Excition 8.6
May 24th, 2011. 5:45PM
Taylor Hebert
I glided down at terminal velocity, arms opened to increase drag as Eidolon took to my right. I could see his
spark growing brighter, as energy production spooled back up in his shard while Queen integrated his shard into Amenthes. He wasn't back to his full strength, but he could summon up three powers again instead of being crippled.
Flight through gravity manipulation.
A Blaster power that was essentially a focused invisible all-terrain penetrating laser.
And a power that summoned indestructible chains that generated an inertial field around themselves. A few wrapped around his costume, cushioning attacks from Leviathan while the rest tried to chain up the monster so we could hit his core and kill him.
He didn't use the power draining ability because he had the foresight to realize that murdering capes for their essence was evil if we weren't dying in droves. Plus he had enough power to last him for a while at his current level, and his power should start coming back as his shard fixes up her corpus.
The wings on my back glowed as they revealed themselves and I infused my power deeper into my suit. I rocketed on blasts of wind, biotic gravity pulses and telekinetic force and glanced over at the three headed Endbringer.
It's powers were limited, one of them being the face of some Thinker cape good with numbers, Strider and a Blaster power that shot out hardened bolts of light. It's Thinker power let it dodge attacks, but Bakuda was somehow keeping up with that monster in her suit as she flung herself around at a couple hundred miles per hour.
She was activating explosions that made my swarm senses fade out and even blocked the sparks of connections from my sight. She shot a spear at the cape, right as it tried to switch to a shielding power, and the payload exploded in its chest, space warping around a nano-thorn infection. It stumbled, having no core but having no mass to regenerate besides what was compressed away deeper into its body.
The time manipulator was trying to trap people in bubbles but was getting interfered with by one of the Voyagers resetting people in time and out of the bubbles. Eidolon fired a dozen lasers in seconds, bursting every layer of shielding in a second before exploding in its stomach. Their bodies were dense and layered but nowhere as tough as their full shard would have given them.
The space warper…
Bohu was trying to condense Labyrinth's power but was being overpowered by the unbeatable combo of both her and Vista. Miniature versions of it were readily torn apart by enraged manifested spirits, and some of the weaker Brute capes were handling them along with a few Blasters. They were weak and easily destroyed, far more fragile than what they could have been.
Tohu switched her teleportation for a shielding power and Flechette shot at her and burst the defense with three bolts in a matter of seconds. Portals opened around the lesser Endbringer and space warping attacks
eradicated most of its mass in a single volley. The Endbringer pulled itself out of the blast radius, limbs healing at a rapid rate as it drew from the few reserves it had to offer. These Endbringers had maybe twenty layers at most, and couldn't pull any more mass from anywhere.
They would count as A-class threats, and collectively would be S-class threats if what we had skimmed from PRT files was accurate. Coil had been pretty useful when we ripped apart his empire. But…that meant a lot less when we were prepared for
Leviathan.
I gathered a swarm projection about fifteen feet tall, several of Amy's bug monsters providing scaffolding for her body. She orbited around me, skating on air as her claws raked along nothing. "Host…I will hold the lessened shards off, you will coordinate the destruction of the Leviathan." I gave her a thumbs up, and she charged into the fray with a crack of air displacement as she outpaced me at my fastest outside of biotic teleportation.
She collided with Tohu, grappling the Endbringer to the ground even as it surpassed her in strength with a Brute power. Her arms split into tendrils of insects, and they raked across skin as matter was broken up by applied telekinesis.
Bohu squirmed as Eidolon held her down with chains, and he threw her in the path of Leviathan's battle. She was covered in nuclear fire, burning away at her flesh, and I could hear its maddened screams as the corpus of its spirit was burned away. The Endbringer's flesh was searing, and it took multiple blasts from Damsel of Distress that cut it right her in half without the durability of the first of her kind.
Polaris cocked
two Halcyon cannons, and the Endbringer was reduced to a slinking stump by the New Wave member. It kept warping space even then, but even as it lost the damage was done as Labyrinth started flagging. Buildings returned to normal and she only had control over a fifty meter diameter sphere.
Bohu took a Bakuda bomb, and it detonated in a flash of dimensional compression. It was reduced to splinters, and tried to swallow up matter to replace its body, and took
seven of Basilia's cannons straight to the last of its regenerating corpus. It's warping of reality ceased, and the strain on Labyrinth was gone as the smaller clones were destroyed with only a few portal openings to shoot out attacks.
I tilted my head, and
blinked back from the burning hands of Tohu as it tried to strike me down while I was distracted. A portal opened and a blast from Spitfire slammed into Tohu. It seamlessly dodged attacks, but had a harder time with the portals…some unique property that interfered with its Thinker power. It had the most personal power out of the three weakened Endbringers so it was going to be the last to
die before Leviathan.
The Rachni Queen had taken to the skies in her armor, some of it pulling back to reveal metallic beetle-like wings that let her fly in tandem with her Biotics. She ripped at the Endbringer with her
warp blades, splintering Tohu's shield with the impact, her song bursting to life with war and courage.
She dwarfed the nine foot tall Endbringer, and I saw that Polaris was riding her back and shot at the smallest city killing monster. Queen had moved on to fighting Khonsu, the enormous monster teleporting more rapidly than before and creating a few portals doing…
something.
I shifted my attention to Leviathan and grit my teeth as Basilia appeared in my sight. Her eyes were exploding with emerald light, and she held a singularity in her hand that she shoved into Leviathan's chest. She
blinked back, and the nuclear spirit spat insults and curses encoded in atomic blasts that seared at the second Endbringers cracking inner layers.
Dragon was doing her part in her giant suit, but we could only buy so much time now. Even the guardian water spirits were tiring and they had retracted into the spirit world to keep up with pushing back Leviathan's hydrokinesis.
Coordinate.
"Delphi what are the chances of one of the Endbringers attempting to make this a Pyrrhic victory within the next thirty minutes?" There was a pause at the line I had connected to Dinah.
"
66.78967% chance that there will be an attempt at destroying the city…likely due to Khonsu." I was about to ask how she knew that, when one of my bugs brushed against a portal. The portals were drawing in
heat, making everything cold and I had a sinking feeling I knew what was going on. Khonsu used portals to teleport, and…if it didn't let energy
leave the portals it could simply build up until it had a gigantic bomb. And we were throwing out a lot of energy to fuel its suicide pack.
I instantly spoke into my wristband. "The fourth Endbringer is attempting to create a high yield explosion with its powers."
"
Monarch is right…it's building up to nuclear level over time, if we don't stop it the city will be destroyed." In an instant the two remaining Endbringers shifted priorities, and I stepped back into another world for a few seconds when Leviathan hit Mach two to try and kill me. Khonsu was surrounded in a wave of water, and its portal took in the kinetic energy and Tohu supplied it with even more energy from two Blaster powers while she dodged with the Thinker power.
We had to take care of this before the city was erased from the maps…before my
home was reduced to nothing but a memory.
…
Well…
fuck that!
I felt the sparks of light, almost able to pluck their strings but kept back by something. I was one of the few people with the multitasking ability outside of Dragon to get this right…
I nodded, and without a second thought two hundred portals opened beneath the feet of every combatant. Leviathan was grappled by the nuclear spirit, Eidolon, Dragon, Kiyohime, and all fell into the portals while the other two Endbringers were ambushed by my swarms until the portals opened wide enough to pull them away. My bugs surged into the gates, and I fell backwards right into freefall, and I swore I saw Hero hop through a portal without a care in the world.
Khonsu almost escaped until Labyrinth ripped open a hole in reality, and it was pulled through by the Maiden through the hole in an act of petty spite by the spirit.
I was falling and I flipped in the air to avoid spikes of supersonic water as Leviathan literally sent out a pulse of
indignation.
The Queen must be eliminated.
All three redirected their ire toward me as we fell at terminal velocity a good quarter of a kilometer in the air, though both Tohu and Khonsu took flight in different ways. Basilia surged through a portal and straight into a battle with Leviathan, air whipping around her as she let out a scream.
This was the first time that portals had worked at all on Endbringers, and that was only because he was literally held down by multiple Brutes including a spirit that wanted to kill them…and had been petty enough to drag the natural teleporter into another dimension. Plus his hiding in water where he was at his fastest had made it difficult…which meant he had to be mentally degrading…because he was
smarter than this.
Earth Siphon was an Earth that had lost 90% of its water, leaving it dry and with strange alien environments. We were in the middle of the desert so Leviathan only had his water echo to use his hydrokinesis.
"
What is this…? Where…are we?" Dragon called me, and I smirked as I kept falling and teleporting to dodge attacks from Khonsu and Tohu.
"Welcome to Earth Siphon." I accelerated on a current of airbending, and Eidolon met Tohu head on while Khonsu was accosted by the Voyagers in midair as they rode on long sheets of bugs infused with power. One of its portals blew out its energetic contents and Echidna took the hit, and I cringed as multiple tons of steaming flesh spread out as half her body was destroyed. She regenerated quickly, tail wrapping around Khonsu even as it altered time around her which was countered by one of her shard-spirits.
Portals announced further attacks, and I smiled.
"F-Fuck…" I raised an eyebrow when I heard Tattletale cursing, her breath short as she sat on another swarm-mat. "If you could throw them into other dimensions why didn't you do it before?"
"We had him completely immobile
once during this fight, and he broke free before we could have brought it up. He's smart enough to not wander into portals so the one time he faltered I took the opportunity.
Now he'll die for it." My tone turned dark, and I felt genuinely alright about that.
"Fair enough." We were approaching the cracked oceanic crust, and this spot was especially dry. Even if he reached deep it would take him far too long to gain his usual supply.
Basilia landed first, kicking up a hill worth of stone in a wave of rock that threw Leviathan as he landed with millions of gallons of water. This place had the same set up as home for portals, so we parked our Blasters a few kilometers away to fire away…and I was going to remember this day
vividly.
Because we were going to kill an Endbringer today.
___
May 24th, 2011. 5:50PM
Taylor Hebert
I was being actively chased by Khonsu, the teleporter moving faster than before but not fast enough to instantly catch up with me. I detected it before it could strike me down, eyes catching the flash of their sparks from dozens of meters away. The monster had no real speed outside his portal teleportation, and dodging his time bubbles was getting harder and harder with time.
I gathered a swarm of locusts, the bugs generating intense directed sound waves as a modified expression of kinetic energy generation. The entire sky was filled with energy from my beams, enough to wipe out an army.
My swarm detected the flood trying to drown our people on the ground, and an idea came to me as I checked how the portal network was doing.
It was operating at a much higher capacity than before, and had margin to spare for what I was planning. I alerted everyone and opened a portal underneath everyone again, moving us some twenty kilometers away and a kilometer in the air.
I landed on Dragon's back, her massive draconic mech easily adjusting for my weight as I expanded my swarm. Every cape I had grabbed for this stunt were either flying or standing on mats of insects I had clicked together into stable platforms. Millions of bugs became
billions as I opened portals across multiple dimensions, gathering a plague that would swallow up the sky and swallow up entire cities' worth of food.
Queen skated along air, arms lifted in a pose as she grew stronger and denser as I diverted millions of insects and packed them into each other to add weight. The more dangerous insects were placed on the outer layers, with skin made out of wasps, bees, venomous snails, dangerous spiders and scorpions covering up the core of beetles and locusts. She was equal in height to Leviathan, and her head was shaped into a crown made out of something called a trilobite with tough exoskeletons made out of silica and iron.
"Monarch…what exactly do you think you're doing?" Dragon was concerned, but before I could answer her we were interrupted.
"Well…I'm not one to talk on reckless plans."
Hero popped up, appearing ghostly and half faded as he stood on one of Dragon's shoulders. "But I'm thinking that fighting these things on an alternate Earth is a safer prospect than having them wipe out a city." Dragon somehow choked despite not having a throat or even lungs.
"We're going to end this here and now…but we need to get everyone in the right positions…we need to expose Leviathan's core, and we need to destroy the two weakened Endbringers." Bohu had been destroyed completely, having far too little mass and energy to fight at the level needed to kill us. But Tohu and Khonsu were more dangerous with their greater reserves. "Do you hear that Leviathan!" I snarled as the Endbringer was attacked by Basilia, a firestorm surrounding her as the warming light of the Maiden-Of-Light-And-Stars shined bright.
The Queen laughed with the voice of a legion. "The cycle is at an end Leviathan, and I will break it with my own hands! Your purpose is obsolete!"
Maximum Priority. Murder Queen-Host
If an Endbringer could express hatred and anger then that was it, and the three Endbringers directed themselves toward me. I smirked as I got what I wanted and split from Dragon as the three converged on us. Dragon popped behind Bohu and fired a rapid-fire burst to break past its shield, and switched to a high powered setting. My swarm let me perceive the world as a 3D mesh, and I was torn a hundred different ways as I portaled people at the best angles possible to strike at the Endbringers.
30 shuttles blinked into existence and then out of it, portals opened at the right positions to…
BWTHUMP!
Strike at areas with the least strength, cutting through their dense flesh with the barrage of Tinkertech cannons and reality warping attacks. Tohu was cut down at the knees and switched to a regeneration power, healing fast but still burning through reserves. A face switched to Eidolon, though there were notable cracks when it pulled out three modest powers. Flight, a red death beam, and a shielding power was what it
barely pulled on.
Eidolon looked pissed, and switched his laser for a gravity shearing beam and sent Tohu flying. I stepped between worlds and back again when Khonsu tried to trap me in a time slowing bubble, which was limited to about ten to thirty times faster or slower than the normal flow of local time.
"You want to kill me is that it!?" I screamed at them. "Then come and get me you broken pieces of shit!" There was a sonic boom as Leviathan took off within a swirling column of water, riding the flood and giving me a few seconds to react. I opened the portals and brought everyone within a circle of about five miles.
"
What the hell are you planning?!" Terra was the one asking this time, and I grit my teeth.
I managed to transmit my voice through Basilia's drones since I had the permissions. "We're doing this here and now! There's nothing to hold back for anyone here…! No buildings to destroy, no people to protect besides our own, no destroyed city and potential hundreds of thousands of deaths on our heads!" Leviathan was at least a good kilometer up, and I had distributed equipment so everyone could breath the thin air and my own bugs were protected by power.
"
BURN!" The great elemental spirit detonated Leviathan, everything within a kilometer flashing into near plasma before compressing down into a spear of nuclear fire. Basilia bent away the heat from her person, and she
Charged Leviathan with enough force to ragdoll him.
This was it. This was the battle that would end it all. A battle
between the Endbringers and humanity.
"All three are attempting to converge on specific people…and their focus will be their
demise. We work together…and we can destroy the Leviathan." I tagged every Parahuman I could, Dinah stepped with her own mat of insects. Amy was rapidly healing people, getting everyone up to 100% as Leviathan was delayed by Basilia.
Other healers including Echidna's shard-things healed, and Eidolon provided a wide scale healing aura of his own and my aches and bruises faded. There was a brief agreement between every cape here, and Legend rose as
they made their approach.
I followed the sparks, guiding my bugs so I could move them in exactly the way they preferred. The sensor network being a group of machine spirits that scanned the area to open and close portals helped make this possible.
The three Endbringers arrived, and with a mental snap of my fingers we moved the battlefield again, shifting by only a few dozen meters and fired upon the shard monsters. A
Sting infused sword was swung by Flechette, and Khonsu was hit right in the stomach. It's bottom half was lopped off seamlessly, and Damsel of Distress followed up with her own attacks, it's portals exploding in its face as they were made unstable by her power.
Flechette caught the sword as I brought it back to her and she infused and swung it again, and it was caught in a time-slow bubble. Forty cannons fired in rapid succession, along with Damsel, Eraser, Dragon, Bakuda and Polaris. The spark
died and Khonsu was no more, as it attempted to regenerate all its mass, and ran out of power. Time power are expensive. Bakuda threw a bomb and what was left exploded into a small mountain of uncompressed dead crystal as it dropped out of sight.
Tohu lifted into the air, and three beams were blocked by Queen with her swarm-body, shredding her. The holes were then easily repaired by the literal storm of bugs I was commanding, and I had to divide them up into different groups led by commanders to reduce the workload on my attention span.
My swarm parted before Basilia and the nuclear spirit as the both orbited around each other, taking turns to fight Leviathan.
I felt the wind on my face through my suit, and easily dodged Tohu and took everyone higher into the atmosphere until the entire battle was in constant freefall. Portals opening and closing to fire and
throw everything we had at the two Endbringers.
Leviathan pushed off a water echo, and several echoes were thrown like spears at the capes…who were already portaled out of the way. On the ground space was twisted on a level of a small city, and weapons were enlarged until Chevalier's cannon-blade was as big as a double-decker bus. Armsmaster's nano-thorn spear was the size of a javelin missile, and followed Tohu like one, with rockets strapped to them by Bakuda and Chariot doing the job. Everything within tens of miles,
hundreds of miles was being warped, very slowly but it was happening. Solaire was down there, and a sun the size of a cargo ship was thrown out like a missile as Vista expanded her power. The shard-things attacks were similarly expanded, covering the ground in controlled plasma.
Vista's warping reached up into the air, forming stairways from nearby mountains while the water was drained as Labyrinth punched holes into empty dead realities. We were dropping altitude, and Leviathan was blocked by pillars of stone over a hundred meters high, that Vista expanded until they crashed into him with immense force. Basilia grabbed hundreds of tons of earth, and with a twist of her arms began to
rub them together until they…turned into
lava and she shoved the wave into Leviathan's face.
Leviathan landed on all fours, still skeletal even as his tail grew back and jumped to meet me with Tohu teleporting behind my back.
Portal.
"Keep attacking!" I flew on biotic pulses, the air cracking as I nearly broke the sound barrier for the first time. Tohu took off and was caught in a nuclear explosion, the rock pillars shattering as the Maiden let out a roar. "Come on!" I baited them and Tohu was behind me again, and I threw a prepared biotic singularity into her chest. Beams from my bugs struck her at every possible angle, but I kept on my guard.
Half of her was already melted, and Leviathan nearly took my head off and Shielder had to tackle me as he wrapped us in a bright blue bubble shield.
Up.
We were shoved a quarter kilometer into the air again, and Queen charged Tohu, gripping a Halcyon cannon and firing it in her face. Tohu shielded herself, and Eidolon popped up from behind…arm wreathed in purple energy before launching his fist into her back.
He pierced through to the other side and with a kick he pushed her into Eraser, and the new cape ripped through her with his Blaster power. Tohu teleported again, and grabbed a regeneration power using Eidolon's power. It didn't fix much so she shifted her ire to me.
Somehow I kept going, running and blinking even as I was chased by two Endbringers at the same time. I caught sight of Basilia's mandala, and felt my power grow more certain…and brought together a swarm to take a hit from Leviathan. My spiders covered him in silk, and I formed long floating silk strings that Clockblocker froze. They cut his layers like a knife, and I could almost see his core poking out from his rapidly breaking flesh.
"Keep going…he's burnt through years of lifespan…and his core is becoming exposed." Queen spoke as she skated on air, and smashed a fist with added telekinetic force into Tohu's shield. It broke, and Chevalier swung his blade and bisected Tohu…but she refused to die.
Nuclear spears smashed into Leviathan, and I opened portals for Flechette and Vista and four bolts were fired in rapid succession. Leviathan stumbled, fleeing as the bolts ripped apart his final layers with no difficulty. Flechette kept firing, cutting off his tail in a single lucky strike. Leviathan had brought tens of thousands of tons of water into the desert with his powers and from deep underground, and with a smirk Labyrinth pulled the below ground water into other worlds.
He turned on his heels, breaking the sound barrier and—
Labyrinth down.
She was picked up in an instant, but had been knocked out in the crash. Leviathan switched to try to down Vista, and took a Bakuda bomb for the trouble as a black hole arrowed into his gullet. He brought more water from deep aquifers, and I portaled everyone twenty miles away.
The Queen must die.
Both Endbringers showed up in a brilliant display of light, Tohu summoning up a teleporting cape.
"
72.879% chance they…" Dinah whispered the rest and both Endbringers took off towards her, and an enraged Maiden let out a shout so I brought us twelve miles east. The sky lit up with another atomic blast, and the two Endbringers came out alive, though Tohu was slowing.
The younger Endbringer attacked from below, space warping around her before I snapped my fingers and thirty cannons reduced her to barely living splinters. One head was cut away, and Bakuda bombed it…blinding its Thinker power to make sure she wasn't going to pull anything. The cannons fired again and again until there was only a piece I crushed with a biotic singularity. The remains were incinerated by Eidolon, his powers growing stronger again.
Leviathan was all that was left.
Water filled my vision and I stopped thinking, simply moving and reacting. I went to top speed, entering a biotic charge at many,
many times the speed of sound. The battlefield shifted from land to air and back again, the air snapping as he displaced it with raw speed. He was supposed to be the fastest Endbringer after all.
In a charge though I was the fastest thing on Earth, even for the briefest instant that I could use it to tear a hole in space-time. He was nothing but a charred skeleton, his outer
fake skin worn away to reveal the machine behind the beast. His ichor was gone, no blood left to spill even as he kept moving, kept fighting with all that his shard could offer. His vaunted tail was a nub, his left leg was a thin twig and both of his arms were ripped out and tossed through a mountain by Echidna.
And I saw his core openly exposed to the air, protected only by thick sheets of water that slowed attacks just enough to keep him alive as he tried to kill me.
I threw a singularity, my arms spasming from overuse of my biotics. It hit the core and for a moment I thought it would put him down…it didn't but it did shake him, a tiny ripple making it trip. Basilia knocked him away from me, not even giving me a second glance in her unceasing rage and anguish.
Again the battlefield shifted and Leviathan was bringing clouds, clouds that were broken up by waterbenders or dissipated by Echidna's word. He was hobbling now, but even a hobble for him was faster than a jet plane.
Eidolon and Dauntless met him head on, and Leviathan held them both off for a second before the spirit helping us dragged him off, burning
very slowly through his body and upsetting his core as she boiled away his water.
I didn't need to say anything then as I landed on the ground, and space warped to aim Sting for Flechette. She fired a dozen times and still Leviathan survived by inches, and he bashed the spirit again and again until
she hissed in pain. My swarm sank into his wounds and we threw everything we had, Basilia adding a titanic biotic warp and lightning to the blast.
Even then she didn't look at me.
By then the Leviathan was a shambling corpse, neck twisted and broken while his arms were stumps and one of his legs was cut away at the knees. Golden light erased his left side, and his core was there in the open.
He was held down by Alexandria, by Eidolon, by Echidna and Basilia with solid claps of thick stone. He was vibrating as he cracked the ground with sheer force and Flechette fired. I added a biotic push to her bolt, and it pierced the core even as he ripped through his shackles. He didn't stop moving and I stepped behind Echidna. His body tumbled down a cliff, rolling along hardy oceanic basalt until he landed and formed a crater with the force of an artillery shell.
He didn't get back up, staying completely still and quiet as the ground settled and Vista's warping of the landscape stopped.
Legend landed, having been the source of a few dozen beams built to buy space for more damaging attacks.
"Is he dead?"
"Let me check." Bugs crawled down into the former sea bottom, and with practiced ease I
flipped the monster over to his front. His core was broken, and a swell of matter had carved hundreds of tons of shard-flesh into the ground where some of the mass had been ejected. Some weird interference from being outside a designated dimension.
I felt vindictive and swarmed over his corpse, planning to turn his body into a hive for some of my honey bees. But cutting up the pieces for samples for the PRT would probably be a good idea right?
"
May I?" The Maiden-Of-Light-And-Stars insisted and I removed my bugs from his head. She crushed his skull with her foot, searing it with her nuclear body. "
Oh that is beyond copacetic." The strange spirit laughed at what felt like an inside joke. I opened portals, sending my locusts back to their native worlds to do their plague thing without hurting humans. My farmed insects were crawling back, and I opened more portals to shift us back to my reality, taking a foot from Leviathan for the PRT.
We were in the rough center of the city, an intersection between the Docks, Downtown and the Commercial District. The portal was there, and blinking wildly.
Basilia was there, her eyes still glowing and her mandala spinning uncontrollably. My eyes saw Eidolon following her, a figure in red leading him toward her. My vision unfocused on the hazy woman, and I saw a flash of some symbol…a flame?
She gestured and Eidolon glanced back as he placed a hand on Basilia's shoulder.
He activated his draining power and Basilia dropped like a puppet on strings, and Eidolon seized up and shoved the energy into the red portal, which turned emerald-gold and started pulsing.
Before I realized it I had pushed Eidolon away and he called Panacea, bringing her to us with a wave of his arms to use a teleportation power. I watched on in horror as her armor plate shattered, wasting away at the sheer amount of force that had taken its toll.
But that wasn't what had made me gasp.
Blood dripped from her nose, one of her eyes turned red as the vessels popped. Her face bruised at an alarming rate, and her inner suit wasted away, revealing her bare arms were bleeding and her whole back was a giant purpling bruise. She fell into a pool of her own blood, and the horror and terror only grew from there.
"Dear god…" My mind turned to static as Amy reached for her, other healers showing up at her command as she screamed at them. Fortunately it was only Gallant and Echidna's healers…and…and.
I dropped to my knees, unable to look away.
___
May 24th, 2011. 7:45PM
Taylor Hebert
I had my helmet off, and I was tearing through leftovers from home, a chicken pasta that Basilia had been excited to show off once she had gotten the hang of it. It tasted bitter on my tongue, and I was turning my back to the one other occupant in the tent that had been set up.
Eidolon was there, staring at his hands with an expression of regret that I only saw through my bugs because he had his mask off. There was a lot of clean-up that a lot of heroes were working on, and the portals were busy bringing people back using the protected path in the spirit world. My bugs were being used to provide directions whether through swarm-speech or words in bees for people with less ability to handle creep factor. Basilia could handle my swarm, but even she had her limits…parasitic wasps were interesting but…very gross to be honest. Her words not mine.
Not that she could say anything right now.
I rubbed my domino mask, the spirit artifact that Basilia had made and wondered where things had gone sideways. Probably the moment that Leviathan arrived in the city I imagine.
"The Simurgh shifted positions a few minutes ago." Eidolon was quiet, and I turned to face him despite my distrust of him. "Right at the antipode from Brockton Bay, Behemoth was spotted in Hawaii, and hasn't moved at all since then." He sounded tired and old, and I didn't look at him with my eyes. "FEMA is being brought in for disaster relief and there are already talks about donations for killing Leviathan. PRT waterbenders are teaching FEMA workers how to remove flooding."
The city was almost untouched due to the barriers within the city, specific portals draining water to keep flooding as far down as possible. There was damage in the millions, and the Ferry had been erased from existence, but the city could recover.
Would recover if we had anything to say about it.
He just kept talking.
"Most of the villains have left by now, and your…portal network cut them off once the battle was concluded. A few heroes are going to remain in the city and help with relief efforts. I'll likely take part in it, but…not right now." He sounded even more tired, like my dad on his bad days…when he simply…shuts down.
It doesn't really happen anymore, but that was what it reminded me of.
"Why are you telling me this?" I asked, my face pulling a sneer as I remembered why we were here in the first place. His power had activated the Endbringers, had sent the world into a bigger death spiral than normal…and neatly killed both Basilia and me.
Eidolon sighed, rubbing his face. "Because I have nothing else to say…
what can I say about what my power did?" I didn't know how to answer him besides maybe reassurance that my shard had shackled his shard, and Shaper was busy ripping apart what was left of the Manufactory and the seventeen Endbringer shards. If he hadn't cut them off Khonsu, Tohu and Bohu would have been unstoppable instead of merely incredibly dangerous.
"You're not wr—" There was something in the air, and I grabbed my helmet. Eidolon placed his mask on, and we walked out of the tent to a small crowd of heroes gathering around the area that had been swept clean due to Labyrinth's reality warping. The clouds were clearing, and the sun was fully set to reveal an impossibly clear sky. Stars twinkling in the night illuminated only by their light and the increasing shine of the hole into the Firmament. It was shrinking down to a small point, and air was gathering in vast whirls of wind. There was a loud
thunk, like someone was banging on the other side of the door, louder and stronger with each hit until…
People were evacuated, and the nuclear spirit was simply standing there with a wide brimmed smile. "
Hmm…a new era is arriving." Around the city pieces of Endbringer flesh were gathering around the portal, glowing with what had to be spirit energy. The rifts were moving, merging with the portal as it glowed with blinding luminosity.
We were within the range, and I was pulled out by Eidolon at the last second as the portal…
exploded. It was a vast orb of multicolored energy, and I felt like something was looking at me…something far
larger than anything I had seen before. For nearly a quarter kilometer the light turned night into day, and I heard Queen's choked surprise.
"
Not…normal." Labyrinth spoke in the wristbands. The drone was loud and clear, and stopped right at the edge of her range when she was here. It reversed course, compressing down to a nearly infinitely dense point before…before…
A column of emerald-gold light speared into the sky, as a portal was ripped into our reality by something with far more power than anything I had felt before. Swirling shapes blocked the stars for several moments, an Aurora lighting the sky before dissipating. Concrete spiraled around the portal, and strange plants grew in them, metal circuits coating them. I stumbled as
ripples passed through me, and when I saw the Moon…I saw
something in there, a glimmer of a greater force at work.
A few buildings were shockingly intact, but were overfilled with plant growth that seemed to merge seamlessly with their concrete, brick and steel.
"What…did that?" Eidolon landed on the spirit-touched center of the city, and I marveled at the height of the portal before it twinkled away into nothing, leaving only the portal itself as the column vanished into the night. It was thirty meters in diameter, and I could feel the
strangeness of the world on the other side of the portal.
"
Something far greater than you human." The Maiden dropped herself into the field, the plants wasting away from the heat she gave off as she sauntered over to the gateway. "
It has seen fit to grant you a path to the Intangible, creating a sign that the world has changed. Do not dishonor this gift humans, the world is still changing…and there is much to be done."
The spirit turned and Elle limped over from another tent, throwing Gregor the Snail off until she was staring up at the spirit. The spirit gave me a nod, and I heard Elle say something to her. The Maiden placed both her hands together, and Elle did the same and they bowed with respect towards one another.
"Goodbye…" I heard using my bugs.
"
We will meet again, when the wheel turns on my homeland once more." She continued her bow for a solid ten seconds, and turned on her heels and right into the portal. Other spirits did the same one after the other, as the rifts had vanished and the Verge near the Docks disappeared.
Even the villains were staring at the portal in awe, and Eidolon talked aloud.
"What now?" I blinked.
…
Now?
Now I had to wait for Basilia to wake up alive and healthy…and hope that we could move forward, into a better future.
___
AN: Here is 8.6. Not much to say here, other than to say it's nice to be almost done with Arc 8. 8.8 should be done by the time I put out 8.7, and I'll be working on Arc 9 at that point unless I hit a block.
So enjoy.
