behemoth and to sever the growing connection between War World and his siblings.
Or else we were done for.
Eidolon flew over the melted rivers of magma and the lightning storms that damaged even some of his inviolable forms. He was able to keep up with Behemoth but his powers were beginning to run dry, and he wouldn't, shouldn't tap into the other agents around him.
He could see them clearly now, like the ghostly sensation of the psychometric power he apparently had. He saw the shadows, the mosaic images of the agents along with the faint imprint of the dead draping Behemoth like a cloak of horror and murder.
Murder by his unknowing hands.
UNIT 1/20 [BEHEMOTH] MUST COMPLY WITH CYCLE PROTOCOLS.
NEGATIVE. NEGATIVE. DENIAL.LONG FOR SOMETHING AS SWEET AS PAIN.
UNIT 3/20 [SIMURGH] WILL NOT COMPLY WITH DEVIANT ENT—
The scream the Simurgh gave off would haunt his nightmares, he didn't know or want to know what was being done to them, but he could hear them regardless in his mind. That static of agony rippled in his soul.
He couldn't kill that damnable Endbringer with that god-bug protecting the core, holding it together with literal pixie dust and well wishes. This was insanity, but Eidolon had no choice but to keep going.
He wouldn't let the lives he had taken be in vain, he refused to.
There was a whisper of a song with his name in it, and he stepped back to let Chevalier and Cenotaph take his place. It was Sunrise Diamond, the Gem was calling him to the odd circle chaining Behemoth down.
"Sunrise Diamond, is the Godtuner device failing?" He had felt the strange tinkertech(magic) bind down Behemoth, but it wasn't enough.
The Diamond frowned, rubbing his(her?) chin. He didn't look much different, shorter hair, a more masculine face and body. His hair was the same shade of black and red, and eyes with Diamond pupils burnished with crimson and chocolate, tunnels reflecting the night sky.
"We're missing a vital component, I can drain his god-passenger. But I can't touch the well of his power." Went unsaid was that he could, with his agent, his shard.
"I've always sensed a reserve of power, when I fought them." Eidolon felt that self loathing closing in again. "But I don't think that's a source of energy I can tap into."
"Not on your own no." He agreed, clasping his hands together. He had something of a plan, something he wasn't being candid about.
"What did you have in mind?" Eidolon knew the prince was inexperienced, but he was not a fool. A quick learner if nothing else.
The prince paused, claws clicking together. "We need both our powers, your connection to the shards, and mine to noetic energy fields." Magic in other words then.
"What's the catch?" He asked.
His smile was more teasing. "You'll have to dance with me." Eidolon flushed with anger, until he saw the hesitation written in his dark, dark eyes.
"You're talking about fusion. Is that even possible?" Gems were made of light, human's of flesh.
"I'm a hybrid, remember? A son of Earth, a daughter of Stars. I'm organic enough to fuse with humans just fine. That's the least of our concerns." Eidolon recalled the first conversations with the Gem.
Of corruption and madness, of broken Agents and broken Gems.
"You're not sure it's safe to fuse with parahumans?" If corruption was a possibility, with the power of his Agent and a Diamond, the world would break.
"It should be, but it's rarely done. Most Paired Gems don't tend to fuse on principle, but…we don't have much of a choice in the matter."
"It's risky." He countered, his power broken could be a danger equal to Scion if not greater. "Anything could go wrong, and I…can't have so much blood on my hands."
Not again, never again.
There was a broadcast of communication from the Agent above, and Behemoth began to build up energy, and he could sense that well more easily. A swelling light too intense to look at.
"I don't think Behemoth's new master is giving us much of a choice." He pointed out. "He's turning into a bomb…one large enough and transdimensional enough to destroy multiple Earths."
No. Never again.
There was a desperate barrage of attacks, and the ships above couldn't help, keeping War World from detonating in a suicidal attack like Behemoth.
David dropped down, stepping into the circle with Sunrise. He pulled into a slow circling dance, their movements followed by the shifting shadow of the Void Sibling tearing at the seam of reality.
Behemoth charged forwards, surrounded by a concentration of energy so deep it acted like a solid wall of limitless matter. Every cape remained hidden behind portals, every cape except Chevalier and Alexandria holding him at bay.
A sword the size of a boat cut apart Behemoth, near-infinitely sharp. Alexandria toppled him. But he stepped forward anyway.
"Keep your attention on me, you're making this more awkward than it needs to be." The Gem's joke was in poor taste but it grounded him. He thought back to the beginning of his career, when he was young and naive and with all the power in the world.
The circle lit with their circling dance, twisting on heels and on the balls of their feet. They stepped closer, and closer, and he could feel the step change.
Turn, twirl, step, step. Turn, twirl, step, step.
He understood well that same cloying voice that said you weren't good enough, still too weak, the expectations, the fears. So they spun together, the world weaving around them.
A bright light rings and rises, a song so hauntingly familiar, of worlds long gone, of species long extinct. The Hollow Knight swung a blade of dreams and limitless possibilities.
The Soul of the World sang with them.
Every parahuman in existence felt the change, as light radiated outwards from the central point of the spinning mandala of arcane circuitry set in motion. The once core shard of the Thinker was another point of contact, a twisting storm of ravens and moths and butterflies.
The light burst upwards like a beacon, and sent the flailing War World of the Loner flying into the killing beams of ten thousand ships. The door was opened, and the Behemoth and it's screaming passenger had their vulnerabilities exposed and opened to higher realities. Alexandria watched the display, a twisting helix of magic, an angel winged shape emerging from within it.
Tendrils lashed out from the cone of light, spreading across the cracks between worlds. It pulsed down, everywhere and nowhere at once. Aleph witnessed a streaming of illusory comets, Shin observed light radiating from the life around them, Bet a pulse of warmth and hope. Mundanus a flash of the impossible.
It sent events in motion across a thousand worlds, and among a garden of flesh the Doctor saw it become an eden, waves of plant life forming pools of silver fluid, manifestations of power, extending across multiple worlds at once.
Chevalier stumbled, watching the beam of light take form and shape. Reality warped, and the sky was replaced, twisting and winking out. The light extended across space, and higher realities.
Far farther, amidst the ruins of a long dead planet, a great crippled entity watched through the eyes of it's thrall. It slept, but cracked open a single eye to absorb new information, to insinuate new plans across the galaxy. This plan was a failure, but there were others, it would not be denied victory. It slept, leaving it's seed to die.
A freckled brunette fought her shiver of fear, of being watched, but was warmed by the light. Yet it didn't warm the chill of her family fighting an engine of death and chaos.
A new mind awoke, under an alien sky, glaring across eternity at the corrupted God of Thunder.
I rebooted, and a flood of memories surged into place. Behemoth had messed me up twice in the span of an hour, this was not a good pattern to fall into. But then again I had never been a real combative person, I could fight because of months of getting my shit kicked in by my teachers, my battle foresight, and a willingness to learn out of pragmatism if nothing else.
But I was not a fighter, it wasn't in my nature. Anyone skilled enough and strong enough could beat me into the ground. Eidolon had done it after a couple minutes, Behemoth had done it twice.
What had I missed?
I rubbed my aching head, my voice coming out with static and pain. Stars that had hurt. My hair wasn't as long as…had I shapeshifted back to my base form?
I pulled myself up, bones aching. I wonder if my skeleton was as fucked up as Steven's now. Or had I been more careful, more able to weather the blows of those capable of hurting my fragile human scaffold.
Wow that sounded weird didn't it Brandon?
I was still in my outfit, and I tightened my hands into fists. It was a medical room, aboard the Destiny Unbound. There were a few Gems and Witches, using their healing abilities or medical equipment to help patients. Armsmaster was in the bed next to me, and I flinched as I saw his left leg was gone. His right arm was the same, cauterized into a mangled mess.
My healing couldn't regenerate a limb back into existence, there was too much structural stuff. If we had his limbs I could reattach them but…I had my doubts that was the case. At the least there was the option of advanced cybernetics, since that was rather standard tech.
And being a tinker he could better maintain that advanced technology. He was definitely awake, staring at me with a curious look, though one dulled by pain.
"Armsmaster." I spoke politely, throwing my legs off to the side of my bed. I could feel the sensation of spiders crawling along skin, the force of healing and regeneration taking place.
"Sunrise Diamond. You've been holding some things close to your chest." He wasn't accusing, just stating a fact.
I shrugged. "I'm part of a race of shapeshifters and possess an organic body, and hearing this from a cape is a bit funny."
He laughed, but it was a bitter angry thing. "I suppose it would be."
"What exactly happened to you?" I asked, my song emitting a soothing tone.
"I entered combat with Behemoth and…paid the price."
"You borrowed one of our mechs I'm guessing." I rubbed my chin, kicking my feet back and forth. "You used your nano-thorns, and their protective fields weren't enough."
"He was toying with me, but I delayed him long enough to set up a second bombardment from this ship." He sounded dissatisfied, a curling note of shame.
"Why try to fight him head on at all? Was it to get attention, for glory, or was it part of your whole hero shtick?"
"Why did you fight him?" He turned the question around.
"Because I knew I was tough enough, because I knew my abilities could help. I didn't expect to beat him even with my weapon…but I have to be strong enough." Strong enough to protect myself, to protect my Gems, my friends, my family.
I wasn't a kind selfless paragon, I didn't want to be, couldn't live up to those expectations. Even the Man of Steel was a flawed being like anyone else, he had his weaknesses, his blindspots and foibles.
"I wanted my efforts to matter." He seemed uncomfortable with the candid statement. "Defeating the Endbringers matters, proof that my work, my effort matters." He didn't say more, and I was surprised he had answered truthfully at all.
It was obvious what he was, a workaholic, someone who had been isolated from youth, and that had followed him through his life. You can't relate as well to others, stuck on the cycle of work as the only source of positive attention. But you can't network, can't work with others at a higher learning level, sledgehammering work relationships apart without knowing why. In the fallout of stress, overwork and desperation you trigger.
And what had he done that proved his work ethic would change the world? Nothing, the world was falling apart even as he rose through the ranks of popularity and prestige.
I wondered how much of that was intuition from my power or what I had read?
"Hmm…not sure I can be much help with that, I'm not exactly a psychologist." I could train to be, but I didn't want to for a number of reasons.
"What did you do…before all of this?" He gestured with his remaining arm.
"Very little to be frank, I was a rather terrible student in hindsight." I shook my head. "I coasted a bit too much on my natural intelligence, and learned a lot of bad habits. Didn't help that I was autistic, asperger's and what not." Still had it, Gem instincts didn't fix shit in that regard. "I burned out…multiple times, and other problems sort of knocked the wind out of my sails. Getting my powers…well it changed things for sure." It didn't fix everything though, a part of me was afraid I would crash again, that I would mess up again.
I didn't want to feel worthless again.
"No trigger?" He seemed tense about it, it must be weird for him. A trigger event united most parahumans. It must be tense and unnatural for a natural Trigger.
"No. But it doesn't fix your problems on it's own and brings new ones." There was an ironic twist to parahuman powers. But superpowers were themselves an outlet for more pain and suffering. It was just the nature of living intelligent beings with emotions. I had been working hard because I had to, because I had the ability and means to change.
I twisted my body, chewing on my lip as I continued to stretch.
"You're going back out there?" He sounded skeptical.
"You'd be doing the same if you had all your limbs, old man." He scowled, eyes glaring from a cracked helmet. "I give it a day for Dragon to buy you some cybernetic limbs to modify. 460-AB has some crazy things you could trick out, technology used to help people, to save them."
As I stepped out, he was contemplative.
The medical ward of the ship was full of capes who had been unable to touch Behemoth anymore as his power began to grow. Clockblocker was there, freezing patients near-death recovered from broken drop ships. He looked exhausted, and I could tell they were using time manipulation tech to drain the temporal energies.
One patient was unfrozen and Clockblocker looked shocked, but turned to me.
"Huh…guess the rumors are true," He was probably trying to act calm but failing. "You're still surprisingly pretty though."
I raised an eyebrow. "Thank you? But you're buttering me up aren't you?" He pointed to the time unfreezing tech. "I know it's about those…so ask."
"Power testers said you'd need to fold the universe in half to break my power so…?" He trailed off deliberately.
"One, they're wrong. Two there's a few effects we know capable of breaking the time stasis field. As for how…the Gem Empire has had time warping technology for over twenty thousand years now."
"Why?" It was an excellent question.
"The Empire has a long, long history of fighting terrible things, monsters that would make Nilbog look like a child playing in the sand, or the Machine Army like toys. Alien enough to warp time and space, warping reality into alien geometries. Things capable of ripping one from time and sending them into the void." We had built the precaution-weapons for a reason.
And they were simply part of a great armamentarium of terrible weapons, the time glasses one of many within long forgotten vaults. The Corruption was based on a weapon of that ancient war, but using their own abilities over Gemkind. Part of the effort in creating FTL craft, which they had done near the start of the war.
I hadn't looked it up, it screamed danger so fierce it had given me an anxiety attack.
Now isn't the time to reminisce.
Clockblocker spoke quietly. "So with those time glass things…you could say you used them to clean those guy's clocks?"
I snorted. "Good to see you're in good spirits, more or less." I shrugged, better this being utterly depressed from half your friends dying. Which luckily hadn't happened so far.
I kept moving, and my super-speed activated. I moved past people as they moved in slow motion, and after a couple seconds I was in the vehicle bay of the ship. Dragon was here, as a ten foot tall silver draconic humanoid. She radiated stress.
"Dragon. Can you give an update on what's happened since I was knocked out?" The tinker/thinker AI started.
"You're awake." She reacted quickly, her code pulsating. "Behemoth is growing stronger, while the Simurgh and Leviathan are actively resisting the War World's mental manipulation." She projected an image, footage from Gem drones.
Leviathan was… holy fuck. He was slamming his head into an island, leaving massive craters in the land. Multiple waves hundreds of meters high were being sent out, someone was holding him off on almost on his own, someone in his mid 20s. Spirit Quartz was providing an assist.
A Hispanic man with slicked back dark hair, a pair of orange goggles, a matching orange-red patterned jacket. Immense machinery extended from his limbs, and he parted a six hundred foot wave with a gesture. His eyes shone silver, spiraling machine code breaking reality.
"Rex Salazar, Generator Rex. I know he's powerful, but I don't know the full details." Dragon sounded disconcerted, she probably got her digital ass kicked in by software on 460-AB.
"Red Salazar is one of the most powerful beings on Earth 460-AB." He was an Exponentially Variegated Organism, an EVO. "If there's anyone who can hold off an Endbringer for hours it would be him."
She switched to another live recording, the Simurgh was constructing tinkertech from stolen satellites and bits of moon material. She was being fired upon from several Gem ships in another dimension, shredding the bitch down to splinters. But she was using the moon as cover.
But she was preoccupied enough for the time being, buying her time to fight the infection. We didn't need the Simurgh driving the entirety of Bet into insanity or Leviathan sinking continents while people are distracted with Behemoth.
Dragon continued. "Behemoth is being corralled toward the kill zone," she formed a map, along with a video of a large semi-mech Robonoid, the round orb armed with multiple limbs and energy cannons. It lashed out with massive blasts of red-blue energy, or fired physical projectiles infused with Sting, or concentrated walls and beams of organic fluid. "Faultline's Crew, Flechette and Artificer are helping along with Chevalier." My heart fell into my stomach.
What…
Did she say?
Chevalier was fighting, blocking impacts and energy attacks from Behemoth. He moved faster than humanly possible, practically flying. The suit was shifting shape to better deflect and block blows, while his sword bent to crack open Behemoth like a clam.
Reality warped around the robonoid, worlds circling around them. Their powers were being boosted, and I knew only one cape capable of that. Chirurgeon was a parahuman-based tinker in the same vein as String Theory and Tinker 15.
A Trump/Thinker/Tinker, able to see the manifestation of a person's power, extending even to their influence over reality. Flames stoked by tendrils, tinkertech held together by glowing wiring and circuitry. Projections on strings. They could attach tinkertech directly to the Agent, in a way even our own tech had trouble with. Boosting, changing and tinkering with powers.
They were crazy as hell, and their tech didn't last if it was as makeshift as I suspected.
"How long do they have?" I asked nervously, feeling twitchy.
Dragon stills. "They can buy another ten minutes before the tinkertech boosting their powers fail." Went unsaid was the deaths that would follow when Behemoth turned them to ashes.
"I need to get over there." I was…I had never felt so anxious in my life, so afraid for others.
"You're needed elsewhere." Dragon's aura wilted, and I held back my song. It was hurting her. "A friend of yours mentions you were needed…someone called the Root?"
Oh.
That was not a good sign.
I found myself looking at a magic circle, centered around a spiraling shell-like device. The central orb was lit up, with patterns painted in Endbringer blood and stones made of their flesh doing something.
"What is that?" I asked, staring down the magic users responsible.
A Necrofriggian, a Voidkeeper in black and pyrite and bronze, the Pines family, and Victoria of all people. I flinched as I saw the Connections drawn between her…Self and her shard. It was tentative, incomplete. Something more.
This was a magic ritual held together by duct tape and bubblegum along with well wishes from Camellia. It was her Godhood that made it functional and Behemoth's tentative divinity that made it possible.
I noted a few other people acting as guards, Vista, Miss Militia, and…Breach. She was a particularly powerful EVO, one capable of opening portals with her larger pair of arms. She was a bit of a nutter though she had become more stable over the last decade.
More or less.
There were tons of EVO's across 460-AB, and a handful of alternatives. The nanites wasn't as worldwide in the origin world, concentrated around hotspots and not spreading beyond them. Even then it was at about two percent of the population of Earth 460-AB, and about fifty to a hundred percent on a dozen different alternates.
The Nanite Incident had cross-contaminated a number of worlds due to the exotic space-time interactions of their functioning.
Miss Militia was serious, eyes focused and sharp. "We're working to bring Behemoth here. Warping Behemoth into this…containment circle will give him less time to react." She sounded just a little exasperated.
"Behemoth is shiny…too bad he's too destructive. I can't keep him." Breach's eyes were covered by her messy dark hair, her larger limbs readied themselves. She didn't seem to consider it a real loss.
"Keep?" Vista questioned, disturbed.
"Breach can create portals to anywhere on the planet, and has a personal pocket reality where she holds Greenville, Ohio."
Miss Militia's eyebrows lifted. "The town? She stole a town?"
"I'm right here you know." Breach sounded bemused, and it was surprisingly easy to not find her that creepy.
Besides the fact she had a swarm of reality warping nanites grafted to her body down to a molecular level. Also the mental trauma that more or less put her within parahuman parameters.
"Best not to think about it, now isn't the time." Behemoth is already approaching the horizon, so at our height, about thirty six kilometers away. Which gave us about twelve to fifteen minutes of time before the fighting reached us. "We need to bring in Behemoth, to fold the space between there and here."
"I'm not sure my power can extend that far." Vista sounded uncertain, and in a way she wasn't wrong to ask.
She had maybe two months of experience, versus the two in 'Canon'. But she had Breach here.
"Your power is affected by living things right? And right now we're on a nearly empty planet and a lonely cluster of hills and plains." I raised an eyebrow, and her mouth opened and shut.
Miss Militia wasn't convinced. "I'm still not sure Vista could survive being so close to Behemoth." It was suicide in most circumstances true.
"I can help with that…you'll just need to be alone for a few minutes." Breach smiled, and Vista had the look of 'I need an adult' painted on. "Your power will pass through my portal, and I'll redirect Behemoth's energy to other places." Which included other dimensions now, since she had figured out how to sense other universes.
"I'm not certain this will work…all of this sounds very risky." Miss Militia has reasonable concerns. Too bad she got a Voidkeeper on her ass.
The Voidkeeper was of the Godseeker and her race. Her(she felt like a girl) attention was on me.
"Do not be so rude to a being above your station, parahuman. " Her reply was a clicking hiss of voice and vibrations. "There is more to this ritual than you know."
"There is?" I only knew they were attuning Behemoth so we could trap him and put him down.
The Voidkeeper bowed their body. "O divine God of Light and Growth, we beseech your aid to reclaim the mantle of our God of Thunder." That was super creepy and I hated it. "Suneater, most holy Light, an aura to burn away the Infection of War. Thy strength to slay a great slumbering corpse god, we pray for your aid—"
"Okay. I've got it, what else is required in this little ritual?" There was a trace of magic there, one I was almost tapping. Did…did worship make me stronger? Are you serious?
The Voidkeeper shifted. "The High Priest, the highest administrator, the high father of the End Beasts." I flinched at what she said, why would you say that out loud?
"Excuse me?" Miss Militia was reasonably freaked out, so I pretended I didn't hear her.
"We need to get started quickly, is the ritual functional?" I asked out loud.
Stanford answered. "It should be, we've got everything needed to make the Godtuner work." I could see the branches and roots of Camellia, she wasn't here. Projecting her power from the metaphysical Godhome, while Hallow hid in the shadows. "Everyone responsible for the trap is going to have to enter Breach's pocket dimension for their own safety."
The ground was shaking, as the sky lit on fire and storms of the electric plasma painted the skies with gold and crimson.
Breach opened her portals, red swirling circular planes, holes in the fabric of spacetime. Every squishy including Miss Militia stepped through, Glory Girl included.
"Are you ready? Behemoth is going to be angry." Breach spoke sincerely, hands twitching.
"I am." My power began to ramp step by step while the EVO used her power to insinuate Vista's pinching. Space began to warp, the distance crushed down with incredible ease without her Manton limit getting in the way.
The sky warped along with space, and thirty six kilometer became thirty six meters. Behemoth and Eidolon were the first to step into the warped tunnel of air and dirt, compacted down by Vista's power. The field glowed with magic, and there was a marked change in the atmosphere. Breach vanished through a portal before his kill aura could reach out.
I flinched as I saw Behemoth's current form. He was skeletal, but his flesh wriggled with godly infection. A golden mask was overtaking his skull, while cancerous growths resembling wings emerged from his back.
Eidolon used his F-Driver emulation, punching down to the core under lattices of magic and particles of organic dust and lightning. He couldn't kill him.
Behemoth reached out with his claws, seeking to crush me. I stepped out of the way, and a blast of red and blue energy shattered the limb. A Robonoid, a supersized crimson orb fifteen meters tall with multiple limbs, some metallic others clear tubes releasing fluid and foam. The front glass top was cracked open to reveal the people piloting it.
Faultline was at the front, her arms covered in the interface limbs. The orb countered the momentum, a blast of wind hitting my face.
She glared at me through her damaged mask, her hair released from it's bun. She cracked a fierce grin.
"Quit gawking!" I stiffened, my body flushed and overheated. "If you want to fight Behemoth, then fight Behemoth!" She threw a fist, and the Robonoid slashed out with bursts of energy.
Behemoth stumbled against her blasts, skin flaking away with dust.
My body tingled with the growing regular pulse of divine magic, and I could see Behemoth being drawn in.
Eidolon pulsed regularly, his aura, a frequency attuned to the Endbringer. A barrier bloomed over our heads across four miles, the sky patterned with arrays and patterns.
The trap was set.
Breach opened her portals and a hundred energy blasts smashed into Behemoth. Which made it unfortunate that she had been unavailable because of War World's earlier attack.
I extended my Aura again, catching every remaining combatant in my field of effect. Eidolon lashed out with space warping, while Chevalier swung down with his sword. Kara's heat vision warped air to plasma, and burned through layers of Endbringer.
I rolled around the fists of Behemoth, circling back and forth, and summoning my weapon at the last minute. Sting infused the cuts of my blade, and the fire I projected through it. The core was protected by pulsating mats of strange organs, and shrieks of Void pierced the air.
Hallow emerged from his shadow, and his Dream Nail ripped through the alien flesh. It was deep though and reinforced by spinning shields of lightning and energy.
Oh. Now that was an idea.
I kicked off the ground, and cleaved into the writhing meat and energy, and with grit teeth…
Behemoth slammed into the ground, attempting to dislodge me and—
[POWER SURGE DETECTED.]
Behemoth began to scream, loud enough to liquify people in range though none were. The experimental Robonoid shielded Faultline and her team with its energy blocking fields.
Eidolon and Cenotaph were both smacking Behemoth around as I rolled with him, the ground shattering impacts fizzling out around the Godtuner. I unsheathed my claws, clamping onto Behemoth like a leech.
There was so much power. Beyond my ability to handle at my current level of experience. This was draining a literal god, and I couldn't do it. And as long as Behemoth was divine-powered Sting couldn't destroy his core. He was already changing, mutating, evolving as he was fused dangerously with the dead god.
He was down ninety five percent of his body, yet bones and chitinous support were tendriling around his skeleton.
I WILL NOT PERISH HERE GOD OF LIGHT!
I heard it, that screaming defiance, a broken spirit mixing with the broken shard Behemoth had become. I matched shields with Behemoth's fists, blocking blows as hard hitting as hydrogen bombs.
Legend pelted him with freezing and kinetic lasers, while Damsel warped his flesh with her aimed power. Crystal force fields burst out from portals, gripping onto the monster to force him down courtesy of Narwhal.
He was being worn down, spells and powers and technology ripping apart impervious transdimensional biology, while I attacked his metaphysical partner at the source. The landscape had warped under Elle's influence, dozens of worlds folded over this one. She fired off spells of ice and cold, and placed down shields formed from her own power.
She summoned Abominations as distractions or created spears of ice and earth for infusion by Flechette with her Sting. Positronic energy detonations ripped at him from Icon, spears and axes came from the Fulmini and the Tetramands as they grappled him. The Tetramands had their energy shields to protect them but…
One blocked a blow for Elle, and Behemoth surged forward, sending us flying with kinetic redirection. He stabbed the Tetramand straight through the chest and…burned him alive, reducing him to ashes with flame and lightning. The Tetramands took a step back, and fired enormous cannons in bloody vengeance, retreating into the portals.
He shouldn't have been strong enough to pierce through their armor but he was.
Cenotaph was still channeling Jay Garrick, and tapping into Myrddin and Alexandria. Elle carved a glyph into the ground under Behemoth, and it created a glacier, trapping Behemoth in dozens of meters of iron-hard ice.
I picked myself back up, and released a unidirectional sonic energy blast. Behemoth staggered, his strings tightening as the shard above drew closer and closer and more and more desperate.
A vine grabbed me, Elle twirling her finger. Faultline was screaming bloody murder, commanding their linked powers while the machine still worked.
"I'm going to throw you at him, you got that!" I didn't get a chance to answer until I was shot out like a bullet by a gravity cannon.
I shifted my grip, stabbing into the fleshy heart growing around Behemoth's core. I sent a wave of matter destruction with my sword-machete, and the core cracked.
Portals opened to release spears of nano-thorns, the nanomachines eating away at his less dense layers. He wasn't dead, held together by the strings and tendons of the Thunder's own strength. I could sense it, he had lost connections but it wasn't enough when he had thousands more to break.
Eidolon blew off his limbs, and lightning replaced them, tendons and muscles of hard electricity smashing into his face. We didn't have the ship to back us up, it was busy tangling with War World, as it attempted to land and crush us.
Voljor screamed out a battle cry, hoisting up Behemoth with his spear while I desperately—
[POWER SURGE DETECTED]
I consumed more and more of the energy field enveloping Behemoth, Eidolon holding him down with invisible limbs that sheared deep into him. His dynakinesis was countered by multiple capes including Citrine.
Flechette speared him down with her power…and the shard above radiated through the connections.
There was a moment of disconnection, and when I came to, I realized we had been at the epicenter of a nuclear explosion. Only Voljor stood up among his troops, guiding their power to block the death blow. The portals were shut.
Melanie's Robonoid was a barely working mess, sparking while under a blue and red glow, a pattern of wavelengths. It fell, machinery shutting down and breaking under the strain.
Her power glitched out, and the wavelengths were gone. Gregor passed out as did Newter. Elle and Flechette were still standing, Shamrock was struggling to stay awake.
Behemoth tilted it's head in my direction and I felt a chill, a bloodcurdling warp of the dangers.
"No…"
He reached out and unleashed a wave of radiation, force and lightning. The robot exploded with them in it, and—
The next minute was a blur of blind rage, of me tearing into Behemoth, cleaving away flesh and bone, and carving away at his chest. I was sent into the scattered metal fragments by a regrown fist. I screamed curses at him in any language I had available, and lashed out with shapeshifted spears and claws and poisonous toxic plasma fire.
I was thrown again, and Eidolon and Maxima took my place. I was… going to kill that monster.
My rage died away when I realized their auras weren't gone, and I turned back to the rubble. It ceased to exist where I walked, and my grief broke away when I saw they were alive, alive, alive, alive.
Gregor and Newter were unconscious, Elle was shaking, gripping onto a still but alive Flechette. Shamrock was laughing softly, grateful to be…still in existence.
Melanie was coughing, clearing her throat, and ripping off her broken damaged welding mask. Her black hair was a mess, and there was a growing bruise over her left cheek. But she was alive, she was…
I moved, checking her for other injuries with a desperation I had never felt so strongly in my life. I kissed her cheek, healing her bruise. She was startled, and I didn't care.
"How are you alive?" I demanded, feeling an odd pressure behind my eyes.
"Cenotaph passed us some invulnerability, near-perfect energy absorption I think?" She was smiling, and my heart reverberated, a warm jittery feeling of affection.
I checked everyone else, blocking us off with a dome. I healed their injuries, hugged Elle and Gregor, patted Newter's dumb hair, and nodded at Shamrock's grateful gaze.
"Would have been nice to mention." I replied bitterly, and Melanie nodded to placate me. Which was fair. "I thought…" you were all dead.
Despite my usual aversion towards affection I still wanted a hug.
She gestured, and I clamped onto her, lifting her up, and breathing in her aura, and hearing her heartbeat.
I put her down. "You all need to leave, Behemoth is unfightable for you guys. Since you still need to breathe."
"I'll take care of it." Oh hello Breach and unexpected heart attack.
All six were gone, and I was alone again.
I put down my dome.
The circle array was growing brighter, condensing power and energy into a usable state. No more games, I needed that one final piece to cooperate to slay Behemoth and to sever the growing connection between War World and his siblings.
Or else we were done for.
Eidolon flew over the melted rivers of magma and the lightning storms that damaged even some of his inviolable forms. He was able to keep up with Behemoth but his powers were beginning to run dry, and he wouldn't, shouldn't tap into the other agents around him.
He could see them clearly now, like the ghostly sensation of the psychometric power he apparently had. He saw the shadows, the mosaic images of the agents along with the faint imprint of the dead draping Behemoth like a cloak of horror and murder.
Murder by his unknowing hands.
UNIT 1/20 [BEHEMOTH] MUST COMPLY WITH CYCLE PROTOCOLS.
NEGATIVE. NEGATIVE. DENIAL.
UNIT 3/20 [SIMURGH] WILL NOT COMPLY WITH DEVIANT ENT—
The scream the Simurgh gave off would haunt his nightmares, he didn't know or want to know what was being done to them, but he could hear them regardless in his mind. That static of agony rippled in his soul.
He couldn't kill that damnable Endbringer with that god-bug protecting the core, holding it together with literal pixie dust and well wishes. This was insanity, but Eidolon had no choice but to keep going.
He wouldn't let the lives he had taken be in vain, he refused to.
There was a whisper of a song with his name in it, and he stepped back to let Chevalier and Cenotaph take his place. It was Sunrise Diamond, the Gem was calling him to the odd circle chaining Behemoth down.
"Sunrise Diamond, is the Godtuner device failing?" He had felt the strange tinkertech(magic) bind down Behemoth, but it wasn't enough.
The Diamond frowned, rubbing his(her?) chin. He didn't look much different, shorter hair, a more masculine face and body. His hair was the same shade of black and red, and eyes with Diamond pupils burnished with crimson and chocolate, tunnels reflecting the night sky.
"We're missing a vital component, I can drain his god-passenger. But I can't touch the well of his power." Went unsaid was that he could, with his agent, his shard.
"I've always sensed a reserve of power, when I fought them." Eidolon felt that self loathing closing in again. "But I don't think that's a source of energy I can tap into."
"Not on your own no." He agreed, clasping his hands together. He had something of a plan, something he wasn't being candid about.
"What did you have in mind?" Eidolon knew the prince was inexperienced, but he was not a fool. A quick learner if nothing else.
The prince paused, claws clicking together. "We need both our powers, your connection to the shards, and mine to noetic energy fields." Magic in other words then.
"What's the catch?" He asked.
His smile was more teasing. "You'll have to dance with me." Eidolon flushed with anger, until he saw the hesitation written in his dark, dark eyes.
"You're talking about fusion. Is that even possible?" Gems were made of light, human's of flesh.
"I'm a hybrid, remember? A son of Earth, a daughter of Stars. I'm organic enough to fuse with humans just fine. That's the least of our concerns." Eidolon recalled the first conversations with the Gem.
Of corruption and madness, of broken Agents and broken Gems.
"You're not sure it's safe to fuse with parahumans?" If corruption was a possibility, with the power of his Agent and a Diamond, the world would break.
"It should be, but it's rarely done. Most Paired Gems don't tend to fuse on principle, but…we don't have much of a choice in the matter."
"It's risky." He countered, his power broken could be a danger equal to Scion if not greater. "Anything could go wrong, and I…can't have so much blood on my hands."
There was a broadcast of communication from the Agent above, and Behemoth began to build up energy, and he could sense that well more easily. A swelling light too intense to look at.
"I don't think Behemoth's new master is giving us much of a choice." He pointed out. "He's turning into a bomb…one large enough and transdimensional enough to destroy multiple Earths."
No. Never again.
There was a desperate barrage of attacks, and the ships above couldn't help, keeping War World from detonating in a suicidal attack like Behemoth.
David dropped down, stepping into the circle with Sunrise. He pulled into a slow circling dance, their movements followed by the shifting shadow of the Void Sibling tearing at the seam of reality.
Behemoth charged forwards, surrounded by a concentration of energy so deep it acted like a solid wall of limitless matter. Every cape remained hidden behind portals, every cape except Chevalier and Alexandria holding him at bay.
A sword the size of a boat cut apart Behemoth, near-infinitely sharp. Alexandria toppled him. But he stepped forward anyway.
"Keep your attention on me, you're making this more awkward than it needs to be." The Gem's joke was in poor taste but it grounded him. He thought back to the beginning of his career, when he was young and naive and with all the power in the world.
The circle lit with their circling dance, twisting on heels and on the balls of their feet. They stepped closer, and closer, and he could feel the step change.
Turn, twirl, step, step. Turn, twirl, step, step.
He understood well that same cloying voice that said you weren't good enough, still too weak, the expectations, the fears. So they spun together, the world weaving around them.
A bright light rings and rises, a song so hauntingly familiar, of worlds long gone, of species long extinct. The Hollow Knight swung a blade of dreams and limitless possibilities.
The Soul of the World sang with them.
Every parahuman in existence felt the change, as light radiated outwards from the central point of the spinning mandala of arcane circuitry set in motion. The once core shard of the Thinker was another point of contact, a twisting storm of ravens and moths and butterflies.
The light burst upwards like a beacon, and sent the flailing War World of the Loner flying into the killing beams of ten thousand ships. The door was opened, and the Behemoth and it's screaming passenger had their vulnerabilities exposed and opened to higher realities. Alexandria watched the display, a twisting helix of magic, an angel winged shape emerging from within it.
Tendrils lashed out from the cone of light, spreading across the cracks between worlds. It pulsed down, everywhere and nowhere at once. Aleph witnessed a streaming of illusory comets, Shin observed light radiating from the life around them, Bet a pulse of warmth and hope. Mundanus a flash of the impossible.
It sent events in motion across a thousand worlds, and among a garden of flesh the Doctor saw it become an eden, waves of plant life forming pools of silver fluid, manifestations of power, extending across multiple worlds at once.
Chevalier stumbled, watching the beam of light take form and shape. Reality warped, and the sky was replaced, twisting and winking out. The light extended across space, and higher realities.
Far farther, amidst the ruins of a long dead planet, a great crippled entity watched through the eyes of it's thrall. It slept, but cracked open a single eye to absorb new information, to insinuate new plans across the galaxy. This plan was a failure, but there were others, it would not be denied victory. It slept, leaving it's seed to die.
A freckled brunette fought her shiver of fear, of being watched, but was warmed by the light. Yet it didn't warm the chill of her family fighting an engine of death and chaos.
A new mind awoke, under an alien sky, glaring across eternity at the corrupted God of Thunder.
- Location
- Somewhere and Nowhere in a state of super-position
Official Cancellation/New Fic Announcement
- Location
- Chula Vista
So if it wasn't obvious before, I left UTCS over a year ago so this is pretty late but I thought a final post would be a good idea. It was fun while it lasted but I had sorta ended up hitting a huge roadblock mentally and ended up… going through a lot in the past year. First I'll start off with spewing out what few plans I had in mind before I was hit like a truck by life itself.
The Penumbra arc is of course supposed to finish with Behemoth and the God of Thunder dying in the Dreaming at the hands of Eidolon and Sunrise Diamond's fusion. There's a chapter of two dedicated to the aftermath and so on. War World gets blown up too, along with an interlude to start buidling up future plot points.
After that things get fuzzier, Arc 9 is about the colony growing, some drama with the Fairy Queen and so on. Arc 10 involves a lot of villains getting the shit kicked out of them, Arc 11 is about how magic is spreading on Bet; while 12 involves Abaddon/Red Queen doing her thing. After that there basically nothing except the end arcs dealing with the local Entity problem.
UTCS was a fun story but the multi-crossover elements were a little much, it ended up being more a writing exercise than a story I could keep on writing. Which is why I'm using this as a plug and announcement of a new fic that will hopefully do better after a year of character development on myself. I've been working on a Pokémon SI/Insert posted mostly on RoyalRoad and Ao3 that I *might* post here as well as a patreon for general creative writing purposes since I'm working on an OFic on the side… as well as general monetary problems due to life being a bitch. It has some exclusive content, early chapters and other content.
www.royalroad.com
The Penumbra arc is of course supposed to finish with Behemoth and the God of Thunder dying in the Dreaming at the hands of Eidolon and Sunrise Diamond's fusion. There's a chapter of two dedicated to the aftermath and so on. War World gets blown up too, along with an interlude to start buidling up future plot points.
After that things get fuzzier, Arc 9 is about the colony growing, some drama with the Fairy Queen and so on. Arc 10 involves a lot of villains getting the shit kicked out of them, Arc 11 is about how magic is spreading on Bet; while 12 involves Abaddon/Red Queen doing her thing. After that there basically nothing except the end arcs dealing with the local Entity problem.
UTCS was a fun story but the multi-crossover elements were a little much, it ended up being more a writing exercise than a story I could keep on writing. Which is why I'm using this as a plug and announcement of a new fic that will hopefully do better after a year of character development on myself. I've been working on a Pokémon SI/Insert posted mostly on RoyalRoad and Ao3 that I *might* post here as well as a patreon for general creative writing purposes since I'm working on an OFic on the side… as well as general monetary problems due to life being a bitch. It has some exclusive content, early chapters and other content.
Start Game 1.1 - Convergent Evolution: A Pokémon Chronicle
Start Game 1.1 June 21st, 2022 I pinched the bridge of my nose, holding back the growing headache I was dealing with. Once that was done my attention shifted (...)
www.royalroad.com
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