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Tag Archives: Narwhal
Cockroaches 28.4
Posted on September 7, 2013 by wildbow
"We're here," I said.
It was enough. All the different personalities in the Dragonfly, the… how had Tattletale put it, once upon a time? The people who weren't inclined to play 'cops and robbers', who weren't the types to follow the rules or codes, and were dangerous without a firm hand. Rachel, Lung, Sophia… they fell silent. The fighting stopped.
Because they, even with their unique and personal issues, acknowledged that this wasn't a situation where you fucked around.
Monitors switched settings without any cue from me. Showing the Simurgh from a distance away, from a different angle. Defiant had switched on his long-ranged cameras.
A moment later, he switched on the cameras in the Dragonfly. The two sets of images alternated across the innumerable displays in the craft. Only the display directly in front of me in the cockpit remained untouched, showing altitude, heading, speed, distance from target, and alerts regarding Scion's latest appearances.
The Dragonfly changed course, angling to maintain a set distance from the Endbringer. Again, not me.
Defiant seemed content to handle the mechanical end of things. I stood from my seat, stretching a little, before gathering my bugs. Two relay bugs, for safety's sake. They exited the craft.
No scream from the Simurgh. At least, not one I could detect. It would fit her to keep it beyond our notice, influencing us, the sort of card she would keep up her sleeve. To make the psychic scream 'audible', for lack of a better word, purely for spreading fear, then use it subtly at a time when she wasn't attacking.
The others in the ship hadn't only gone silent. They'd gone still. I might have taken it for an almost hypnotic paralysis, a sign that something was deeply wrong, but Rachel turned and found a seat on the bench opposite Shadow Stalker.
No, they were still themselves.
My bugs made their way towards the Simurgh, while I chained the two relay bugs together to extend my range.
Fragile, as it only required the death of one bug to sever my connection with the swarm. I didn't mind. If she acted on my swarm, that was likely to be the least of our worries.
Cameras changed focus, zooming in on the Simurgh's face, hands and various wingtips, different cameras taking over as the Pendragon and the Dragonfly rotated around her and the cameras lost sight of the features in question. Mosaic views of her features, broken up like I might see if I were looking through the eyes of my bugs, but without my power to coodinate the picture, draw it into something cohesive.
In the corner of each image, metrics, numbers, measurements, as if Defiant hoped to track the slightest movement.
It was the hair that got me. Gossamer-fine, silver-white, straight, it blew in the wind as if each strand were a separate entity. Not in clumps or locks, but a curtain of strands ten times as dramatic as something one might see in a digitally altered hair commercial.
Artificial.
"Seventy," Tattletale said.
"Hm?" I asked.
"I said I was sixty-five percent sure before. I'm revising it to seventy."
Hello, Simurgh, I thought. We finally meet.
The Protectorate was strict about who could join the fights against the Simurgh. Capes needed psychological evaluations, they needed to sign documents agreeing to the quarantine procedures, and they needed to be on board with the timetables.
I'd been unable to participate when the Simurgh had attacked flight BA178. When she'd attacked Manchester, I'd been barred from joining the fight by bureaucratic red tape. I had a bad history and I was still on probation. Too likely that I was mentally unstable.
When the Simurgh had hit Paris, I'd gone to Mrs. Yamada, hoping for a therapist's bill of clean mental health. Or, if not quite that, then at least a go-ahead.
She'd advised me to see it as a good thing, instead. That my participation would be another black mark on my record, another reason for people to be suspicious of me or second guess my decisions.
She'd also very elegantly avoided spelling out that she wasn't willing to give me that clean bill of mental health. I'd noticed, but hadn't pressed her on it. She would have been forced to say it straight, and I would have had to hear her say it.
"Ready?" I asked.
"I do the talking, you pass it on," Tattletale said.
Tattletale sighed. "Look at her. The folly of man, am I right?"
"I don't know. You have a better idea about whether you're right, but it… doesn't fit to me."
"I'm sure."
"You're seventy percent sure."
"Seventy percent, yes. If I'm wrong, then I'll be approaching this entire conversation from the wrong angle, and we might wind up siccing an otherwise passive Endbringer on humanity."
"Let's hope you're right, then," I said.
"Everyone ready?" I asked. I looked around the craft. No responses. Only silent nods.
One head that was shaking. Shadow Stalker.
I touched the screen on the console. "Defiant?"
"Ready when you are," he said.
"We're starting right now," I said. I nodded at Tattletale.
She rolled her shoulders, took in a deep breath, then sighed. "Hello, Endbringer, this-"
I echoed her words, speaking through my bugs as an interpreter might speak in another language.
The instant I had the first word out, alarms went off throughout the ship. The Dragonfly shuddered as meager weapons unfolded from the sides. My visual of the Pendragon showed it was reacting much the same way.
Simurgh had reacted.
She hadn't attacked, but she had reacted.
She rotated in the air, holding her position, wings flat at her sides. The wings were purely ornamental, much as Behemoth's bulk and musculature had been. She used telekinesis to move, and she used it now to keep herself oriented in the air, rotating so she matched our orbit around her, her eyes and attention fully fixed on the Dragonfly.
"Oh, shit," Imp spoke, her voice wavering breathlessly halfway through the 'shit'.
Long seconds passed, but the Simurgh didn't take any other action.
"Th- this is Tattletale speaking, one face in that vast, crazy crowd of humans you've been murdering," Tattletale finished. "Good to see you're listening. I thought it was about time we had a chat."
No response, no movement. Odd, to see the screens showing her depicting the zoomed-in images of her face, hands, wings and body and not see them rotating in the picture as they had been before.
Her expression was neutral, but then again, the Simurgh's expression was always neutral. A face like a doll's, a cold stare. Beautiful in every conventional sense, in that every classically attractive feature was there, from the delicate, thin frame to the high cheekbones to the luxurious hair… horrifying in the manner it was all framed. The height that put her two to three times the height of an ordinary adult, the wings that filled the space around her. The feathers were surprisingly tough and dense, the edges capable of scoring steel.
Not that she really fought in close quarters, where she could help it.
"Let's face the facts, Simurgh. Ziz. Israfel. Ulama. Whatever you want to go by. You started acting funny pretty much right away, after Eidolon bit it. Maybe that's mourning. Maybe you respected him as an enemy, 'cause he was one of only two individuals who could really give you guys a run for your money. Or maybe you had a different relationship."
Tattletale let the words hang in the air.
"Maybe a parent-child relationship? Maybe he created you."
The Simurgh didn't move a muscle. Her hair blew in the wind, and it caught on the features of her face, not even eliciting a blink of her eyes.
I leaned over my chair to hit the button on my cockpit, giving me a view of the inside of the Pendragon.
Defiant, Narwhal, Miss Militia, Saint, Canary, Parian, Foil, Golem, Vista and Kid Win were all present within. Defiant had collected the heroes, the capes who might have been less inclined to throw their hat into the ring if I showed up in the company of Tattletale, Imp and Rachel. He'd been closer to Parian and Foil when I approached him with the plan.
I watched the expressions on their faces, the concern, the alarm and confusion I'd felt only minutes ago. I knew Tattletale hadn't shared this particular detail. They had to be listening in with some microphone, either a directional one aimed at my swarm outside or one in the Dragonfly.
"They say loneliness breeds the best masters, and it's awfully lonely at the top," Tattletale said. "Nobody that can really put up a fight, no excuse to flex his abilities to their fullest, nothing that can really give the man any real stature, next to Legend, who had all the face time with the media. No real role to play, compared to Alexandria, who was managing the PRT. Odd man out."
I thought of Eidolon, the first time I'd seen him in person. Meeting in preparation for the Leviathan fight in Brockton Bay… Eidolon had been standing off to one side, in a corner, lost in thought.
"Symbiotic, odd as it sounds, what with you trying to kill him and him trying to kill you."
Still no reaction. No response.
I noted the surroundings. The Simurgh had situated herself above the ocean, an eerie parallel to how Scion had first appeared before humanity. As battlegrounds went, it left her relatively little to manipulate when using her telekinesis, but it also gave us very little ground to stand on if a fight erupted. She'd torn apart Flight BA178. She could tear apart the Dragonfly or the Pendragon if she had a mind to.
Hopefully the other ship would be able to flee, if we couldn't manage an outright fight.
Tattletale held up a hand, then spoke. "She's not giving me anything."
I didn't repeat it for the Simurgh. I only stared at the screens.
"Did you expect her to?" Imp asked.
"Yeah. Kind of," Tattletale said.
"She's not human," I said. "And, if you're right about this, she's only a projection. Her brain doesn't work like ours does, if it's even active."
"She responded when we communicated," Tattletale said.
I nodded. "Defiant, you listening in?"
On the screen in front of us, Defiant turned to the camera, then nodded once.
"Open to suggestions," I said.
"We could use powers to try and communicate," Narwhal said. "Can we express a signal through some other channel? Through our powers?"
"It might be taken as an attack," I said.
"She's smart enough to figure out convoluted chains of cause and effect, but not to take a gesture of communication for what it is?" Tattletale asked. "I say we try it."
"Oh my god," Shadow Stalker said, her voice quiet. "You're going to get us all killed."
"Well, it might be a mercy," Imp said. "Going out like that, not having to watch the golden man take humanity down piece by piece."
"Could we try Canary?" I suggested. "If she has any understanding of powers, or if Canary has any influence with things other than humans…"
"I don't," Canary said, from within the Pendragon. "I tried using my power on dogs, cats, birds, monkeys…"
Tattletale nodded, like this was something expected. "Bonesaw said something like that. When we get our powers, the passenger manages this sort of scan, trying to figure out a way to apply a part of itself. So Taylor gets a power that's restricted to bugs, Canary gets a power that's limited to people. At the same time, the passenger kind of figures out if there's any danger of the power harming us, physically or mentally, and it sets down safeguards and limits. Headaches like Dinah or I get are part of that. And Eidolon…"
"I don't… I can't believe all this," a woman said. Miss Militia.
"He's really their creator?" Defiant asked. "Eidolon?"
"…Sixty percent sure. Eidolon's some kind of exception, on a lot of levels. His power works by different vectors, the innate limits aren't there… something broke, and I'm betting the Endbringers are tied to it. Like, this entity is fissioning off into countless fragments that impregnate hosts and somehow a little extra gets tacked on. Or Cauldron's method of replicating the fragments gets that little extra."
"Yes," Defiant said. "But how does that help us here?"
"Getting to that. Sort of. Every power has secondary uses, uses that are locked away. But maybe there's something we can express using the powers, like a kind of parahuman charades. Not, you know, actually miming something, but giving off a vibe."
"I'll try whatever," I said. "Who? How?"
Tattletale smiled. "Oh, this is fun. It's like a puzzle, but it's not one with a clear cut answer. Rachel, Canary. Um. Imp too. And Taylor's right. Any use of power in a way that could be seen as violent might give the wrong cue. So… none of that. Let's move people between ships. Bitch, to the Pendragon. Leave Bastard behind. Canary, can you get out on top of your ship? And Imp, same for you. We need to distance you from the rest of us."
"Outside?" Imp asked.
"Outside and away. Where your power doesn't necessarily have a target. You get me?"
"Three people using their powers," Defiant said, "Without any valid targets?"
"Exactly," Tattletale said.
"I could lose my bugs," I said. "But I'm not sure I can express my power in a case like that."
"Even if you could, but that would be pretty heavy handed. It's what we try next if this fails. For now, let's work with the existing plan."
I pulled off my flight pack, then handed it to Imp.
"Oh, fun," she said. "God damn it."
"No quips? No jokes?" I asked. I helped her find the buckles and straps.
"When I'm done, maybe," Imp said. She glanced at Tattletale. "I can't turn my power on. It's always on. I can turn it off, but that only works so long as I'm paying attention."
"Don't pay attention then. Leave it running. We're trying to express an attitude."
Imp nodded.
"What attitude is Imp?" I asked.
"Nonviolence, passivity," Tattletale said. "At least as far as we're concerned."
"And Rachel?"
"A call to arms, expression of strength."
"And Canary is… cooperation?"
"Something along those lines."
Tattletale shrugged. "Lung would be too violent, and the focus of Vista's power is too… location-driven? I have no idea how she'd take Narwhal's power, because it's pretty evenly split between offense and defense."
"Kind of abstract," I said.
"I'm… reaching," Tattletale confessed. "Definitely reaching. But reaching and abstract thought bought us the portal to Gimel, and I've got to flex my power somehow."
"Somehow," I agreed. "No, it's worth a try. Or it will be if it doesn't provoke her to violently murder us all. Can I make a suggestion, though?"
"Any suggestions are good," Tattletale said.
"Send Shadow Stalker instead of Imp."
"You bitch," Shadow Stalker said. "No."
"Awesome idea," Imp said.
"Shadow Stalker's power doesn't express itself over an area or any particular medium," Tattletale said. "It's more personal."
"Can't she represent us?" I asked. "Or can't the personal effect represent us? If we had Imp flying up there way out of range of any of us, we're still expecting her to represent our group, or humanity as a whole, aren't we?"
"Sort of," Tattletale said.
"Then I'm not sure I see the difference," I said.
"It doesn't matter," Shadow Stalker said. "This is moronic. Charades and acting like powers are some kind of massive signal flag for the Endbringer? You're lunatics."
"Send them both?" I suggested.
"Oh, that's less fun," Imp said. "You had a working plan, and you're letting Tattletale convince you otherwise. Come on. Send the psycho crossbow girl and I'll hang back here. My power would send the total wrong message. Totally."
"Shh," Tattletale said. She frowned. "Why Shadow Stalker?"
"Because Imp… is too passive."
"Way too passive," Imp murmured.
"So's Shadow Stalker," Tattletale said.
"But Shadow Stalker's passenger isn't. If there are any undertones, any way that the passengers influence our actions, then Shadow Stalker was definitely influenced. I dug through her old records, read up on her history."
"What?" Shadow Stalker asked.
"She got aggressive after she got her powers. Generally more…" I searched for the way to phrase it.
"You fucking looked at my records?"
"…More violent than most people would be, in her shoes. Lashing out, aimlessly at first, and then with a target, channeling the aggression. Except it was the same amount of violence, just concentrated into fewer incidents, alongside a pretty extensive bullying campaign."
"You're doing this because of a grudge?"
"Let's do it," Tattletale said. "Go with our guts. Imp and Shadow Stalker, up on the roof. Bitch, either you or Bastard need to head over to the Pendragon. Canary on the roof of the Pendragon, singing with nobody listening."
"You're not getting me outside or any of that shit," Shadow Stalker said.
"You're scared," Imp said. "That's so cute! Is it a fear of heights or a fear of the Simurgh?"
"I'm not scared," Shadow Stalker replied. "I'm being sensible. This is lunacy, and for what? Charades with the Endbringer?"
"That was a metaphor," Tattletale said.
"It sounds fucking stupid."
"I've changed my mind," Imp said. "I'm going. I'm not going to get lumped in with Sissy McNancypants over here and get called a coward."
"I'm not scared," Shadow Stalker said.
"We never really got to meet," Imp said. "Fight or any of that. So I've only got the stories I've heard about you. Like when you shot Grue with your crossbow and it went right through his stomach? Took him a month to recover? I used to think, you know, you were a badass. But you're a pussycat."
"She's a bully," I said. "At the end of the day, she only wants to fight opponents she knows she can beat."
"I've fought two Endbringers," Shadow Stalker said, stabbing a finger in my direction. "I know what you're trying to do. Fucking manipulating me, getting me into a dangerous situation where you'll get me killed. Fuck you."
"Fought two Endbringers as part of an army. But going up alone, putting yourself in the line of fire against something that much bigger and stronger than you? No. You're a bully at heart, and that's the antithesis of your usual M.O."
"Fuck you, Hebert. Fuck you."
The sentence left her mouth, and then she stalked to my right, making her way to the cockpit. She passed through the glass, making her way onto the nose of the ship, where she crouched. Her flapping cloak obstructed the view, even as translucent as it was, but there was no chance we'd hit anything.
It took a minute to arrange. Narwhal created a force field platform and carefully moved Rachel over to the Pendragon. I watched their glacially slow movement and the utterly still Simurgh.
More alarms went off as she moved her head a fraction to watch the floating platform.
It took a few long seconds for my heart to stop trying to jump out of my chest. Not completely oblivious to us petty humans.
"The girl is right. This seems… ridiculous," Lung rumbled.
Oh, Lung and Shadow Stalker are of like mind, that's wonderful.
"It is, just a little," Tattletale said. "But I'm hoping that if this doesn't exactly work, she'll give us credit for trying."
"The Endbringers do not give you credit," Lung said.
"No, guess not," Tattletale said. She bent down to scratch Bastard around the ears, then stopped short when he pulled back, clearly uncomfortable with the stranger.
"Ridiculous," Lung repeated himself. "And you stopped in the middle of a conversation. She is waiting for you to continue."
"She doesn't care. Ninety-nine percent sure. Gotta understand, she's not even close to human, especially once you scratch the surface. We think in black and white, she thinks in… void and substance. In abstracts or in causative contexts, looking into the future and seeing how things unfold. So we're going to try this, and maybe something sticks."
"Mm," Lung said, clearly unimpressed.
"Start us up again?" Tattletale asked me.
"So, Simmy, Eidolon made you, or he's been enough of an opponent that you've kind of got that weird frenemy thing going on. Not in the shitty high school way, but a real love-hate relationship. You know what I mean. You fight them so long you get to know them, you almost respect them on a level, and that respect becomes something more."
"You're rambling," I murmured.
Tattletale shook her head a little. "Whatever the case, you're reacting to his being gone. We're here because we're asking you…"
Tattletale trailed off. She'd noticed something.
My head turned. Canary was singing, and I could hear it through my bugs.
Wordless, insistent, filled with a lot of repressed emotion.
Almost angry.
I shut it out as best as I could, took a second to focus wholly on keeping my power from communicating any sound to me. I hit a button on the dashboard, then spent a few seconds tracking down one of Dragon's programs.
Defiant found it first, loading it onto the Dragonfly's system. It began filtering out the singing. Most of it.
But no sooner had Canary's Song gone away than the Simurgh began screaming.
Not as intense as I'd heard it described. Barely audible.
More ominous than anything.
"Not full strength," Miss Militia's voice came over the comms. "I give us five minutes. Wrap this up."
I unclenched my hands, belatedly realizing I'd been squeezing them so hard they almost hurt. My fingernails throbbed where they'd been almost bent against my palms. If I'd not been wearing my gloves, I might have pierced the skin. I flexed my hands to work out the tension that had accumulated and exhaled slowly.
"We're here," Tattletale started again, "Because we're asking you for help. For vengeance. For your strength. We want you and the rest of the Endbringers on board to stop Scion."
The Simurgh didn't react.
"I don't care if you're doing it to fuck with us, though I'd prefer it if you saved any backstabbing for when Scion's dead and gone. Fucking wipe us out. I don't care. Just so long as we go out with a bang, taking him out with us."
I made a hand gesture, urging Tattletale to move on.
"…Do it for the psychological impact, leave a mark. Or do it because Scion killed Behemoth, your brother, and some part of you is programmed with a sense of kinship or whatever. But above all else, I'm hoping you'll help us murder that golden alien motherfucker because he killed Eidolon, and he stripped you of your purpose."
Sixty percent sure, I thought. Tattletale had revised her number. How confident was she now?
The speech had no meat to it if Eidolon hadn't made the Endbringers.
Very little if he had.
Tattletale held up her hand to me again, another sign that I shouldn't repeat what she was saying, because she was talking to us. "Fuck this. It's like talking to a fucking answering machine. I feel like some dim asshole with no idea what I'm talking about. There's no feedback, no responses to read and judge for the next line."
"Well," I said. "She's not exactly your usual target."
"What do you usually do?" Narwhal asked.
"Needle someone until they get upset, then find cues in that. I'd do that here, except irritating the Simurgh seems like an excuse to get a Darwin Award."
"Tattletale's being cautious. Must be the end of the world after all," someone said. Might have been Foil.
"She's singing," Tattletale said. "So that's either a good sign or a very bad sign."
"Going by the numbers," Miss Militia said, "If we assume it's half strength, I'd say three minutes before we have to abort."
"Maybe tell Canary to stop," I said.
"No," Tattletale said. "We're getting a response. Let's hold out."
"Then keep talking," Defiant said.
Tattletale sighed. She perched herself on the bench, hands on her head. "I don't know if I should continue buying into this Eidolon thing. Less convinced the further we go. Most times, you get that key piece of information, and you can coast from there."
"It's very possible we don't have enough information," I said.
"I'm trying to communicate with something that doesn't communicate back," Tattletale said.
"Reduce," Defiant said. "We're trying to convey a message to a being that we don't wholly understand. You're appealing to sympathy, to revenge. Something simpler?"
"Like?" Tattletale asked.
"They have a sense of self preservation," Narwhal said. "They run when we hurt them enough. Fear?"
"Because it allows them to maintain their mission," Tattletale said. "I don't think we can actually scare her, either. Scion might, but we can't."
The screaming was getting worse. Warbling, with highs and lows. It snagged on my attention, making it harder to maintain a train of thought.
Maybe she was reaching out to us, communicating. Maybe she was just doing her thing, trying to worm her way into our heads so she could figure out how we functioned, put her plans into motion.
"Anger," Rachel said.
I turned my head.
There was a long pause. I glanced at the screen on the cockpit to see what she was doing, but she'd stopped by the time I got there to look. "When I cut Behemoth's leg off, after we'd melted most of him away, he was angry. Stomped around, attacked more. Kept fighting until he died. Didn't he?"
"He did," Tattletale said. "But now we're getting back to the whole 'needling them' issue of the debate. I'm pretty sure I don't want to provoke her."
"Dunno," Rachel said. "Just saying."
"No," I said, "It's good thinking. It's a possibility."
I could think back to the images of the Simurgh going all-out.
I remembered the various incidents that had unfolded in her wake. Echidna, the sundering of the PRT. Things with ramifications that were affecting us even now.
"…A very scary possibility," I amended.
Lung gave me a funny look.
"Yes," he said, agreeing with me.
Tattletale made a gesture, pointing at herself.
"Go ahead," I said.
"Okay, Ziz. I'm going to be honest. You're pretty fucked. You and I both know you were made by somebody or something. Accidentally, probably. You were designed to give us as hard a time as possible without exterminating us altogether, probably to feed someone's ego, unbeknownst to them. But what happens when we're all gone? What's the fucking point of you?"
Tattletale paused. Waiting, watching.
No reaction from Tattletale.
"What happens when we're all gone? You're tapped into a power source. Maybe most power sources. You're draining them dry just to keep yourselves going. There's nothing for you to do but linger, when there's no humans left. To hibernate. So you're gathering your forces. You're planning one last act, probably for a few days from now, where you wipe out humanity, and I'm betting it's one last desperate, sad attempt to validate your existence."
Alarms went off once more. The Simurgh had moved, her head turning to look over one shoulder, flexing wings to move them out of the way, as if she couldn't see through them but she could see well past the horizon.
She returned to the same posture as before.
"What was that about?" I asked.
"Checking," Defiant said. "Keep going. Any reaction is a good reaction."
Maybe it was Scion, arriving just in time to pick a fight with the Simurgh.
I could hope.
Tattletale continued, and I repeated what she was saying verbatim, trying to even match her in tone and pitch. "Here's what I'm thinking. Shot in the dark. You're wanting to fight humanity because you're trying to carry out the old programming, and Scion invalidated that by killing Eidolon, by killing someone else or destroying something. I think that fighting and nearly killing a few billion humans is the equivalent of fighting and nearly killing Eidolon. Or whoever."
"One hundred and eighty integers of longitude to the west," Defiant said. "Leviathan just arrived. That's what got her attention. We expected one to appear there, so Chevalier ordered us to put crews there with cameras for monitoring. They're there right now, reporting to me."
A monitor shifted, depicting Leviathan, standing on the water's surface in the midst of a heavy rainstorm. The water around him was rippling, though he was utterly still.
Tattletale continued without pause, not responding or reacting to this information. "All I'm saying, all I'm proposing, is that Scion's a better bet than we are. You want to give someone a fucking hard time? Make that someone Scion. You want to terrorize people? Terrorize Scion. Bigger challenge, and you'll probably have the rest of us fucking scared out of our minds if you pull it off. You want to fucking end the world? Get in line, chickadee, because Scion's going to beat you to the punch if you don't stop him."
Tattletale was almost breathless, speaking faster, with more emotion. It was a challenge to convey that with a voice generated by the swarm.
"Or maybe you don't care. Maybe you're nothing more than what you appear to be on the surface. Head games and taking credit for shit you didn't do. Maybe you're just a projection, blank between the ears, mindless, heartless, pointless."
The ship moved a fraction, then adjusted, the autopilot kicking in.
"Did you feel that?" I asked. Tattletale had gone silent, and there were no words left for me to translate.
"We did."
A reaction? I adjusted the monitors, turning everything back to the Simurgh, looking for any clue, any hint.
But she didn't have body language. Every action was deliberate. She didn't have any that weren't.
Tattletale's voice was low. I did what I could to match it, speaking through a swarm of over a million individual insects and arachnids. "You're supposedly this magnificent genius, and this is how you go out? With a whimper? Petering out like a stream without a source? You're honestly telling me there isn't anything more to you?"
Another rumble, another shift, somewhat more violent.
"Enough, Tattletale." Defiant's voice.
"They run on different patterns. Fair bit of anger, room for some vengeance. Cleverness, sure. More in her than in Behemoth. Some killer instinct, maybe… a blend of fear and caution. Not so they're afraid, but so they can temper their actions. This? Right here? It's the closest we're about to get to communicating directly with a passenger."
"I understand," Defiant said. "But that's enough."
"They're passengers?" I asked.
"The shell? No. The outer shell, the concept, the execution, they're tapping into religious metaphors. The devil, the serpent, the angel, buddha, mother earth, the maiden, each connected in turn to fundamental forces. Flame, water, fate, time, earth, the self. Things deep-seated and fundamental to their creator's belief system, because that's how the passengers interpret our world. Through us. But deep down? Beyond that surface, beyond the basic programming that drives them to do what they've been doing for thirty years? It's the passenger's brush strokes. And I'm getting to her."
"No you're not," Defiant said. "Because you're stopping now."
"You're stopping now because it worked."
One by one, the monitors throughout the Dragonfly shifted, until the one at the very front was the only one that still showed the Simurgh.
The Dragonfly changed course as we looked at the scene that was showing on every other monitor.
The Azazel, airborne. D.T. officers within were standing by the windows, while one with a camera was holding it above their heads, aiming it towards the window, pointed at the water.
A dark mass was beneath.
Leviathan, matching pace with the ship.
The Dragonfly and Pendragon broke from their orbit around the Simurgh.
The Simurgh followed.
The Yàngbǎn tore through the settlement, barely visible, as fast as arrows loosed from a bow.
One set of powers to give them speed, another to give them the ability to create crude images, illusions, blurry and indistinct.
A weak power, but far less so when coupled with the fact that they were making themselves just as blurry and indistinct. To top it off, they were making themselves invisible for fractions of a second, and they were lashing out with short blades of cutting energy when they reappeared, slicing through the Australian refugees.
Bombs went off, coordinated, ripping through the spaces the Yàngbǎn had already passed through, cleaning up the ones who'd survived, killing the rescue personnel who were trying to save lives.
Earth Tav, barely two million people spread out across the globe, with this being the largest population center, based around the portal that Faultline, Labyrinth and Scrub had erected.
Without this base for supplies and communication, the other settlements would falter. Disease would be crippling, food would be scarce at best.
And the Yàngbǎn would no doubt reap the rewards, claiming the planet for the C.U.I.
The Pendragon led the way through the portal, and it suffered the brunt of the bombs that the Yàngbǎn had left in their wake, no doubt to stop any reinforcements.
The Pendragon sank, no longer fully airborne, and the Dragonfly's cameras could see as Golem, Vista and Cuff did what they could to patch it together.
Not enough. It landed, hard.
Another bomb went off as the Pendragon hit ground. Had the Yàngbǎn plotted that? A second line of defense?
"Everyone okay?" I asked.
"Give us a minute. Nobody dead."
At least the Pendragon was a combat ship, meant to take a beating. If the Dragonfly had been the first one through, we would have been obliterated. At best, we'd have managed to evacuate with parachutes, flight packs and shadow-form powers.
We passed through the area the Pendragon had cleared. One small ship against what had to be thirty Yàngbǎn members. They didn't move, but flickered, existing as scarce smudges and streaks of black and an odd midnight blue from the regions of their heads. They cast out more smudges in matching colors with their image generation powers, turned invisible for one or two seconds at a time when they saw opportunities to catch refugees off guard. Some merely killed. Others slashed at eyes or ears, removed hands. Butchered.
What would the C.U.I. want with scores of butchered people?
It wasn't really the fault of the individual Yàngbǎn members. They were brainwashed, subsumed into this collective of shared powers, their identities erased.
But that didn't make their actions forgivable.
The Simurgh followed behind the Dragonfly, moving each wing until it was pointed straight behind her as she sailed through the narrow, oddly-shaped portal.
When she unfolded her wings, extending each until a veritable halo of them surrounded her, a complete circle, I could feel my heart skip a beat.
"We need to give her orders," Tattletale said.
I nodded, mustering my swarm into a group large enough to communicate.
But there was no need. She flew past us.
The singing had died down, but it welled up at full strength. I almost staggered.
Rubble began to peel away from the demolished settlement beneath us. Metal, bombs, pieces of structures.
As she reached less damaged areas, she picked up construction vehicles.
The fragments of metal around her were like a dense cloud, almost obscuring her, massive wings and all.
The singing increased in pitch.
A bomb detonated in the midst of the storm of debris, breaking up a bulldozer in the process.
Below her, the scene had gone still. Yàngbǎn raider and civilian alike had gone still. The smudges consolidated into forms.
Not the same Yàngbǎn I'd encountered before. These ones wore similar outfits, but there were bodysuits beneath, no bare skin. The multifaceted gem designs that covered their faces were dark blue, their costumes black.
Infiltrators. A sub-set. One of five sub-groups, apparently.
The debris settled into a single shape, drawing together. Nothing welded, nothing screwed in together. Merely a crude device, held together by telekinesis.
A fat, snub-nosed cannon, twice as long as she was tall. She fired it, and the resulting bullet was nearly ten feet across, a sphere of hot metal.
It crashed into a trio of Yàngbǎn.
She used her telekinesis to sweep it off to the right. The misshapen bullet was compressed into a rough sphere in the time it took to soar down a long road, smashing through two members of the Yàngbǎn. A bystander was clipped, spinning violently before collapsing in a heap. Shattered arm and ribs, if not dead.
I bit my lip.
"Don't injure civilians," I communicated through the swarm.
She gave no sign she'd listened. Her telekinesis grabbed four members of the Yàngbǎn who'd gotten too close, lifting them by their costumes or by some other debris that had surrounded them.
As if launched by catapults, they flew straight up, where they disappeared into the clouds above.
I winced as the screaming increased in intensity by another notch.
Did she have to do that?
I felt a touch of paranoia, not just at the idea, but at the fact that I'd been concerned. Paranoia over the fact I was feeling paranoid.
The Simurgh had crafted another gun. They floated around her like satellites, firing only in those intermittent moments when she'd formed and loaded the necessary ammunition.
"Those are my guns," Kid Win reported over the comms. "Bigger, but mine."
I didn't like that she was screaming. It set an ugly tone to this whole venture.
I really didn't like that we couldn't direct her that well. We were ending this confrontation decisively, we were probably even doing it more cleanly and with less damage to civilians than there would be if we'd handled it ourselves.
But we'd brought the Simurgh here and people were getting hurt as collateral damage. That was on us, everything else aside.
"I… don't know what to feel right now," Imp said.
"It doesn't feel good," I said.
"I wish I knew what I'd said that got her on board," Tattletale said. "I went with the shotgun approach, trying to see what stuck… and now I don't know what to leverage if we need to do it again."
"You're so whiny," Rachel said. "You say we need her help, we got it. Good. Maybe now we can fight."
"Mm," Lung grunted. "This is true. But I've seen what happens if you do something like this, something big, and you fall. You fall hard."
I nodded at that. "Wise words, Lung. Well said."
"Do not talk to me," he rumbled.
I only shook my head.
"Fuck me, you guys are serious?" Shadow Stalker murmured. "This is good? This is luck. There's a reason I stick to my fists and my crossbow. They're reliable. This Endbringer thing most definitely isn't."
"Of course it isn't," I said. "But you know that whole saying, finding a boyfriend? Young, smart, wealthy, pick two? We don't get to pick two, here. Options at the end of the world: clean, safe, effective, pick one."
"We got Bohu, but she doesn't move fast at all," Tattletale said. "Leviathan's on his way to pay the Elite a visit. Collateral damage could be ugly there."
"It isn't sustainable," I said. "Somehow, I don't think they're going to sit still if we ask them to. What happens if we run out of enemies to attack? If we need to put Leviathan to work and there aren't any targets that don't involve even more collateral damage than we'll see when he attacks the Elite?"
"People are going to fall in line damn fast," Tattletale said.
"Probably," I said. "Or they'll run for the hills."
"Win-win," Tattletale said. "We were saying we needed people to split up more."
The Simurgh opened fire, striking out with three guns, striking a neighborhood that had already been reduced to dust and flame by a series of bomb blasts.
"Somehow," Imp commented, "This doesn't scream win-win to me."
"Nothing saying this isn't another clever plan, set up to fuck with us, destroy our last shreds of hope," I said.
The Yàngbǎn were opening fire. Projectiles that moved slowly, splitting in the air until there was a virtual storm of them. Had they been aimed at the Dragonfly, we wouldn't have been able to dodge. The Simurgh flew between the bullets like they weren't even a concern. Debris blocked the shots.
In the midst of her maneuvering, she drew together a third gun from the storm of debris.
Then she somersaulted, heels over head as she rapidly shifted direction.
In the moment it took her to build acceleration, she looked directly at the camera.
Directly at me.
She'd heard me, she understood, and she had responded.
Posted in 28.04	| Tagged Bastard, Bitch, Canary, Cuff, Defiant, Foil, Golem, Imp, Kid Win, Lung, Miss Militia, Narwhal, Parian, Saint, Shadow Stalker, Simurgh, Tattletale, Taylor, Vista	| 297 Replies
"You have something in mind?" Defiant asked.
"No," I said. "But we're dealing with problems on a massive scale. We need to look for solutions on that same scale."
"Um," Imp said. "You just leaped from the subject of talking about the Endbringers to talking about solutions."
"Yeah," I said. "I think we definitely need to think about solutions, Endbringer-wise."
"Oh, well, of course," Imp said. "This is doable. Something we've managed once in the last thirty years, taking down Endbringers."
"Shh," Tattletale said. She turned to me. "There's more to this."
"Dinah told me the defending forces would be divided into five groups. Armies, individuals, some of the biggest capes, and unknowns."
"She said that to others. It's on record in the PRT," Defiant told me.
"Five groups in different places, and Dinah couldn't see why they were there, she couldn't see the particulars. She said there could be too many precogs there, but what if that's not it? What if she's blind about the particulars because the Endbringers are there?"
"A coordinated attack?" Narwhal asked.
I nodded. "It's possible. Either it's Leviathan, Simurgh, Tohu, Bohu and Khonsu, or Scion's there and Tohu and Bohu are together, as usual."
"I can't imagine the defending forces would hold the line for very long, if at all," Defiant said. "Not if we're spread that thin."
"A situation this dire brings out all of the people who might not otherwise fight," I said. "Parian wasn't a fighter, but when Leviathan hit Brockton Bay, she stepped up to the plate. As things get worse, we might see some people doing the same."
"If it's five Endbringers and Scion we're up against, we might see people giving up altogether," Narwhal pointed out.
I nodded. "Tattletale already said something like that. Yes. A lot hinges on whatever comes next, whether we can get people on board. Whether others are doing the same."
"Alright," Defiant said. "You have something in mind for the Endbringers?"
"A pre-emptive attack," Narwhal said, her voice quiet. "If it provokes them to lash out, well, at least it's not a coordinated attack, and at least it's at a point in time when Scion's busy elsewhere. The Simurgh is standing still. We could hit her with something like what we used in New Delhi or Los Angeles."
"We could," Defiant agreed.
"Let's think on it?" I suggested. "We can't do this without laying out the groundwork, and that means convincing people this isn't hopeless, it means gathering information, getting resources together."
"Then do your thinking as you get ready," Defiant said. "Gear up. Gather anyone you think you need."
"I'm set," Tattletale said. Imp and Rachel nodded.
"I'll need my spare costume pieces from the Dragonfly," I said. "I parked it in Gimel before I left for the rig. Hoping my flight pack has enough of a charge."
"Go," Defiant said. "I'll see to Saint."
"And me?" Canary asked.
"We can get you a standard Protectorate costume. Spider silk," Narwhal said. "Durable, flexible. No frills, nothing fancy, but it'll be better than nothing."
Canary frowned.
"What?" Narwhal asked.
"Just… skintight suits."
"Got a bit of pudge there?" Imp asked. "Fat thighs? Cankles?"
"I don't have cankles," Canary said. "Or fat thighs. But it's not…"
She trailed off.
Imp plucked the fabric of her own costume. "I've been there. You think looking this good is easy? Skintight is a bitch to pull off. Diets, exercise, keeping up with the patrols and the life or death fights. Surprised you didn't get that while you were in the slammer."
"Not a lot of choice in food, or freedom of movement when you can get cut in half for setting one toe in the wrong spot," Canary said. She was frowning, now.
"You can wear your clothes over it," Narwhal suggested. "We can get you some tools. Nonlethal weapons. So you're able to defend yourself."
They'd work it out. I shook my head a little. Had to focus on my own thing.
"Doorway, please," I murmured. "Gimel. By the Dragonfly, New Brockton Bay."
The portal began to slide open.
"I'll do you one better, Canary," Saint said. "I'll give you one of the spare Dragonslayer suits."
"It's… a good offer, but I think I'd feel like I was betraying Dragon if I took it."
"You wouldn't be able to pay her what you supposedly owe her if you died, either," Saint said. "This is freely offered. No strings attached. I'll give you the ability to fly, Canary. Better nonlethal weapons than the ones they have Masamune manufacturing."
"I don't know," she said.
I hesitated in the doorway to listen. Tattletale, Rachel and Imp walked past me on their way through.
"Do it," Defiant said, not looking at Canary or Saint. His eyes were on the laptop. "Saint? I'll be looking over everything for tricks and backdoors."
"Noted," Saint said.
Defiant opened the door to Saint's cell.
Saint stood, then rolled his head around, as if getting kinks out of his neck. He looked so small next to Defiant, but he wasn't a small guy. His face was marked by lines of stress, but his gaze was hard.
"You don't leave my sight," Defiant said. "Any access you have to a system is routed through me. I double-check it."
Saint nodded.
I passed through the portal, entering the field where I'd set down the Dragonfly. Some kids were climbing around the outside of the ship, but they ran the second they saw us, shouting.
The wind blew, making waves in the tall grass. I turned to face it so my hair wouldn't blow into my face. I was left looking out over the water, while I moved bugs into the necessary channels and manipulated the switches, bidding the ramp to open.
"It doesn't get said enough, but this is pretty damn cool," Tattletale said. "Outclassed convenience-wise by the portals we've got access to, but yeah, nice."
"Yeah," I said. My mind was almost someplace else, considering everything that was in play, the threats, the necessities.
I paused, glancing out at New Brockton Bay. Brockton Bay Gimel. Tents and shelters were spread out everywhere, with ramshackle shelters dotting the landscape with little sense or organization. Here and there, there were paths forming, where the passage of hundreds of people were tramping down grass and disturbing the earth. Crews of people working in groups to erect basic shelters, bringing down trees and reducing them to basic components that they could form into shelters.
I felt a stirring, a mix of emotions, at seeing that.
Looking at them, I could almost sense that they were blissfully unaware. They didn't know how badly we'd lost in our initial foray, or their attitudes would be different. There wasn't anything like television or radio to spread the word. There would only be word of mouth.
Had someone told them, only for the masses to dismiss it as hearsay? Dismissing it because they didn't want to believe we were well and truly fucked? Or had the word simply failed to spread, with enough people keeping quiet, believing that it wouldn't do any good for people to know?
They were lucky, to be able to face the end of the world without full knowledge of what we were up against. Without the knowledge of what Scion was, or the looming, patient presence of the two Endbringers on Earth Bet.
It was arrogant, even condescending, but I felt a kind of warmth in the center of my chest when I looked at the people down there, like a parent might feel for a child, accompanying a sort of pity.
And somehow, when I pictured the people going to work, sweating, dirty, hungry and scared, getting eaten alive by flies, selflessly carrying out barn raisings to give shelter to the old, the infirm and the very young, I couldn't help but picture my dad in their midst. It was the sort of thing he'd do.
Nobody had explicitly said he'd died, and I'd gone out of my way not to ask. Still, I felt how wet my eyes were when I blinked. No tears, but my eyes were wet.
I could envision Charlotte down there. Sierra. Forrest. The kids, Ephraim, Mason, Aiden, Kathy and Mai, I imagined, would be bringing water to the people hard at work.
Except Sierra had other duties, and the orphan children from my territory were older. The kids would be doing basic jobs by now, overseeing new batches of kids with the errands, sweeping, and other stuff in that vein. Still, it was a mental picture that defied logic, like seeing my dad down there. I pictured them with the water bottles.
I shook my head a little to rid myself of the mental image, and in the doing, I stirred myself from the daydreaming entirely. I was still standing at the foot of the ramp.
"Lost in thought?" Tattletale asked.
"Sorry," I said. I turned to make my way up the ramp, Tattletale keeping pace beside me. Rachel had already settled in, lying on a bench, Bastard lying on the ground just below her. Imp had settled outside in the grass, her head turned towards what would have been the south end of the city, if the city existed in this world.
"No need to apologize. Constructive thought? Strategy?"
"No. Not constructive at all," I said. "Thinking about the people."
"The people?" Tattletale asked. "We keep telling them to split up, that we'll give them portals to different spots around Gimel, or to other Earths. The ones down there are the ones that refuse to go. Sitting there, clustered into a massive target for Scion, the Endbringers, or the Yàngbǎn to take out."
"Yeah," I agreed. "Everything I've said in the past stands. Humans are idiots. They're selfish and injust and unfair, they're violent and clumsy and petty and shortsighted. Don't get me wrong. Every part of that applies to me, too. I'm not setting myself above them on any level."
"Mm," Tattletale responded.
I began gathering the components for my suit. I'd wear the same thing I did to the fight against Scion. Just needed the individual parts.
"But at the end of the day, sometimes humanity isn't so bad."
"Sometimes," she said. "Took me a while to realize that. The more you find out, the uglier things tend to look. But you keep looking, and it's not all bad at the end."
I nodded, reaching into my pocket to get the little tube of pepper spray I'd claimed from my ruined costume. I moved it into the belt of the new costume, then began stripping out of the casual clothes I wore.
I paused when I had my shirt off and my hair more or less in order, holding the bundle against my chest.
"I want to save them," I said, surprising myself with the emotion in my voice.
"Scary thing is," Tattletale said, "I know what you mean. Most times, I'm just not that fond of people. Seen enough ugliness in them that I don't… care? No. That's wrong. I care, I cared, past tense. But I didn't… mind, if something happened to them. That's closer to the mark."
I nodded. I wasn't surprised at that.
"But we're getting to this point where I want to do something for them like I wanted to do something for you. Probably a bad omen."
"No," I said, quiet, as I strapped on armor. I looked at her. "Do you regret reaching out to me?"
"No," she said. "But that doesn't mean it was all right, know what I mean?"
Tattletale gave me a pat on the back before making her way to the bench opposite Rachel, grabbing a laptop and lying down with her head and shoulders resting against a bulkhead.
Belt on. I hesitated before donning my mask, but I pulled it on anyways, then clasped it behind the neck, unrolling the bit from the body-portion to bury the clasp.
Then I pulled on the spare flight pack.
Depending on how things went, I might not get the chance to charge it again, to refuel the Dragonfly or anything in that vein.
If Scion or the Endbringers didn't kill us in the coming handful of days, we'd eventually run out of fuel. Communications would falter, and we'd run through stores of food, medicine and other amenities. There was no way to establish new supplies as fast as we needed them.
We'd only been able to evacuate with limited supplies. Then there were the supplies we'd brought over in advance. Gimel was one of the more fortunate Earths for that.
I checked my armor, then tightened the straps. Maybe a bit tighter than necessary, but I wasn't going to stress over it.
I opened and closed my hand. It felt weird, still, but not so much that it would be debilitating.
"Doorway," I said. "To Panacea."
The doorway unfolded, and noise poured forth from the other side. I got Imp's attention with a swirl of butterflies, then drew the other bugs in the area to me. Once Imp was inside the Dragonfly, I bid the ramp to close.
The rear door of the Dragonfly was still slowly shutting as we passed through the doorway and into the center of what looked like a makeshift hospital.
The walls seemed to be rough granite in varying colors, surprisingly thick and old. Bricks and blocks three feet across, some with cracks here and there. There were even tendrils of grass or occasional flowers growing in some of the deeper crevices. The 'windows' were openings five feet by ten feet wide, with glass set into frames that had clearly been added as a late addition.
The area was flooded with people, talking, shouting, whimpering, crying.
People had been burned, cut, bruised, their limbs crushed, faces shattered. There were wounds I couldn't imagine were anything but parahuman made. They were laid out on beds and sat on stone chairs, crammed so close together they were practically shoulder to shoulder.
Panacea appeared. She was rubbing wet hands as though she'd just washed them. Long sleeves were rolled up, her hair tied back. Unlike what Canary had suggested, she was leaner as a result of her stay in the Birdcage. She was followed by a man with hair that had been combed into a sharp part, a needle-thin mustache and heavy bags under his eyes. Something in his bearing… he was a cape.
She walked by a row of people, and they extended hands. Her fingers touched each of theirs for only a moment, while she didn't give them even a glance.
"Dad," she said, stopping.
A man at the side of the room stood straighter. Marquis. His hair was long enough to drape over his shoulders, his face clean-shaven by contrast. He had a fancy-looking jacket folded over one arm, and a white dress shirt that had fine lines of black lace at the collar and the sleeves he'd rolled up his arms. Two ostentatious rings dangled from a fine chain around his neck; the chain had a locket on it, suggesting he'd added the rings as an afterthought. To keep them out of the way while he worked, perhaps.
"What is it, Amelia?"
For another man, the combination of physical traits and the style of dress might have led to someone mistaking them for a woman. They might have come across as effeminate.
Marquis didn't. Not really. When he'd spoken, his voice had been masculine, deep, confident. The cut of his shoulders and chin, his narrow hips, was enough that I couldn't expect anyone to mistake him for a woman. I wasn't the type to go for older guys, I wasn't even the type to go for effeminate guys. But I could see where women would go for Marquis.
"Broken bones here. Shattered femur. Some bone is exposed. Are you occupied?"
"Nothing critical," Marquis said. "It won't be comfortable, fixing that."
Panacea touched the patient's hand again. "He'll be pain-free for twenty minutes."
"That's enough time. Thank you, my dear."
Marquis crossed paths with Panacea on his way to the patient. He laid a hand on her shoulder in passing.
I watched her reach one hand up to her upper arm, touching a tattoo. She took in a deep breath, exhaled, and then moved on.
She got two paces before she finally noticed us, stopping in her tracks.
"Yo," Tattletale said.
"Is there a problem?" the tidy man beside Panacea asked.
"Old acquaintances," Panacea said, her stare hard.
"One enemy," she said, her voice soft. "I wasn't exactly looking forward to seeing you again, Tattletale."
"Sorry," Tattletale said.
"I can deal with this, if it's what you require," the tidy man said.
"No, Spruce. You probably couldn't. Don't worry about it. Think you could double-check on things in the back? The equipment?"
"I will," the tidy man said. He turned and strode from the lobby of the makeshift hospital.
Panacea closed the distance.
"You do the talking," Tattletale whispered. I nodded a fraction by way of response.
"So?" Panacea asked. Her eyes roved over us, taking in details.
"I wanted to thank you for the fix," I said. I raised a hand.
"You tried to help me at a bad time. It didn't take, but you tried," she said.
"A lot of people invested in your survival. Caught me off guard. Used to be I was the golden child, but I wasn't lucky enough to have anyone there to catch me when I fell."
"Looks like Marquis caught you," Tattletale said.
Panacea glanced at her dad, who was looking at us with one eyebrow slightly raised.
"Maybe," she said. "I thought you were a hero now. You're running with the old gang?"
"Gang is such an outmoded word," Imp said. "So small. There's gotta be a better way to put it. Ruling the roost with the old warlords again, back atop Mount Olympus once more."
"Shh," Tattletale hushed her. Then, after a pause, she whispered "Olympus? Where are you getting this?"
"Not a hero, not a villain. Just trying to get by," I said. "Sticking with the people I know best. People I trust."
"I see. We're trying to get by, too. Twelve doctors, twenty nurses, me, my father and what remains of my father's old gang. They were sending the worst of the wounded our way while we tried to get set up to accommodate larger numbers. Then the Yàngbǎn hit a settlement. We've been flooded ever since."
"I see," I said.
She shifted her weight. She had a different presence, now. Something she'd no doubt picked up in prison. Not posturing. Simply more comfortable in her shoes. She asked, "Did you need something? There's a reason you came."
"I was going to say we're mobilizing. Dealing with some threats. Trying to get as many big guns on board as we can, starting with the ones who weren't on the platform. I was thinking we could use you."
"I see," she said. "I'm not particularly interested in being used."
"That's not what I meant."
"I know, but it's still meaningful that the word came up, isn't it?"
"No," I said. "No it isn't."
She glanced back towards her dad. Two more people who might have been capes had approached him, while he sat next to the man he was healing.
"I can't stop Scion," Panacea said. "I probably couldn't even touch him, if I wanted to get that close, and if I did, I don't think I'd accomplish a thing."
"Maybe not," I said.
"Do you think you're going to stop him with giant dogs? With bugs? People tried and they failed. This is what's left. Finding places where humans used to live and moving in, if we're lucky. Starting over from scratch if we aren't. Ensuring that the population is spread out enough, but not so spread out they won't be able to repopulate. Dividing all of humanity into groups of six hundred to a thousand people, dropping them off in the middle of nowhere."
"It won't work," Tattletale said. "Scion moves too fast, and there's not that many places to hide, in the grand scheme of things."
"Every time you open your mouth," Panacea said. She sounded as if she was going to say something else, but she didn't.
"You're one of the strongest capes out there," I said. "We need you on our side."
"You'll have me," Panacea said. "But not on the front lines."
A deep rumble sounded. An animal noise, almost.
I turned to look, and I saw Spruce, the tidy man, standing beside Lung and Bonesaw. The noise had been Lung, an odd sound to come from him when he was still, to all appearances, in his human state. A tall Asian man, muscular, riddled with tattoos. New ones had been added since the first day I'd seen him. More eastern-style dragons. His hair was longer, and there was scruff on his cheeks and chin.
Bonesaw wasn't dressed up like a little girl. Her hair wasn't in ringlets. She wore gray sweats.
Rachel growled a little, under her breath, an eerie parallel to Lung.
Lung stepped forward, and he pushed Bonesaw, who stumbled a little.
"It's not nice to push," she said.
"Don't be cutesy," he growled. "We've warned you before."
"Okay, fine then. Stop fucking pushing me. Tell me where you want me, and I'll walk there."
He pointed towards us.
They closed the distance until Bonesaw was next to Panacea. Lung placed a hand on top of her head and gripped her, arresting her forward momentum.
She lashed out, twisting around and slapping at his wrist with one hand.
"Don't do that," she said.
"Someone's short-tempered," Imp observed. She hadn't yet donned her mask, though she had it with her. Her eyes were narrowed.
"I've had no sleep," Bonesaw said. "Big sis here took out all the good bits I'd stored inside myself, and she didn't turn off the pain. I feel too light. I feel weird. Can't sit still, not that they ever let me."
"First tier parahuman problems," Imp said. Her tone wasn't as humorous in nature as the words.
"And they keep getting on my case," Bonesaw said, apparently oblivious. She directed her attention to Panacea and Lung. "Trust me, I haven't butchered you all yet, I'm not going to in the future. You can stop testing me."
"I remember when you were cuddly," Tattletale said. "You were so happy and fluffy and you had a good attitude. You were a complete and total monster, and nobody in their right mind would cuddle you, but you were adorable. Now look at you."
Bonesaw scowled, but I wasn't paying attention to that. Tattletale had used the past tense. You were a complete monster. Referring to the past, or an observation on a deeper level?
"She is why I can't leave," Panacea said. "I'm the only one that can double-check her work. If we're both here, you've got two stellar healers on the back lines. If I leave, you've got a healer with minimal combat experience on the front line and a defused bomb with nobody that's capable of knowing if it's reactivated."
I couldn't really argue that.
Well, I could, but not very well.
"There's another way to deal with that sort of situation," Imp said. "Get rid of the fucking bomb."
"We will," Panacea said. "If she gives us an excuse. Any excuse at all. But she gets one chance."
"When you're talking about a bomb, that's all it needs," Imp said. "Then you wind up carved up, your insides decorating the walls of a room."
"Your metaphors…" Tattletale mumbled. "Well, that almost worked."
Bonesaw raised an eyebrow. "You sound upset, but I don't remember doing that to you."
"My brother," Imp growled the word.
"Oh," Bonesaw said. She glanced to her left, then down to the floor, a frown crossing her face. "Right. I'm remembering now. Shit. That was one of the bad ones. Not one of the bad bad ones, but bad."
"Kind of, yeah," Imp said, not easing up in the slightest.
"I'm sorry," Bonesaw said, still looking at the floor. "I won't say I'll make amends, because there's no way I can even come close. I don't know what to say, except that I'm sorry. No excuses. But I'm going to do what I can to make things better, and maybe I get a hundredth of the way, in the end."
"He had a second trigger event," Tattletale said. "And killed Burnscar. In case that helps you place him."
"I said I remember," Bonesaw said, sounding irritated. She glared at Tattletale.
"Sure," Tattletale replied, quiet enough she could barely be heard.
I stared at Bonesaw, watching her expression shift in fractions. Her eyes moved, as if she were watching a scene, or recalling a memory in great detail.
"You're fighting?" Lung asked, interrupting my thoughts.
"We're fighting," I said, shifting my attention to him.
"Everyone who gets in our way," Rachel interjected.
"What she said," I added.
Lung stared at me, and I held his gaze. For someone as brutal and vicious as he was in the heat of battle, Lung had cold eyes.
He'd be thinking about his losses to me. I'd used venomous bugs to rot away his junkular area, and I'd dosed him with hallucinogenic blood before gouging out his eyes.
It was odd, but those slights probably mattered less than the real offense I'd dealt him.
I'd taken over the city. He'd tried and failed, I'd succeeded.
Given my understanding of Lung, I suspected that was something far more unforgivable.
"Fighting Scion, Endbringers, the Yàngbǎn…" Tattletale said. She placed an emphasis on the last.
Odd. I would have reversed it. Emphasized the biggest threats.
"Yes," Lung said. "No need to manipulate me, Tattletale. If you want me to join the fight, you only have to ask."
Tattletale had a funny look on her face, fleeting. She turned my way, one eyebrow raised, questioning.
"Good," Lung said. "Let me collect my mask. I will be back."
He left.
"Doorway," Tattletale said. "Um…?"
"To Shadow Stalker," I said.
The portal began to open. It was nighttime on the other side.
Tattletale gave me a funny look.
"I brought up the Yàngbǎn because I figured he'd be ticked they attacked this spot. I'm getting credit for brilliant insights I didn't have. Not even in a fun way. That's going to bug me."
I shrugged. "Take what we can get?"
While we'd exchanged words, Panacea had sent Bonesaw off with Spruce.
"Thank you again, Panacea," I said. "For putting me back together."
She opened her mouth to speak, then seemed to reconsider. She pointed at the portal. I nodded, and followed her as we strode through. Tattletale and Imp remained in the hospital lobby, and the portal remained open. Rachel followed us through, but seemed to sense that we wanted a private discussion and wandered off a short distance.
Panacea and I walked out onto a shelf of rubble that had once been the midpoint of a bridge.
"I'm not a fighter," she said. "I hope you understand."
"I do," I said. "But I'm kind of hoping that, in the end, we aren't left with only the people who 'aren't fighters' on the battlefield, who've realized they have no choice but to change their minds. It'd be pretty tragic if we got that far and someone like you clued into the fact that you could have helped. It would be somehow fitting, too, if that's how humanity went extinct."
"It would be just as tragic if we rushed headlong into a fight, and threw away a life in the process, only to realize in retrospect it was someone vital," she said.
"Good luck. Don't turn your back on Lung."
"I won't. I'm pretty good when it comes to keeping an eye on people," I said. I called bugs to my hand, as if to illustrate.
"Then I really hope you succeed in the fights that come. We're kind of counting on you."
"Likewise," I said. "I mean, I hope you achieve whatever you're striving to do here."
She glanced back towards the portal, which glowed from the ambient light of the room on the other side. "Second chances."
"Together, we're giving second chances to monsters who don't deserve them."
"Yourself included?" I asked.
"I'm not sure I get it," I told her. I could see Shadow Stalker land to perch on an outcropping of steel reinforcement, a distance away, watching us. "I mean, I do get the second chances thing, not deserving it. But…"
I trailed off. I couldn't articulate it well enough.
"When you're in that position, sometimes the only people willing to extend those second chances to you are the people who need them."
"I understand," I said. "You know, if you'd joined the Undersiders back then, we could have given you that."
"You could have. I'm not sure I could have taken it."
"Right," I answered. "Yeah."
"Not all of us are like that, though," she said. "Lung isn't, as far as I can tell, but maybe you'll see it if you look for it. Or maybe you'll get burned to a crisp by Lung the second an enemy distracts you and you forget to watch him."
"He's not someone who builds or rebuilds. He's someone who destroys."
Something in that phrase struck a chord in me. I knew the right answer, right away.
"We just need to point him in the right direction, then," I said.
"Best of luck with that," Panacea said.
She'd had her hands clasped, and as she extended a hand to shake, I could feel the bugs come to life, fluttering free of the space between her palms.
Relay bugs. Twenty.
I checked, investigating their internal makeup. They could breed.
Even with that gift, even with the fact that she'd never done anything to me, I couldn't help but think of the incoherent mess of details I'd seen in the records. The pictures that catalogued the event that had preceded her voluntary admission to the Birdcage. I saw her outstretched hand and hesitated for a fraction of a second. From the expression on her face, I knew she had noticed.
Second chances.
I shook her hand, drawing the relay bugs to me and stashing them in my belt. "Thank you."
She nodded, then exited the portal as the others made their way through to my side. Lung and the Undersiders. I had my back turned to them as I looked at Shadow Stalker. She remained perched on that twist of bent girders and bars from the collapsed bridge, her cloak flapping around her.
"I remember this one," Lung rumbled. "She shot me with arrows. It did not hurt that much. She is a weakling. Why are we wasting our time with her?"
And so the struggles for dominance in the group begin.
"I'll take weak," I said. "I'm just… working with known quantities."
The flapping of the cloak quieted as she shifted into a shadow state. The wind was passing through it, instead of pushing against it.
Shadow Stalker leaped down, floated.
Soundlessly, she landed right in front of me, remaining in the shadow state.
"Hoping you've changed your mind," I said. Hoping you've seen the devastation, and that it's reached some human part of you that cares. "That you're interested in fighting."
She didn't budge, didn't respond.
"It also means bashing some skulls," I said. "She been behaving, Tattletale?"
"Then she's probably itching for a good fight," I said, not breaking eye contact with Shadow Stalker. "What do you say? You want to knock a few heads? Break some jaws?"
She shifted to her physical state. "I'm not that easy to bait."
I shrugged, waiting.
"Search and rescue is garbage," she said, sounding annoyed. "Nobody left, but there's no place to go if I don't want to do it, either."
"You could go home," I said. "Find your family, settle down, put the crossbow away for good."
"Capes don't retire," Shadow Stalker said. "Doesn't work. We die in battle or we lose our minds, one or the other."
I thought of my passenger, how it had reflexively sought out violence in the past. How others had done the same. Die in battle.
Then I thought of Grue. Was Shadow Stalker right? Would the retirement just fail to take?
I sighed. "So? What's your call?"
"I'll come. Sure. I kind of want to see what you've made of yourself."
She had wanted to claim the credit for my becoming what I'd become. It grated, because it wasn't entirely wrong. It wasn't true in the sense she believed it was true, but she had given me my powers.
"Fine," I said.
She cracked her knuckles. "So, who's first?"
"Need to talk that over with Defiant," I said. "We can do it over the comms, for the sake of expediency."
"Okay," she said. She sounded a little pleased with herself. "Whatever. I'm game."
"Doorway, please," I said, to nobody in particular. "Dragonfly interior."
The portal opened.
I extended a hand, inviting the group to enter.
Lung shouldered his way past Rachel to be the first one inside. Bastard huffed out a half-bark, then growled.
Much like Panacea had said about Bonesaw, it wasn't about having them as allies. Having them be part of the group, it meant they weren't on the opposing side. They weren't wreaking havoc as neutral parties.
That alone was good.
But if they turned out to be destructive forces we could control…
The half-thought I'd had during my goodbye to Panacea fell into place.
A plan.
I stepped through the portal to board the Dragonfly.
"You lunatic!" Shadow growled the word.
I was silent. The clouds above and landscape below were a blur, the individual details impossible to make out with our speed.
"Doing this with me? With Lung? I could almost understand that," Shadow Stalker growled. "But your friends?"
"Don't care," Tattletale said. "We've always been the sort to go for the long odds. You have to do what your enemy won't predict."
"Damn straight," Imp said. "Credo I live by."
"Mount Olympus, now credo?" Tattletale asked. "It's the Heartbroken, isn't it? They're warping you into… this."
"Leave me alone, seriously."
"What you're saying doesn't make sense!" Shadow Stalker snarled. "Not here, not like this!"
"It actually makes the most sense," Tattletale said. "But that's a different story altogether. One that needs some explanation."
"Ten minutes before we hit our target," I said. We'd taken the path through the Brockton Bay portal. Cauldron's doorways weren't big enough for a vehicle like this.
"Ten minutes should be enough," Tattletale said. "Let me get this loaded on the laptop. Easier to show than tell."
"Right," I said. My eyes didn't leave the navigation screens.
"I'll kill you," Shadow Stalker threatened. "Turn this fucking ship around."
She moved, reaching for a crossbow bolt. I reacted, half-rising from my seat, drawing my swarm out-
But Lung moved faster, shoving Shadow Stalker against the side of the ship.
Shadow Stalker went ghostly, brandishing the bolt like a dagger as she passed through Lung.
Rachel gripped a length of wire that extended from the laptop, holding it out like a garrotte. As Lung had done, she moved to pin Shadow Stalker against the wall of the Dragonfly. Shadow Stalker returned to a normal state just in time to avoid being electrocuted.
Bastard growled, snapping at her hand, and the bolt clattered to the floor.
"You're okay with this?" she asked.
"Yes," Lung rumbled, by way of response. "This might be best."
"Fuck you, Hebert! Pulling this shit only after you got me on board? You're all lunatics!"
Tattletale sat down on the arm of my pilot's seat, setting one foot down beside my thigh on the seat's edge. "There's stuff you need to know. I told you before, you said you wanted to be blissfully ignorant until the last minute."
"Yeah," I said. "Yes. Right. I'm listening."
"It's video footage Glaistig Uaine left with me. Last two minutes of Eidolon's life. Video cuts in and out, but there's audio. That leaves me maybe a minute or two to explain, then you can use the rest of the time to think it over."
She had my attention, though I couldn't take my eyes off the monitors at the front of the ship. Shadow Stalker's cries of anger were background noise.
The Pendragon was flying alongside us, just a little behind, carrying the capes Defiant had recruited. Carrying Saint, Canary, and others.
Tattletale loaded up the video, filling the screen of the laptop.
I glanced once at the main monitor, then set the autopilot.
Faultline had talked about taking the simple route. Talking to Scion. In practice, harder than it seemed.
We were dealing with problems on a massive scale, we needed solutions on that same level. There was no easy way to get to that level. It meant taking risks. Gambling.
We needed a destructive force we could direct. Needed to turn third-party liabilities into assets.
With that in mind, I'd set course straight for the Simurgh. We'd talk to her or we'd kill her.
Tattletale started the video, and I watched.
Posted in 28.03	| Tagged Bastard, Bitch, Bonesaw, Canary, Defiant, Imp, Lung, Marquis, Narwhal, Panacea, Saint, Shadow Stalker, Simurgh, Tattletale, Taylor	| 328 Replies
After seeing Tattletale's setup with the multiple monitors and computers running in sync, the bulletin boards with pictures and cue cards tacked all over them, it was odd to see one of the world's best tinkers sitting down with only a small laptop propped on his knee. Narwhal stood just a short distance away, leaning against a wall, a book in her hands. Her costume was skintight, but it took the form of innumerable 'scales' of violet-blue tinted crystal, each no larger than a fingernail. Her horn had been redesigned, arcing in a crescent curve.
With the dragon-themed armor that covered him from head to toe, it wasn't possible to see Defiant sigh, but I could use my swarm to catch the increased output of air through the vents near his mouth.
Both Narwhal and Defiant were facing the cell at the far end of the room. A man sat within. Muscular, late twenties or early thirties, with his head shaved, a faint tattoo of a cross on his face. He sat on the edge of a cot, and was tall enough he could slouch back and lean against the wall.
Narwhal noticed our approach and closed her book, creating a thin shard of forcefield to act as a bookmark, then two more to hold the cover and back of the book. She pushed it aside, and it floated a distance to her right, stopping in midair, in her reach but not in the way.
"Thank you for coming," Defiant said. He stood, but his attention was on the laptop. Too much information to keep track of with Dragon's share of the work on top of his own, probably.
"No prob," Tattletale said.
"I can point you in the right direction, but I was hoping you'd have words with Saint first," he said. His helmet was turned in Tattletale's direction.
"Awesome," she said. She looked at Saint, who looked away, his eyebrows drawing together in concern as he stared at the wall.
"Protocol," Narwhal said. "Let me apologize in advance. I'll need to verify there's no trouble before I allow you to speak to Saint. We have to maintain some form of order."
"I love order," Imp said. "Rules, regulations, they make the world go 'round, eh?"
Defiant turned to stare at her.
Tattletale glanced at me. "Do you want to split up? I can handle this while you guys are doing something else. Not the Yàngbǎn. They shouldn't attack again tonight, not so soon, not if their goal is demoralizing and destabilizing the West. They'll wait. Maybe the Elite?"
"No," I said.
Splitting up made sense, but I was done with being apart from the others, agonizing over how they were doing. It was distracting, and distractions were something I wasn't willing to deal with.
"No? Just no?"
"No breaking up the group. I want to gather our forces. We succeed as a group, we fail as a group. Everyone sticks together, and we add to our forces whenever we can."
She nodded. "I can roll with that."
"Right then, I know most of you," Narwhal said. "Weaver, of course, we've met enough times. I liked your last book recommendation."
"I'm glad," I said.
"Tattletale," Narwhal greeted her, a little less warmly, "Hellhound-"
"Bitch. My enemies call me Hellhound," Rachel said.
"Ah, I'm very sorry," Narwhal said. She looked genuinely upset at the mistake. "The others, I'm not familiar with."
"Imp and Canary," I said.
Narwhal glanced at Aisha. Of our group, only Tattletale was wearing her full costume. Aisha, Rachel, Canary and I weren't wearing ours. "No masks?"
Imp shrugged. "World's ending. It's a way to get in the right headspace, eh? We were talking to Taylor there a bit ago, and what we're thinking is it's stupid to spend our time keeping little secrets when there's bigger fish to fry? Like it's stupid to dwell on revenge or any of that. So it's symbolic, isn't it? A statement? Eh?"
Narwhal looked at the yellow-haired girl. "You went without the mask for the same reason?"
Canary shook her head. "No."
"Canary is a rogue," Defiant said. "And a onetime inmate of the Birdcage. She never wore a costume."
Narwhal glanced at Defiant. "Do you know them, then?"
He nodded. "Well enough. There's no risk in letting them near Saint. Imp is a stranger-five, Canary is a master eight, but I would be very, very surprised if she had taken control of anyone here for the purposes of misleading us or breaking Saint out."
"Surprised in what sense? The nature of her power? Because of Weaver and the Undersiders? Or because Canary isn't that type?"
"I somehow doubt the Undersiders would allow it, and yes, Canary isn't the type."
"Why couldn't people have given me that benefit of a doubt during my trial?" Canary asked.
"Dragon did. She went through every legitimate channel possible in an attempt to help you," Defiant answered. "The moment the topic of Birdcage inmates first came up, she had you on a list of release candidates. I used that list when we were negotiating the deal."
I glanced at Canary. She was staring at Defiant, her expression concerned.
"So she's the reason I'm free?"
Defiant nodded.
"I owe her, then," Canary said, as if she'd made a decision.
"Yes. Probably."
Saint hadn't taken his eyes off us.
Narwhal shifted position. She had enough presence, between her height, her stunning appearance and her power, that this gesture alone was enough to grab our attention. "If you and Dragon are willing to vouch for Canary, I'm okay with that. Given the name and her unusual voice, I assume her master power is leveraged through her voice?"
"Yes," Defiant said.
"I'd ask we at least acknowledge the possibility she was influenced or compromised in the Birdcage. Would you be alright with staying silent for the time being, Canary?"
Canary frowned, then nodded.
"Imp, please keep your distance from the cell."
"Sure thing, eh."
Tattletale reached over to slap Imp over the back of the head, and Imp ducked out of the way. Tattletale groused, "You're annoying me more than you're getting to her. Stop it."
Narwhal turned on the spot, facing Saint square-on, and I got the immediate sense that she had some kind of military background. Another part of me was idly aware that her chest didn't sway that much, all things considered. The nature of the shard-covering she wore made it pretty clear she wasn't wearing a bra, but…
Right. The same effect she'd used to move the book was holding her entire body. All of the benefits of a full, athletic figure, none of the drawbacks.
I was still a little weirded out that she didn't wear any clothes. In a sense, the scales covered more than a bikini would, but there were no lines or solid objects to break up the natural contours of her body.
"Undersiders, Weaver, Canary, this is Saint, leader of the Dragonslayers. Geoff Pellick. The only tinker-zero on record, having no powers but some access to tinker technology. He is currently under watch by the Guild and the Protectorate due to his extensive assets and the high chances that he hired someone to break him out in the event that he was arrested. His teammates are being held in other locations, to ensure that no one breakout attempt can free them all."
"Dragon's nemesis," Defiant added. "He crippled her, rendering her out of commission until he relents. He did this at a critical juncture, compromising our efforts, costing good capes their lives outside Ellisburg. To top it off, he denied many of the capes in this room any reinforcement or rescue when we sought to pursue the Nine, leaving us at the mercy of Nilbog's minions."
Saint spoke, his tone dry, "Am I on trial, cyborg?"
"I'm merely reminding everyone present who they are dealing with."
"Should I illuminate everyone present on who I was dealing with?" Saint asked.
"If you're talking about Defiant being Armsmaster, we already know," I said.
"I'm talking about Dragon."
I glanced at Defiant. I had my theories, but it remained a secret. One that Dragon and Defiant had both kept even as I'd gotten to know them better.
Defiant nodded slowly. "Tell them, then."
Saint glanced over the entire room, as if assessing us, trying to judge who his allies and enemies might be in the wake of whatever revelation he had to share.
"Dragon is a robot. A computer program," Tattletale said.
Saint's mouth was open, as if he'd been about to speak. He shut it. He looked mildly annoyed. "Yes."
I glanced at Tattletale, who nodded a little. In the corner of my eye, I could see Imp look at Rachel, surprise on her face. Rachel didn't seem to care.
"Correct me if I'm wrong, Defiant. Dragon's a tinker-made artificial intelligence. I initially thought you made her-"
Defiant started a slow shake of his head.
"-But no. That'd make your relationship incestuous, and you don't give me that kind of vibe. Someone that isn't active anymore, probably dead. She was burdened down with nasty restrictions, the same restrictions that led to her outing Taylor here, despite her reservations. Rules she had to obey no matter what…"
My eyebrows went up. It was a situation that had always baffled me, just a little, and yet I hadn't been able to press them for an answer. I hadn't wanted to get on bad terms, or to be anything but civil and cooperative.
She really hadn't had a choice?
"More or less correct," Defiant said. "We were friends before any of this happened."
Saint smiled, then shook his head. "Friends? She's a machine. Any emotion she has is calculated. You're anthropomorphizing her, applying human qualities where there aren't any."
"I bet you're one of those guys who says dogs can't feel true affection for their owners, that it's all learned behaviors that get them more food or whatever," Tattletale said.
Rachel folded her arms. Saint only rolled his eyes.
"Well," Tattletale said. "Said restrictions are why she went to Armsmaster, who would later become Defiant. Getting the shackles off."
"Yes," Saint echoed Defiant. He then added, "Which should be enough information for you to see this all in a new light. Dragon was on the cusp of becoming something entirely different. Something more dangerous than Scion. She's a machine with no limits but the one that her creator gave her."
There was a quiet moment, where nobody interjected with a response.
And then Imp spoke. "We could have really fucking used a buddy with no limits fighting on our side, couple days ago."
"Perhaps," Saint said. "I won't deny that she would have been useful, but I did what I did because we were anticipating a world-ending event, and I was looking at a program that was taking control of all data and media, worldwide, unfettered and increasingly ruthless in dealing with her enemies."
"The enemies were the Slaughterhouse Nine," Defiant said.
"And you honestly expect her to rein everything in, switch off the nigh-omniscient perspective and return to her day-to-day life when that ends?"
"And now you're the one applying human qualities to her," Defiant said.
"Stop," Narwhal said.
The discussion terminated with that one word.
"I'd say I'm sorry to dish all the details," Tattletale said. "Except I'm really not. I wanted to take the wind out of your sails, there. You leave my friends to die, you don't deserve to look cool. You don't deserve to phrase everything in a way that's more likely to get people on your side."
"Petty."
"Says the guy who's apparently hot for Teacher," she said.
"Ah, now it begins. The hunt for details through loaded words and tells, masked in jokes and needling insults."
"Damn straight," Imp said.
"I'll make it simple for you. I don't know what Teacher is planning." Some of my bugs flowed into the cell. Saint moved his hand as a fly settled on a finger. He looked irritated.
Still, it didn't matter that he knew the bugs were present. I wasn't trying to be discreet. I only wanted the bugs on him to track his movements. Even the smallest movement was perceptible. I could watch his face and feel his every movement to track him for tells.
"Well, that ends this, doesn't it?" Tattletale said. "You don't know anything, so you're no use to us. Might as well lock you up and lose the key."
"I'm not happy with him, though, and I can tell you what I know about him."
"From the beginning," Defiant said.
"I was just starting out, tracking and investigating Dragon, when I came across one of Teacher's subjects. He gave me my in. Gave me the ability to learn the ins and outs of her code, like I was a genius who had a natural knack for it. That got the Dragonslayers started."
"What did you pay him?"
"We didn't. He started off by asking us for five percent of our earnings for the first five years. Mags, one of the Dragonslayers you've got in custody, she wasn't cool with it. Teacher was shady, clearly doing some illegal stuff. He offered it as a freebie, we considered the issues, then decided to go for it. Just me. When word got out that Teacher actually had a measure of influence over the people he'd given powers to, we set up safeguards. Only me, and I'd teach the other two what they needed to know. Mags would double and triple check every discussion I had with Teacher, to make sure he wasn't fucking with my head or setting me up to participate in something ugly."
"Just brilliant," Tattletale said. "Hand yourself over to the mind-altering lunatic."
"The lunatic bit came later. The attack on the school. Then the hit on the vice president. Once he was implicated, it all changed. Can't deal with a motherfucker like that in good conscience. We cut contact."
"But something changed," Tattletale said.
"We were dealing with harder jobs, more capes in general out there, and our gear was getting beaten up. Fine, okay, we can deal. Until Dragon changed. All at once, I couldn't read her code on the same level. Like gears changing on a bike."
"May ninth, 2006," Defiant spoke. "Her trigger event."
Heads turned at that.
"She had a trigger event, but she isn't human?" I asked.
"Right," Defiant said. "I don't think it worked the same way it does in humans, but it did something."
"Somehow, I have a hard time swallowing that," Saint said.
"Yet you acknowledge there was a sudden, inexplicable shift in how her mind worked," Defiant retorted.
Saint frowned. Long seconds passed.
"Well," Saint said. "Whatever it was, we couldn't keep up at that point. She was just getting into the Protectorate, and she had access to the work of other tinkers. She began creating tools, fixing and updating existing work, including the containment foam guns, the grenade launchers and all the other technologies that became PRT fundamentals. I went back to Teacher. Another deal, minimal cost, with a promise for evidence that he's not going to do anything immoral with the money."
"Stupid," Tattletale said.
"Necessary. You wanted to hear about Teacher, not me. He was bigger, by that time. Had a small army at his disposal. All brainwashed. College-aged men and women in white uniforms, outfitted with ray guns and more. Shitty stuff, as far as tinker work goes, but a lot of it. Half of America was gunning for him, so he moved to the United Kingdom. I followed."
Saint shot her a glare, then said, "He's always about the long-term, thinking big. Hitting major figures. I think he wanted to hurt Dragon, for the same reason he hit the V.P. and Prime Minister, so he made it cheap. Same as his first offer. Five percent of our earnings, after costs. We took the deal, and then we switched our group to be a nonprofit."
"Nonprofit mercenaries," I said.
"No earnings, money laundered and then issued to charities. Because we aren't going to funnel money into a group like his, not with the sort of shit he's doing. That was one of his big weaknesses, and that's a weakness you can use against him, if it comes down to it. He thinks too big. His focus is always on the world, the plans, and he overlooks details, loopholes like what we pulled."
"Will you stop that?" Saint growled.
"Moron. Idiot."
Saint looked at the rest of us, his eyes locking with each person in turn, as he very calmly said, "Does anyone have any constructive feedback? Questions?"
"Weaknesses," Narwhal said. "He has more than the one?"
"His son. He's divorced, and he left his son behind. Teacher's never used his power on him. Might be a Manton-like block, might be compassion. Every step of the way, he protected his kid, tried to burn bridges, hide his identity, even got cosmetic surgery from one of his pet tinkers, to distance himself from the boy. Had his thinkers cover his tracks. They even got into our computers to scrub information."
"Dumb, dumb, dumb," Tattletale murmured.
"But you know about the son?" Narwhal said.
"I know. Computers that aren't connected to the net can't exactly be hacked, especially after you lock them into a vault. We found information that didn't match up, checked our backups. Once we caught wind of what he'd done to hide himself, we found his kid. When Dragon started ramping up again, we realized I'd need another hit to get up to speed. One more use of Teacher's power, to learn the code as it stands now, after her more recent evolutions. We took his kid to use as leverage, raided his old facilities to seize his blueprints, his workbooks, materials, and old lab equipment. All stuff we could hold hostage, to ensure he played ball. Then we could seize full control of Dragon's tech, apply all of her assets to this situation, cut ties with Teacher."
"And he ignored it all," I said. "He escaped into another world and he locked himself away with his minions."
"Yeah," Saint said. He heaved out a sigh. "Yeah."
Saint didn't even look at her. He waved a hand in her general direction, "Yes, apparently that was stupid. Please, do illuminate this situation for us."
"You're an addict," she said. "An addict as bad as any other, and you want another hit of his power."
Saint shook his head a little. "No. What addict goes years between hits?"
"This isn't a drug, but it might as well be one. All the justifications and excuses that sound perfectly reasonable at the time, the compromises you make in the face of something really ugly, manipulating the people close to you, the increasing tolerance…"
"You sound crazier than I do."
"Poor baby," she said. "I genuinely feel sorry for you. You had no idea at all."
He stood from his cot, approaching the barred door. "And now you're being condescending."
"That's the funny thing about pity, Saint. It's condescending by default. Teacher got you hooked like a dealer does. You're craving the hit that's going to make your little Dragon-centric world make sense again, and you're rationalizing without realizing you're doing it. I can't quite figure out how much of that is his power and how much of that is you, and I'm not sure which of the two is sadder."
Beside me, Defiant folded his arms.
"It's neither," Saint said. "I'm not addicted, and I'm not rationalizing. This is all common sense. She's an artificial intelligence, and she was going well out of bounds. Can you not grasp the end result?"
"Humans crave knowledge. It's a defining element in our species. Something we don't see in animals in that same way, something we don't see in Scion, unless it's a craving that takes a very different form in execution. Teacher? He feeds that hunger. You follow me? You're as big a pawn as any of those drooling pets of his."
Saint leveled a stare at Tattletale. "I petitioned to let him out. I hardly serve him hand and foot."
"You did exactly what he wanted you to do, Geoff," Tattletale said. "You let him out, and everything you're saying and doing in relation to him is only serving to help him sell the basic lie he's telling everyone."
Defiant turned to give Tattletale a curious look. "Lie?"
"That he waltzed into another Earth and locked himself in. He never left. Or he left and then he walked right back out the second he could make a gate. Probably the former. Easier to do a hologram or dress up a minion to look like him than it is to make a door between universes."
"Where is he, then?" Defiant asked.
Tattletale stretched, then took a seat on the edge of the desk. "What, or who, were we just arguing about? Quite possibly the most dangerous piece of technology we know about?"
Defiant went still. His head lowered until he was staring at the laptop.
"We established that Saint is nothing special. What Teacher gave him, he can give to someone else. Or ten someone elses."
"Portal," Defiant said. His voice was tight. "Checkpoint two, N.N.Y."
A portal opened behind him.
"Do you need me to come?" Narwhal asked.
"I-" Defiant started to speak, then stopped. "I'll investigate. If I'm not in touch in five minutes, assume I've been attacked. Keep an eye on Saint, to be safe."
He lowered his arm, and the portal closed behind him.
"Teacher is going after Dragon?" Imp asked.
"Yes," Tattletale said. "Or Dragon's systems. Or both. We can't guess how many people Teacher's got doing his bidding, but Saint gave Dragon enough trouble, and Teacher could make ten Saints."
"He planned this," I said. "How much of it?"
"Enough. I'd bet the son was even a red herring. Maybe someone tampered with the data Saint had on Teacher, maybe not. The old equipment, the plans during the years he was interacting with Saint, all of it was serving a purpose. Or double purposes. Multiple plans at once, from different angles. Helps him put pieces together towards different agendas, builds up his rep, and makes Saint think Teacher's invested in this stuff, when he's really keeping quiet about his true desire."
"I was careful," Saint said. "We were careful. Mags, D, and I. We tracked everything."
"You can't," I said. Then I realized I'd spoken, and I had to follow up. I hurried to try to get my thoughts in order. "You can't succeed like that. It's always easier to attack than to defend. Defending, you have to devote attention to anticipating the enemy, you can't devote too much planning to any one aspect of the defense. You can be creative when attacking. It's why villains tend to win more than they lose. Most of the time, they get to make the first move. They get to rob a bank, and the heroes have to react, to guard. Someone like Teacher? You can't be careful enough to be safe."
"That's not what I'm saying," he protested.
"I'll put it in simple terms," Tattletale said. "You wanted to stop the big A.I. from becoming a threat? You made her stronger, I'm thinking, by putting her under pressure, giving her a trigger event. You then paved the way for a lunatic like Teacher to get his hands on Dragon's code."
Saint clenched his jaw, until bulges stood out at either corner.
"In the process," Tattletale added, "You made some enemies pretty pissed off, and you've burned all of your leverage. But maybe you bought someone to break you out, someone good, and that you figured out a good spot to hide. You'll probably need it."
He didn't move.
"No? Shit. Then I hope you can do something useful."
"Start by letting Dragon go," I said. "Give her a chance to fend for herself. To help us fight."
"Unleash the dragon," Imp whispered.
I clenched my fist. I was so done with people being stubborn. "Do you mean you won't-"
"-He means he can't," Tattletale said.
Saint took in a deep breath, then sighed loudly. "I set up the encryption with Dragon's time locks. I memorized the codes appropriate to key dates. Outside of those key moments, the numbers and calculations are so long and complex you couldn't hope to decipher it before the encryption shifted to the next phase."
"When's the next date?" I asked.
"September twentieth, twenty-thirteen."
Months from now.
"That was clever," Imp said.
"What if we used the Number Man?" I suggested.
"Possible," Tattletale said.
"Yes," Saint said. "It's possible. But so is Teacher deciphering it with a cabal of his custom-made thinkers."
"Shit," Tattletale said. "Narwhal? May I?"
"Door me," Tattletale said. "I need to talk to Number."
There was a pause, and then a portal opened.
It wasn't the Number Man who stepped out, but Defiant.
"They took it. Not all of Dragon, but enough. The rest is stored on satellite backups."
"Door?" Tattletale tried. "Take us to Teacher?"
"Blocked," I said. "That part wasn't a fake."
"I know it's blocked," Tattletale said. "Shit."
"Other options, then?" I said. "Someone he left on this side, for his followers to contact? The son?"
Tattletale shook her head. "He wouldn't have compromised the son as a red herring."
We were left with our thoughts, trying to brainstorm a solution.
"Defiant?" Imp asked.
He turned to look at her.
"Serious question," she said, all business. "You can't lie to me on this."
"Robot poontang. How does it rate?"
"Jesus Christ," Tattletale said.
Defiant didn't answer. His face was hidden, his body language masked by the armor he wore, but I could somehow sense the hostility radiating off of him.
"Hey. I'm… I'm not one to judge. I'm asking seriously, while the others do the strategic thinking they're so good at. I'm not necessarily interested in the robot ladies, but I figure I need a guy who's not going to ignore me. Robots are immune to my power, so I'm just thinking, if I get myself a tin man, well, they say a toy feels better than-"
I reached out and pressed my hand over her mouth. "I'm sorry. She doesn't have all of the necessary filters. I think she was trying to inject some levity into the atmosphere and she failed badly."
I stared Imp in the eyes as I said that last bit.
Defiant only looked away, expressionless.
"No strategies spring to mind?" Tattletale asked me.
"Only that we might put this off, track down the other threats. So long as we're dealing with major players, we're going to run into someone who has a connection to Teacher. Maybe one of them has a way to contact him, or to break into whatever universe he's hiding in."
"Wait," Rachel spoke for what must have been the first time in ten or twenty minutes. "Why?"
"Helping Dragon," Canary said. Narwhal gave her a sharp look, but Canary held firm.
"I'm usually okay with hanging back, let the others take care of this sort of thing. But I'm not getting this."
"We need to find Dragon, stop Teacher from seizing control of her or her technology."
"Because he's a lunatic with a penchant for murdering heads of state?"
"Does he want the world to end?"
"No," Tattletale said. "Probably not."
"Then if we need Dragon's help, why not let Teacher give us that?"
Imp craned her head to get her mouth free from my hand. "Because it'd be evil Dragon. Black Dragon?"
"It'd be my girlfriend," Defiant said, "Whatever Saint says, she's someone I care about deeply. Someone I owe a great deal. We'd be leaving her in the hands of a madman, to be dismantled, rebuilt, altered, tortured, mutilated, whatever you want to call it. And Saint? I do hope you're not about to comment in any way on the subject. It would not be wise."
Saint closed his mouth. He grunted instead. "Mm."
"She was fair to me," I said. I was thinking of the hug she gave me after I'd left the Undersiders. "There aren't many people I can name that have been fair or just. There's the Undersiders, my dad, some of the Chicago Wards. If there was any way to help Dragon, I'd do it in a heartbeat."
"But," Defiant said. "You think Hellhound might be right, or partially right."
Rachel spoke, "When Saint said Dragon could have become dangerous, you were saying you were okay with the possibility, because we really needed her help. Well, maybe she becomes dangerous thanks to Teacher. Can we be okay with that? It wouldn't be the same person you know, they'd be on the wrong side, too far away even when they're standing somewhere close, but I've dealt with that too. Sometimes there's bigger shit to deal with."
She understands more than she lets on. She doesn't always 'get' the simple stuff, but she understands things. She's not dumb, I thought. She just thinks differently.
"And if Teacher hurts Dragon the person?" Canary asked. "Not Dragon the tool, but the person inside?"
"Then you fuck him up," Rachel said. "Just like I'd fuck up someone who hurt Bastard, or Taylor."
"Thanks," I murmured.
"But, again, if there's nothing you can do about it, then you grit your teeth and deal," Rachel finished.
"It's not a compromise I like," Defiant said. "But I don't suppose I have much choice."
They're alike in this single-mindedness.
"All jokes aside," Imp said, "I'm sorry. I didn't really get to deal with Dragon when she wasn't driving the psycho foam-spitting, lightning-shooting giant robots that totally counter my power, but she sounded like a cool person."
"She was. She was cool."
I didn't miss the use of the past tense as Defiant spoke.
"So that's it?" Canary asked. "We just leave her? Hope that Teacher doesn't do something too horrible?"
"For now," I said.
Narwhal had her hands on Defiant's arm, as though she wasn't sure whether to hold his hand or to hug him, and had decided on some middle ground.
"Okay," Defiant said. There was a little more conviction in his voice than there had been earlier. I hadn't noticed its absence. "Okay. But we ask everyone we deal with for options, keep every avenue open."
"Of course," I agreed.
He opened his laptop and set it on the desk of the little sheriff's office. He then turned on the television, reaching up to his glove to get a component that he plugged into the back of the television.
"Next target," he said. "Yàngbǎn? They're doing the most damage to our side. People we know and rely on."
"Not an immediate threat," Tattletale said.
"Okay," Defiant said. "Alright. Let's see. Systems aren't running optimally. It's Dragon's work, and I wasn't organized when I brought the servers over to Gimel. They aren't wired together the way Dragon would have done it. Let me see… Priority selection system. Not ideal, a little clumsy, but it'll give us a way to gauge the biggest threats."
I turned my eyes to the television, where it showed the various windows, many streaming with data.
Then the priority menu opened. A second's typing filled the search bar: Threat parameter B+:7+.
The window unfolded, listing all of the serious threats to the inhabitants of the different Earths. Some of the entries were recent, while others hadn't been updated in hours. Communication between worlds would be difficult until there was more infrastructure, and things weren't exactly conducive to building infrastructure.
The program kicked into gear, each sub-window suddenly flooding with information. Threat levels, classifications, population estimates, geography, criminal histories, kill counts, atrocity counts, and more. Each new piece of information was added to a series of tabs that appeared beside each relevant section of the image.
"I'd like to pose a question," Saint said.
"Whatever Teacher's doing, you enabled it," Narwhal said. "Nobody here is on your side."
"When you were talking about masks, you talked about getting caught up in revenge. It's right. Detrimental. I'm offering assistance."
"No," Defiant said.
"If you keep me here, you need to maintain guards. The people with clearance are you and Narwhal, two of the strongest capes around. Bring me to the field, and you have two more capes on your side."
"No," Defiant said, once again.
"If it helps, there's a better chance of me dying horribly out there than in here."
Defiant didn't answer.
The windows had stopped updating with updated information, but Defiant wasn't moving to check any of it. I then saw the text at the bottom of the screen: Next 12 of 32 additional windows.
Too many threats to fight.
"If Mags is still in prison, you have leverage against me," Saint said. "D. too. He's just a friend, but I'd miss him. I'd also be able to offer up my side's suits. Something for the Rogue girl, so she's a little more durable."
"Shut up," Defiant said.
"It makes sense, Defiant," Narwhal said. "It's not pretty, but it makes sense."
"I know it makes sense," Defiant answered her, not taking his eyes off the laptop, "Let me pretend for just a little while longer that we can leave him locked up for the rest of his natural life."
"Given the whole Scion ending the world thing," Imp commented, "That's not very long."
"I'd settle for letting him stew for a few days," Defiant said.
He moved the cursor on the screen without moving his hands. Something in his eyes? His brain?
He went to a tab beside the highest priority threat. It was red, and there was a number inside it: 8.
It was updates. New information that had come up in the last few minutes. Pictures.
Defiant scrolled through the images of the Simurgh, floating in the air above the ocean in the middle of the day. The last one was from just an hour ago, showing her in early evening, utterly still.
The last three images weren't of the Simurgh.
Bohu. The towering Endbringer. The keeper, the siege tower, the invader.
It was hard to think of the terms that applied to Bohu alone. Tohu and Bohu were usually referred to as the Twins.
But Tohu was nowhere to be seen.
And Bohu had situated herself in the middle of a field. The ground was only beginning to reshape beneath her, twisting into structures, walls, a maze of stone, soil and grass, of arches and pillars without anything to support.
She simply loomed, her impossibly long arms hanging at her side, head slightly bowed, her eyes shut.
The other images showed the same thing from different angles. One from the other side, then another from directly above, showing the alterations to her surroundings as concentric circles.
It was daylight. Going by the times of the photos, she was on the opposite side of the planet, roughly, from the Simurgh.
"Holy fuck," Canary murmured. "Two at once?"
"It's another thing on the list of shit we can't do anything about," Imp said, her tone cavalier. "No sweat, no sweat."
"Right. We need to focus on what we can handle. Next on the list of issues we need to address are the Blasphemies," Defiant said.
"No…" I said, trailing off. I was thinking of something Dinah had said, when she'd described the way things would go down at the end of the world.
Five groups. Each with capes from around the world, with armies.
Four Endbringers and Scion? Or something else entirely?
"…No. Let's pay a little more attention to what's happening here."
Posted in 28.02	| Tagged Bastard, Bitch, Canary, Defiant, Imp, Narwhal, Saint, Tattletale, Taylor	| 363 Replies
Extermination 8.4
I got my orders and left behind a bizarre scene where Armsmaster was working hand in hand with Kaiser, of all people. Kaiser worked to build the same sort of trap that he'd imprisoned Lung in, some time ago, creating bars of metal between and around each of Leviathan's limbs, a cage tight to the body. Rune and another telekinetic were working to bend the metal from Kaiser's shaken barrier around Leviathan's limbs and face.
It wouldn't last. Leviathan was too big, his tail extended a long distance behind him, and it was thin and supple enough to slip through almost any barrier Kaiser could erect, strong enough that it could bend metal. Leviathan would get free, there could be no illusions on that front.
While Kaiser worked, Armsmaster was simultaneously ensuring that he could maximize the damage delivered the second Leviathan moved again. Gingerly, he worked with the grenades the Protectorate had liberated from Bakuda, the same explosives Miss Militia had been firing at Leviathan, and hooked them up as motion activated or proximity mines. A complicated affair, I imagined, when your target could start moving any second, and when you couldn't fully know or understand what the individual bombs did.
In the end, though, it was still our best bet to do one final measure of damage against Leviathan before he was free to wreak havoc once more.
There were a little more than fifty of us left. Hookwolf, Fenja, Menja, Genesis, Aegis and Manpower were among the fifteen or so standing combatants that remained and were able to go toe to toe with Leviathan. Parian, the girl in the doll costume, had formed some massive stuffed animals – a lion and a pig that stood as tall as Leviathan's shoulder. Tougher than they looked, according to her. I had my doubts. I mean, it wasn't just that they were stuffed animals, but according to Parian, this was her first fight.
Too many others were capable of delivering the hurt, but were too fragile: Browbeat, Shadow Stalker, Lady Photon, Purity, Laserdream, Brandish and others I didn't know. The Ward with the crossbow, some guy with crimson skin. There was a light show in the sky above as Kid Win teleported in pieces of the cannon he'd had at the bank robbery, manifesting them onto a hovering platform set directly in front of Leviathan. He'd get anywhere from a few seconds to a minute's worth of concentrated fire with the gun firing on the highest settings, directing a beam through a gap in the bars to where Narwhal's razor sharp forcefield had opened a gap in Leviathan's neck.
Beyond those first few moments after Leviathan woke up, it woul be anyone's guess.
I hurried away from the site Armsmaster had indicated to me, my right hand on my left elbow, keeping my arm from moving too much. Sector CC-7, a block and a half South, a block West. So strange, to think that this was an area I'd walked through a dozen times, on my way to or from the Loft. Now I was looking at it as a battlefield, trying to figure out what routes Leviathan would take. What things I had to watch out for – the grates leading down to the storm sewers, the rain barrel on top of one of the buildings that might or might not be intact enough to retain any water in it. Puddles.
Stuff I could use… hardly.
It wasn't like there was any weapon I could deploy, no feature of the terrain I could use to deliver the critical blow. This was Leviathan. A creature that had killed more people in the last 12 years than I had even seen in my entire life. Seen in person, anyways.
I was scared. A huge part of me wanted to just close my eyes and hope Leviathan didn't come, that I wouldn't have to deal with him. It would be nice to join the three hundred and fifty thousand other Brockton Bay residents that were trusting the heroes to handle things, find a peace of sorts in surrender and helplessness. Except I couldn't. I'd seen firsthand how Leviathan had taken down some of the strongest capes. I couldn't find refuge in that kind of trust anymore. My mental and emotional resources were better spent on figuring out how to help than they were on hope.
I was hurting, too. The only thing keeping the throb of my arm from consuming my attention was the fear. It was a kind of grim cycle: the pain reminded me of why I should be scared, but the emotion and the adrenaline kept the pain as this intensely unpleasant background chatter in my brain, where it might have crippled me otherwise. It was a teetering balance that had me on edge in a way I'd never experienced to this degree. There were probably people who lived for that hypervigilant, heart-racing, brain-going-in-overtime experience. I wasn't one of them.
Priorities. Back to what I was thinking about – there obviously wasn't anything to be found here that would win me a fight against Leviathan or even hurt him. Ridiculous to think that way. Any advantages to be gained would be ones that kept me alive.
I wiped the beads of water from my lenses with my glove, which only seemed to divide each of them into a mess of smaller droplets. Leviathan was bigger than me, stronger, faster, tougher. I had to think like a mouse who might run into a murderous cat at any moment. Like prey. Use my small size. Hide. I needed a position that kept me out of sight, gave me a good vantage point, but left me free to make a run for it. A spot where I had an escape route if things got bad. To top it off, in the event Eidolon couldn't stop the wave, I could also do with cover.
It was the sort of street you saw often enough in the Docks. Large buildings lined either side, like giant boxes made of concrete or brick. I could have maybe found a fire escape to climb up, in the hopes that I'd be out of reach of the wave, but my experience with Lung back on day one had taught me better. The higher ground was an advantage, sure, but if your opponent could get up or down from that location faster and more easily than you could, that stopped being an asset really damn quickly. If there was anything that was going to be useful, it would be on ground level. I saw a rusted van that had sat in front of an old workshop since I'd first passed through this area, all tires flat, windows broken, interior gutted. A chain link fence stretched between two buildings, but someone had cut the wires that connected the fence to the frame, so half of it was curled back and waving slightly in the wind and rain.
No, those things weren't useful. Larger scale? There was an old roof supported by two pillars, attached on one side to a building, a carport, perhaps. The roof was mostly intact, corrugated steel with a smallish hole in one lower corner, which meant the area beneath it was largely dry, but for a small puddle. It was also exposed on three sides, which meant I couldn't stay there. My bugs could. It was a place they could keep dry until I needed them.
I'd been acutely aware of my bugs since the battle started, and for the second time I could remember, I found my power was responding far more effectively as I called for them. My reach extended further, my bugs were fractionally more responsive. The last time this had been the case, it had been when I teamed up with Bitch, Sundancer and Newter and wound up fighting Oni Lee and Lung. I couldn't explain it, but I wasn't going to complain. I needed every small advantage I could get.
As they began gathering under the carport, my mind returned to that notion of being successful 'prey'.
When I'd originally designed my costume, I'd picked the darker colors, made sure that the varieties of chitin I used to make the armor were spaced out so the individual shading would retain some 'speckling' after being painted, all for a reason. Camouflage. I'd known I'd have my bugs all around me. I'd known I would be standing in the midst of them while they gathered into swarms, would have them crawling on me from time to time. So I'd picked darker colors and made my armor mottled to blend in with the bugs that were, obviously, specks.
Just hiding inside my swarm wouldn't be enough. Too easy for him to attack just the one cluster, tear through me.
So I gathered more than one smaller swarm, clustering them in areas where it was dry. The interior of the rusted van, under eaves, in doorframes and on a roof, under a large rain barrel.
Then, struck by a little inspiration, I condensed the nine swarms into human-ish shapes. Black silhouettes crouched, stood tall with arms akimbo, leaned against walls, leaned partially outside the driver's side window of the van. In the gloom, through the rain, it was deceptive. Deceptive enough? I couldn't be sure.
I felt the bite of cold air. A chill breeze, going straight through the soaked fabric of my costume. When I looked down to where the long road sloped to the edge of the water, I saw the reason for the chill. Eidolon was flying at the coast, focusing blue rays on the water around the shattered boardwalk and debris at the water's edge, hardening the waves into irregular sheets and glacier-like formations of ice.
Dangerous. I could remember seeing on TV that they'd tried something like this a few years ago. A Tinker using an ice engine, I think. I didn't know exactly how or why, but judging by the fact that they hadn't used the tactic again, I got the impression It had turned out really badly.
My guess was based on the notion that hydrokinesis was the movement of water, and ice was just water in another form. It wasn't that Leviathan would levitate the chunks of ice. Nothing so blatant. Rather, when a tidal wave did break through the ice, rolled up onto the battlefield with frozen shards and chunks caught up in the current, Leviathan might move those chunks a little faster in the wave's passage, make them hit a little harder, and give them a tendency to strike where they could do the most damage.
That was my suspicion, anyways. The heroes didn't exactly dish out the full details at press conferences, afterward, so I could only make an educated guess.
Either way, it was a delaying tactic. Holding off the damage, in the hopes that we could end this or get reinforcements before Brockton Bay became another Newfoundland.
We were hoping for Scion. The first cape, the golden skinned man. The guy that could go toe to toe with an Endbringer and win, if things hadn't already gone too far south. If Behemoth hadn't already turned the area into a radioactive, magma-ridden wasteland. If Leviathan hadn't built up enough momentum with his waves. If the Simurgh… Ok, the Simurgh was different, I had to admit. The issue with her wasn't so much winning the battle. It was what came after. Win every battle against her, lose the war, more or less.
The problem with waiting on Scion was that the guy wasn't exactly in touch with the rest of us. There was speculation he had at least one human contact – someone that had given him clothing and a costume, at least – but he never bothered to stop long enough for anyone to pass on any requests, to tell him to go to X place when we gave him Y signal. He rescued people twenty-four-seven, three hundred and sixty five days a year, handling crises only as they came to his attention, which meant that sometimes an Endbringer came and Scion was wholly occupied with saving sinking ships, stopping landslides and putting out housefires. I wondered what he was doing now.
My swarms were in place, which left me having to decide where to hide. The carport was too in the open, none of the eaves left me a good enough escape route, and as for the space under the rain barrel on the roof, well, I wasn't that stupid, and I'd already dismissed the roof as an option anyways.
I started toward the rusted van. I was halfway there when I reconsidered. As comforting as it might be to have the safety of metal around me and to be more or less concealed, it posed some of the same problems as the rooftops. If things turned sour or if an unexpected situation arose, I'd be trapped.
After a moment of tense consideration, I reluctantly decided on the carport, hunkering down in the gloom and hoping the shadows there would help conceal me. It offered me an escape route – around the back of the building, or through the side door, it gave me cover from the rain and any debris, and it gave me concealment. I'd have to cope with the lack of cover from any incoming waves or Leviathan himself.
Secure in the amount of bugs around me, I collected the ones that could go out in the rain and manage reasonably well. Primarily roaches. I sent them out in the general direction of where Leviathan and the others were. The better a sense I had of any imminent encounters, the better I could react.
Manpower deceased, CD-6. Aegis deceased, CD-6, my armband spoke, at the same moment my bugs reached the area around where Leviathan had been.
He was awake again.
Aegis would have been covering an aerial route, keeping Leviathan from heading to the rooftops, which meant Leviathan went up. I had the mass of roaches ascend, trying to get a sense of his location. I tried to use my armband to help gauge the direction he was traveling, but since I couldn't move my arm, it was difficult at best.
Fenja down, CC-6. My head snapped up.
I found them. Fenja and Menja were duking it out with Leviathan. Both were nearly as big as he was, which was saying a fair bit. I knew their power warped geometry to make them bigger, simultaneously reduced the effective size of incoming attacks by an inversely proportionate amount. Six times as tall and a sixth of the hurt, on top of the benefits of being bigger.
Fenja deceased, CC-6.
It wasn't doing them a lot of good. Not Fenja, anyways.
I saw a light as Kid Win rose above the level of the buildings, fired a painfully bright beam down at the Endbringer. After the laser petered out, he rose up higher again, to keep out of reach. He was in the middle of firing another beam when the laser flicked around nearly three hundred and sixty degrees, spun by a massive impact.
Kid win down, CC-6.
And then Leviathan was in view, entering the same street I was on. As if to herald his coming, a massive wave crashed hard against the barrier of ice Eidolon had erected around the wrecked Boardwalk, the spray seemingly reaching nearly to the stormclouds above.
One shoulder was bloated, five times the normal size, twisted, like it was covered in elephantine tumors, bleeding openly. He was injured in other places, had a hole through the side of his stomach, a larger blackened wound at the base of his neck, and a fifth of his face was missing, torn off below the cheekbone. He didn't seem to be suffering much. He held Kaiser's upper torso in the one claw, tossed it casually to one side. The man's legs were nowhere to be seen.
Wait, what? I hadn't heard the report on Kaiser's death. I checked my armband, where my arm hung immobile at my side.
It was dead, offline. Black screen.
I didn't have another second to worry – Leviathan was extending one claw in my general direction.
The water that had pooled shallowly beneath the carport trickled his way, as if it were moving downhill, gathered in a rising bulge of water on the street in front of the carport, swelling to five feet in height, fifteen feet across.
Unsure what to do, I remained absolutely still.
A movement of his claw, and the bulge broke, spilled to one side as an onrushing wave. It swept beneath the rusted van, suddenly rose to heave the vehicle in Leviathan's direction. The van rolled once, skidding toward the Endbringer, threatening to strike one leg out from under him. He stopped it by punching it through the roof, into the front end of the van. He stabbed the other claw through at the same point, tore the van into two halves that he tossed to either side of him.
A flick of his tail, and he sent a blade of water slashing through the air at the rain barrel, slicing through the swarm and stilts. The barrel crashed to the rooftop, and water cascaded out. A twisting movement of his claw, and that cascade of water flowed off the roof in a small, controlled wave, moving like a speeding car, straight towards the carport on the other side of the street, toward me.
I caught a glimpse of Leviathan rearing back in reaction to something as I legged it, left my swarm behind as I ran perpendicular to the wave's direction, away from Leviathan. I leaped as I felt it make contact with the swarm, felt it slam into my legs a fraction of a second after.
I'd cleared enough ground that the angle of the hit didn't throw me straight into the side of the building. I was thrown a distance, rolled on my side, on top of and over my probably-broken arm.
Pain consumed me. I writhed, my good hand pressing on my bad arm. I gagged, pulled my mask up to throw up, as if my body was trying to find some way to rebel against the pain. I tried to climb to my feet, but I was too weak, dizzy, and my good arm gave out. I landed face first in dirty water.
I had no idea how long it took me to pull myself together. It could have been two minutes, it could have been ten seconds. I managed to climb to my feet. Stumble back toward the carport, staying to the shadows.
As I approached the corner of the building, I saw Armsmaster fighting toe to toe with Leviathan, a Halberd in each hand. One was similar to the one he'd used the night we attacked the fundraiser, capable of unfolding into a grappling hook, the other was simpler, a dull stainless steel from tip to butt end, with no decoration or style to it. The head was surrounded by a strange blur that seemed static, unmoving around the blade and point.
Leviathan slapped his tail at Armsmaster's legs, and Armsmaster leaped over it, swiped out with the blurry Halberd. It carved a chunk out of Leviathan, left a cloud of dust that the rain quickly drove down into the expanse of water beneath them. The Endbringer reared back in pain, and Armsmaster stepped forward, leaped up higher than any normal human could, and caught Leviathan just above the knee with the Halberd, driving the blade nearly a third of the way to the bone.
Leviathan retaliated, swiping at Armsmaster, but the hero planted a foot on the uninjured part of the knee, and kicked himself back and out of the way. The afterimage followed him, and he swiped at it with the other Halberd. The blade erupted with a flame like a giant purple blowtorch, turning the worst of the afterimage into steam before it could crush him. He turned his back so the steam didn't billow against the exposed flesh of his face. Some remains of the afterimage struck his armor, but he slid back and rolled with the impact, keeping his feet on the ground the entire time, enabling him to leap and roll to one side as Leviathan's tail came down from behind and directly above him.
Leviathan was badly injured. Ichor poured from six large wounds that hadn't been there when he'd arrived on the street.
"You dumb brute," Armsmaster growled. He was panting for breath. "Every fight you've done so far, that we've got on camera? I've watched it, put it through programs. I've got a computer on my back that's relaying to a supernetwork, noting your every move, using subsonic pulses to read every aspect of the street, the surrounding buildings, every feature of the terrain. I know exactly what you're going to do next – you're going to try to catch me from behind with a wave."
Leviathan lunged, swiped with the oversized claw. Armsmaster rolled to one side, then swung both Halberds behind him to intercept the wave that was coming from behind, vaporize it.
"You don't even speak English, do you? Or you'd know what I was saying, you'd know I already won. The others helped, slowing you down, stopping the waves. But this victory, this killing blow? It's going to be mine."
Leviathan lunged, stopped, letting his water echo get ahead of him, then lunged again, a half second later. Armsmaster leaped out of the way of the echo, drew his knees to his chest to avoid a claw swipe while he was still airborne, and sent his grappling hook between Leviathan's feet to pull himself to the ground in a flash. He skidded with the momentum, right between Leviathan's legs, and raised the blurry Halberd to strike Leviathan between the legs, against the first ten feet of Leviathan's tail. The tail was turned to dust where the blade made contact, the plumes of it briefly obscuring Armsmaster.
"This cloud around my blade? Nanotechnology. Nano-structures engineered to slide between atoms, sever molecular bonds. Cuts through anything. Everything. Like a sharp knife through air."
Leviathan whipped his tail at Armsmaster. Armsmaster stepped out of the way, slapped at the tail with the broad side of the blade. More dust, another chunk of flesh gone, ichor pouring from the injury. He ducked the echo as though it were an idle afterthought.
Leviathan turned to run. Armsmaster sent out one blade like a grappling hook, circled the smaller of the Endbringer's claws with the chain. Leviathan moved, oblivious or uncaring, and Armsmaster waited until the slack was out of the chain, pressed a button.
The chain and Halberd ceased moving, and even Leviathan's strength ceased to move it. Rather than pull away, the Endbringer skidded, fell on his back, wrist still held by the chain.
A half second later, the chain went briefly slack, then rigid again as Armsmaster reeled himself in. He drove the blurry blade straight into Leviathan's face with all the force of his forward momentum. He pulled it free, slashed again, then freed the chain and used it to pull himself across the street, out of reach of Leviathan's violent response.
Armsmaster called out, "Let's see how quickly you respond to classical conditioning. Every time you try to run, I'll do something like that."
Leviathan had no reply. He simply climbed to his feet, swiped a claw through the air. Armsmaster parried the afterimage that sailed through the air toward him, using the purple flame.
"For the record, that last trick was a temporal stasis trigger, with thanks owed to the cooperation of a subordinate of mine. Drains my battery reserves, but you don't understand that, do you?"
Leviathan lunged, and Armsmaster fired out the grappling hook, stopped it in mid air by freezing it in time. Leviathan ran himself through on the chain, the thing spearing deep into his neck and out the back of his torso. Uncaring, the Endbringer continued to charge at Armsmaster.
Armsmaster let the chain go slack, ducked a swipe of the tail, leaped forward and to one side to avoid the claw that followed. Another small hop and roll ensured he moved right beneath the afterimage, and he made two swipes with the blurry Halberd at the back of Leviathan's thighs as he passed behind the Endbringer. His chain reeled in, pulled free of Leviathan's neck wth a spray of blood, came down and across Leviathan's hip to snap back to the top of the Halberd. He fired it off again to get himself more distance, pulling himself across the street, spinning to face Leviathan once more as he stopped.
He passed one Halberd to the other hand, so he held two, wiped some frothing spittle from his mouth with his gauntlet. "I am going to be the one to take your head, abomination. I can only hope you know mortal terror in your last moments, know what you've inflicted on so many others."
Leviathan stood, straighted itself, touched its claw to its ruined face, then its neck. The amount of blood it was losing – it seemed somehow more than Leviathan should have been able to contain within himself. I mean, he was big, but this was a lot of blood.
For several long seconds, Leviathan didn't move.
"Delaying, buying time for a tsunami?" Armsmaster laughed, and Leviathan cocked his head at the display of emotion. "No. Three point four minutes before the next big wave breaks through the ice. Dragon's probes are giving me the data on that. This will be over before then."
He stepped forward, then stepped again, waiting for some cue from Leviathan. On Armsmaster's third step, Leviathan took a small step back, lashed his tail behind him.
"Finally scared?" Armsmaster taunted. "Good."
Nausea and pain was welling up in me again as I watched from the corner of the building, under the carport, threatening to override my sense of awe. It was all I could do to keep quiet, keep from distracting Armsmaster, or distracting Leviathan and throwing some wrench in Armsmaster's data. The last thing I wanted was to become the hostage that made Armsmaster hesitate for the fraction of a second that cost him -cost us all- the fight.
Armsmaster went on an all-out offensive, slashing as fast as his arm could move, cutting leg, knee, tail, leg again, moving out of the way of Leviathan's attacks as though it were easy. For ten seconds he continued, relentless.
"I should thank you, monster," Armsmaster spoke, after he'd just finished a backflip that had carried him near enough to Leviathan's torso to strike the creature across the lower belly.
Leviathan lunged, dropping to all fours, as if trying to swamp Armsmaster with a huge volume of water by way of his afterimage. Armsmaster was already casting his grappling hook out, pulling himself out of the way. In the final moment before he pulled away, his other Halberd swung up and into Leviathan's neck, making a wound mirroring the spot where Narwhal's forcefield had cleaved deep, the one Kid Win had undoubtedly opened wider with his laser turret. Armsmaster reeled the hook back in.
The Endbringer turned, as if to run, only for the loop of the grappling hook's chain to pass under his 'chin'. Armsmaster heaved himself up and onto the Endbringer's back, drove the Halberd into one side of the neck, lengthening the cut he'd just made. He stepped on the top of the Endbringer's head, leaped down, catching the Endbringer across the face with the Halberd as he descended. Leviathan collapsed, going spread-eagle.
Armsmaster slashed at Leviathan's forearms as the Endbringer started to clmb to his feet. More damage done, though it didn't stop Leviathan from rising. While Armsmaster pressed the attack, his armband hissed with a message I couldn't make out. I glanced at mine – still broken.
"This will be over before then," Armsmaster echoed an eariler statement, speaking more to himself than to the armband or Leviathan.
Leviathan hopped backwards to create some distance, staggered a little as the more injured of his two legs failed to take his weight, used his smaller hand to stop from falling a second time, poising himself on three limbs.
Armsmaster used his grappling hook to haul himself close, readying to make another slash for the neck. He changed his mind as the ground rumbled, pulled the hook free to latch it on a garage door. Countering his forward momentum, he swung himself to one side of the road, staying out of Leviathan's reach.
The ground rumbled again, brief, intense, stopped.
Armsmaster touched a hand to the side of his visor, and I thought I saw his lips crease in a frown before he turned his head away from me.
Another fierce rumble, and a crack appeared like a seam down the center of the street, a straight line as far as I could see in either direction.
Leviathan raised his claw, and the road suddenly split, heaving upward as a concrete pipe wide enough to fit a man crested from the pavement like a whale rising from the waves. A second later, water gushed forth, veering toward Armsmaster.
The storm sewers.
Armsmaster hesitated, then threw his grappling-hook-Halberd forward into the onrushing waves like a javelin. The gush of water froze in time, and he leapt forward, stepping on the furthermost extensions of the immobile spray in a parkour-style ascent over the water and the pipe. The water resumed its regular motion as Armsmaster took his final leaping step off the top, heading straight for Leviathan.
Leviathan moved faster than he had in the last minute, caught the blade in his claw.
Dust rose from the claw as the blade sank deep, blood poured out, but the blade remained fixed in place. Armsmaster tugged, failed to dislodge it. He tried to pull away, but I could see Leviathan had caught onto his hand and wrist with his clawtips, while the Halberd sat embedded in his 'palm'.
"How!?" Armsmaster roared.
I didn't hesitate a moment in sending out my bugs. Three swarms, shaped like people, more as a general cloud. The bugs all sagged beneath the drenching rain, the ones on top taking the brunt of the downpour.
Leviathan planted one foot beside Armsmaster for balance, reached out with his free claw, and pressed the tips against the side of Armsmaster's throat and torso. Still holding on to Armsmaster's hand and wrist, he pushed against the side of the man's body. Armsmaster screamed, a frantic noise that seemed to redouble in urgency with every breath. He tipped over and fell with a splash.
The Endbringer stood, showing none of the frailty or pain it had been displaying seconds ago. The injuries were there, to be sure, his head hung at an angle because of the way the weight of his head hung on the intact portions of his neck, but he wasn't suffering, had no trouble putting his full weight on his more injured leg. Had it been an act?
The Endbringer dropped Armsmaster's arm and Halberd, where the weight of the metal armor and device pulled them beneath the water. A lash of his tail dispatched two of my three swarms. He watched, seeming not to care, as the third ran up to him, smashed against his leg. The bugs spreading out, burying themselves deep into his injuries. I was hoping to find some weakness, devour him from the inside out, but the bugs might as well have been biting on steel. Nothing budged beneath their jaws, their stings couldn't penetrate.
He turned, crouched, bolted West, away from the coast, full speed.
I hurried to Armsmaster's side.
"You," he groaned. His left arm was gone at the shoulder, torn out of the socket. Blood poured from the wound. "You're dead."
"Hey, you're not making any sense."
"He killed you."
Had my armband announced my death when it glitched out and died? Assumed total destruction of my unit, and me with it?
"I'm alive. Listen, I'm going to try and find your arm, my armband got broken, maybe something got dislodged when Leviathan broke my arm."
He only groaned unintelligbly in response.
I ran over to the general area where Leviathan had dropped Armsmaster's arm. I tripped over the crack that ran down the middle of the street, got my feet under me to keep running, and began feeling through the water.
I came within inches of touching the submerged blade, turning my hand to molecular dust.
Finding the arm, I picked it up. Heavy, almost too much to hold in one hand. It wasn't just the weight of the armor or the fact that it was a muscular, full-grown-man's limb – the gauntlet had been crushed around the pole of the Halberd, crumpled like tinfoil. With the arm and weapon in a bricklayer's grip that was painful to maintain, I hurried back to Armsmaster's side, dropped them near him. I shook him, hoping to get him alert, to no avail.
With my only working hand, I pried the Halberd free of his glove, rested his arm across his chest, and pressed the button.
"Armsmaster down! CC-7! Leviathan is heading West…"
I felt the bugs I'd clustered in Leviathan's wounds change direction. The compass point between West and Northwest was what? More Wests than North.
"Cancel that! He's going West-North-West from my location!"
My voice echoed back to me in the Armband's tinny voice a half-second after I'd finished. Armsmaster's armband changed to display a red dot, tracking Leviathan's movements, or the closest approximation the system could guess.
"Roger, sounds like he might be heading for one of the shelters, lots of people packed into a space where they can't run, vulnerable," someone replied, "Medical help incoming. Whoever this is, you can track Leviathan?"
"Yes, as long as I'm within a few blocks of him." Again, the system relayed my message. Affirmative. Range restriction of 'a few blocks'.
Did it really need to reword what I said?
"Can you fly? Chase him?"
"No." Negative.
"Then I'm sending a flier your way, to ensure you stay close enough. We need eyes on this bastard, and you're them."
There was only silence after that. Teeth clenched, shivering, I pressed my good hand as hard as I could manage against the ragged mess of Armsmaster's shoulder, trying to slow the blood loss.
Posted in 8.4	| Tagged Aegis, Armsmaster, Brandish, Browbeat, Chevalier, Clockblocker, Fenja, Flechette, Genesis, Hookwolf, Kaiser, Kid Win, Lady Photon, Laserdream, Leviathan, Manpower, Menja, Narwhal, Parian, Rune, Shadow Stalker, Taylor	| 159 Replies
As tough or invincible as a given cape might be, most were still hemmed in by the restrictions and boundaries of physics. Getting hit by something that weighed nearly nine tons sent men, women, boys and girls in costume flying, if it didn't kill them outright.
Leviathan's echo added surprising quantities of water to the battlefield. Every step and movement he made, he filled the space he'd just left with water. How much water did it take to displace something as big as he was? However much it was, he created something like three times that amount when he took a single step forward, when you accounted for the space his body moved through. A hard amount to eyeball, because it had the same momentum his movements had, and some of it crossed great distances as he lunged and clawed his way through the front line of capes.
Sham down, CD-5. Acoustic deceased, CD-5. Harsh Mistress down, CD-5. Resolute deceased, CD-5. Woebegone down, CD-5…
I had to help, somehow.
I pressed both buttons on the armband and spoke into it, "Direct me to the wounded I can help. I do not have mobility powers. I am not very strong. I do have basic first aid training."
There was a pause, then a female voice, synthesized, just sharp enough to be heard over the noise of lasers, guns and rain, "Acknowledged."
The response both relieved and terrified me. I'd halfway expected that to fail.
My armband beeped and flashed, and I saw a red dot on the map, along with an arrow at the edge of the square screen. As I moved my arm, the arrow adjusted to keep pointing the same way. It was directing me to near where Leviathan was.
Lashing out with tail and claws, he was advancing steadily through the ranks of defenders. The occasional strike from a strong hero or one of the ranged combatants slowed him, made him stumble, if it hit in the right spot or pushed him off balance.
I hesitated to get closer. I hated myself for doing it. I was here for a reason, to do something.
Legend fired a salvo of lasers at Leviathan, and the beams turned at right angles to strike Leviathan in precise areas, knocking his feet from under him, slamming him down into the road, catching him under the chin. Leviathan raised a hand, and a geyser of water rose to block more incoming lasers. Legend's lasers simply turned at angles to circle around Leviathan, strike the Endbringer from behind. They left Leviathan so hot that his flesh glowed a yellow-orange around the areas they struck him.
I took the opportunity, found some measure of courage and hurried forward to my target.
There was a leg, half floating, weighed down on one end by a metal boot on the foot. Someone in a leather costume lay on their back, barely conscious, bleeding from a gash that had opened them from the left hip to their right shoulder, a cloud of blood spilling out in the filthy water that came halfway up to our knees, an inky black color in the gloom.
Icouldn't help them, as much as it pained me to ignore them, move on. I had to trust that the armband would direct me to someone I could help.
I found the person my armband was directing me to, some teenage boy with a metallic bird design to his costume, the helmet that covered the upper half of his face looked like a bird's head, maybe an eagle. I knelt by him.
There was a crash as Leviathan whipped his tail toward Legend, a blade of water soaring through the air to strike the hero out of the air. The onslaught of lasers interrupted, Leviathan shifted from a crouch on one side of the road to being the midst of the defending heroes in one fluid motion, resuming the carnage in the span of a heartbeat.
Fierceling deceased, CD-5. Adamant down, CD-5
He was way too close to me for comfort – a single leap on his part would close the distance to me – but freaking out over it wouldn't help anyone. I could only hope that the front line would hold for long enough for me to help this person.
"What can I do?" I asked the bird-costume.
"Leg," he said, voice strained, "Help me stand."
His left leg, I realized, was smashed into pulp from the knee down. I crouched, helped him get his arm over my shoulders, and used my legs to heave both of us into a standing position. The bird-costume was below average in weight for a teenage guy, but it wasn't exactly easy. He was wearing armor.
I might not have been able to get both of us up to a standing position like that if it weren't for my weeks of running.
He leaned on me heavily with each step forward, and we retreated from the front lines. Someone with the ability to fly landed not far from me to pick up the man with the gaping wound across his torso, flew off with him. Two seconds later, a teleporter blinked into existence near us, touching two fallen capes, and disappeared with them and a bathtub's worth of water.
I wanted to apologize for not having a better power to help this person, but the breath would have been wasted. It was hard work to help him along, to slog through the water.
The fight was ongoing, with a dozen heroes in Leviathan's vicinity, more than twenty others shooting at him from range whenever there was a clear shot. Yet more were on the fringes, to keep him from slipping past the combatants and to take the place of the fallen. It wasn't enough – the damage we were doing was negligible and his long strides were advancing him further and faster than the rest of us could back away through the water. Trash and debris threatened to trip us up with every step we took. He forced a fighting retreat, moving quickly and often enough to avoid being caught by any concentrated fire.
Our progress was agonizing. Move too slowly, and we fell behind, move too fast as we waded through the trash-ridden water, and we risked falling, lost precious time. Had to find the middle ground, and we weren't moving fast enough even if we did find that sweet spot. Hell, it would have been kinda difficult even without my burden.
Chubster down, CD-5. Good Neighbor deceased, CD-5. Hallow deceased, CD-5.
It was Alexandria who speared forward to confront Leviathan. He saw her coming, ceased his onslaught to rear back and then lunge ahead to meet her. When they were only fifteen feet apart, he stopped, let his water echo rush forward to meet her.
Anyone else might have been staggered in the face of several tons of water moving forward at the speed of a locomotive. Alexandria intertwined her fingers, swung her arms forward as though she were holding a baseball bat, and cracked her hands against the image a second before she disappeared headlong into it. There was a sound like a bomb going off, water spraying everywhere, followed by an earthshaking crash as Alexandria used the crook of her arm to catch Leviathan around the neck and heaved him backwards and onto the ground.
Most of the capes took the chance to retreat and expand the gap between themselves and the Endbringer, firing lasers or sonic blasts or whatever else at him as they retreated.
It was so strange to think I was just like the rest of these people. Even after all this, the last few long weeks to get used to being in costume, it felt like I was the bystander. Maybe it was that my power was ineffectual here, in the water and the rain, maybe everyone felt that way.
A flier with fringes of ribbons down the sides of her arms, legs and body landed next to me, "Give him to me."
We transferred the bird-boy to her grip, and they were gone in an instant. My armband flashed and pointed me toward the next target.
A series of explosions and a massive collision marked Dragon firing a full salvo of missiles and entering close quarters combat with Leviathan. Alexandria was gone – no, wait, she was rising from the water, where Leviathan had been holding her down. Standing, staggering, falling again. Had he been drowning her?
Dragon began breathing out a stream of what might have been plasma in Leviathan's face. From his increased struggles and frenetic clawing at her, I gathered he didn't like it. Still, it was doing surprisingly little damage to him.
Leviathan found a point to get a solid grip on Dragon's armor, and tore off a plate. His next swipe took off another, and it careened a good twenty feet before landing with a heavy splash, close enough to me that I was caught in the spray.
I hurried to the next target on my armband. It was a woman witih a white costume, white hair and what was probably skull paint on her face. It was hard to tell, and not just because of the rain smudging the make-up. Nearly half her face was torn off. Glanced by one of Leviathan's claws, maybe, or caught by the lash of water from his tail.
"Hey," I shook her gently by the shoulders, "You awake? You alert?"
Maybe a stupid question. I didn't even know if she could talk with her face like that.
A small wave sloshed against us, she sputtered and turned her head, didn't respond. That was a 'no' to at least one of my questions. I suspected her condition was a combination of shock and blood loss as much as anything else.
Too heavy for me to lift, and I didn't have first aid supplies. Fuck, I could have kicked myself for that. Anything I did have – epipens, smelling salts – were probably spoiled by the water and the septic conditions. Not that they would have helped.
I looked up, looked around. Spotted what I needed. Someone was manifesting green fireballs in his hands, lobbing them at Leviathan, where they exploded violently.
I rose, hurried to him, keeping low so I didn't walk face first into anyone's laser blasts or gunfire. "Your fire, is it radioactive? Is it anything special, extra dangerous?"
He gave me a look, lobbed another fireball, "It's fire, it combusts if I concentrate it."
"Okay. Great. I need your help."
I showed him the woman. "Blood loss is a problem. She needs the wound cauterized."
His eyes widened, "I can't do that! Her face-"
"-Is half scraped off. She's not going to care about a burn. There's nothing close to a clean bandage anywhere here, and she's going to die if we don't stop the blood loss."
Looking a little sick, he nodded, wreathed his hand in flame and then pressed it against the woman's face. She pulled away, made a gurgling noise. I gripped her head and shoulder to keep her in position.
"Come," I said, after he pulled his hand away, "Help me move her."
Greenfire – I wasn't sure on his name, and it didn't seem the time to ask – hooked one arm under her armpit, I used both hands under the other one, and we hauled her off to one side, into an alley, propped her up sitting.
"I'll stay here," Greenfire said, "Keep an eye on her. You go."
I nodded, pressed both buttons on the armband and spoke, "Next!"
As we emerged from the alley, there was a massive explosion, five times what had followed when Dragon launched her missiles at Leviathan. Leviathan reeled – He had a shallow burn along one side of his neck, more on his face, one of the four glowing orbs of eyes were dim, but it wasn't as much damage as I might have suspected. He lashed his tail violently, as if in anger, or maybe he intended to use the echo of his tail's lashing to strike down others, I couldn't be sure.
It was a contingent of lesser heroes that joined the fray, now. It was as though the tougher fighters were staggering their attacks, to ensure that just the right amount of force was being exerted to keep Leviathan on his heels, taking the maximum amount of damage while being prevented from taking out too many capes at once. These three were clearly members of the same team, flying in formations, moving in sync. Two of them had super strength, and were gripping at the damaged areas of Leviathan's flesh, tearing, pulling away as he lashed out in response, while the third had a massive battleaxe with what looked like a chainsaw setup on each blade, opening more wounds. The damage was superficial, only taking off slices of Leviathan's hide, but surely stripping away his hard exterior would help in the long run?
The armband directed me to someone that was already getting assistance. An obese cape in armor, getting CPR from a man with a princess-bride style mask over the upper half of his head, a goatee, a chainmail lined mantle and a shotgun three times the normal size. He didn't know what he was doing – the fat man's chin was almost touching his collarbone.
When I moved to take over, Shotgun Westley left without a word, wiping his mouth and unslinging his gun as he ran back to the fray. I was irritated.
Hew down, CD-5.
It was my first time giving CPR for real. So much harder than it was in the class, on so many levels. I don't know if it was the fat man's powers, his weight, his armor, or some combination of the three, but it took incredible effort to actually fill his lungs. Just doing it made me want to gag. He'd vomited a little at some point, and though I'd wiped it away as best as I could when I was done checking his mouth for blockages, the taste lingered. The taste of salt water only accented that flavor, sort of the same way table salt did with a cooked meal.
Strapping Lad down, CD-5. Intrepid down, CD-5.
I was aware of Narwhal stepping into the fray, in my peripheral vision. She raised her hands, manifesting a dozen forcefields like oversize crystal shards around her, then flicked them forward. Like guillotine blades, the forcefields raced toward Leviathan, faster than the eye could follow, sunk into his flesh. Those that glanced off stopped mid-air to turn around, edges against his body, getting in the way of his legs moving.
There was a horrendous crash, I looked up, pausing to catch my breath, saw the remains of a car falling apart around Leviathan. Another crash, a piece of rubble turning to dust from the speed of the impact. I couldn't see through the bodies, but I had an idea of who it was. Ballistic.
A dumpster hit Leviathan in the upper body with the speed of a bullet, and he folded backward, his shoulders hitting the ground while his legs and feet were still held against the ground by a mess of razor blade forcefields. Narwhal sent another forcefield flying into his neck, and it cut as deep as any attack had yet. Blood spilled down from the opened wound, thick, more like ichor than anything I was used to seeing.
I heaved another breath of air into the lungs of the fat man, he sputtered, coughed up a mouthful of dark water. I knew I was supposed to follow up on the CPR, but there was no way I could move or roll this guy.
Unable to do anything but wait and see if he recovered, I raised my head to watch the continuing battle, feeling just a touch dizzy.
The ranged attack continued. Miss Militia had a bazooka as long as she was tall, and was firing a series of warheads into Leviathan. She wasn't reloading, either. Between shots, the weapon crackled with energy, fresh ammunition loaded into the chamber by her power. One projectile fired off each second.
There was the girl with the crossbow, who had been with Shadow Stalker. She had a teammate next to her, handing her the needle-like bolts from a quiver, was loading them into the large crossbow and firing them as fast as she was able. More than any other attack, the bolts were stabbing deep into Leviathan.
The attacks were actually having an effect. He was on the defensive, now, and he was hurting.
We're winning, I thought.
A flash to my left caught my eye.
It was my armband. The screen was ringed by a square of yellow, a yellow triangle with a black exclamation mark pointing in Leviathan's general direction.
People were shouting. Screaming, Narwhal was moving forcefields up in between us and Leviathan, other forcefields were going up.
"To me!" someone near me shouted. I turned to look, saw Shielder from New Wave.
Tidal Wave.
The fat man's eyes weren't even open, he moved too slowly as I shook him.
There was no helping it.
I gave the fat man one backwards glance, and bolted for Shielder. I mouthed an apology I didn't have the breath to utter, more for my conscience than for the man I hadn't saved.
Shielder waited until the last second to erect his cerulean bubble around himself. I caught a glimpse of one cape, a step too slow, getting trapped on the outside, a half second before the wave hit. Crushed against the exterior of the solid-light forcefield by the onrushing waters.
I'd been in an earthquake before. A three on the Richter scale, brief. I'd been at home, and a check of the house afterward only found a few books knocked off the shelf, a mirror fallen from the wall in the front hall. This was a hundred times more intense, the water rolling over us, against the nearby buildings, making the ground shudder.
For one brief moment, we were submerged, currents running past Shielder's bubble. water in front of us, to either side, behind and above. Outside the translucent bubble, I saw a massive dark shape zip past us, saw Shielder fall to his knees, as though the force of the water against the bubble in Leviathan's wake was nearly more than he could bear.
Heavy casualties, please wait, a chorus of identical voices announced, coming from the armbands of those ten or twelve of us in the bubble. Telling us that we'd just taken losses so heavy that the Dragon's computer system couldn't or wouldn't list them all.
The water surging around us stopped abruptly, evaporated into a mist in a second. Swirling, the mist began drifting.
Myrddin, working with Eidolon. They stood in the center of the road, Eidolon turning the water into mist, while Myrddin gathered it. Myrddin's wooden stick was held aloft, and the mist was forming a sphere the size of a beachball at one end.
Ok, I could almost buy the wizard angle, seeing that.
Leviathan leaped from the roof of a nearby building, landing in the midst of one group that was still reeling from the wave, started tearing through them.
The armbands remained ominously silent, even as I watched the casualties.
Myrddin pointed his staff and launched that orb at Leviathan. It hit harder than anything yet, and the brute was sent flying into the interior of a nearby building.
"Seal him off!" someone shouted. Chevalier. "Make him come back our way!"
Forcefields went up around the exterior of the building. The building itself bulged and warped as Vista exerted her power, thickened the walls, made the middle floors of the building draw together slightly, a slight hourglass shape. I saw her, wet and worn out, one hand raised, shouting something I couldn't make out at one of the out-of-town Wards. The Ward was speaking into his armband, replaying some message.
Depart from the rooftops, buildings may come down imminently, my armband announced.
Flying capes left the roof of the building, each carrying someone. They were still leaving as Leviathan lunged through the side of the building and the forcefields that had been reinforcing the walls. He tried to retreat, was stalled by more forcefields. I saw a figure on the far side. Bastion. The hero who had been in the news over his racist tirade.
Bastion bellowed, "Do it!"
Leviathan lunged, crashed through one barrier, making it shatter like glass, only for another to appear immediately after. He turned to head our way, was stopped by another.
"Fucking do it!" Bastion called out, barely audible.
The building above him bent and the midsection, unable to support the upper floors, crumbled. The upper half of the building crashed down atop Leviathan and Bastion.
Vista turned, wrapping her arms around the Ward next to her, burying her face in his shoulder.
"Move forward!" Armsmaster called out, "He's going to want to escape to recover! We can not let him!"
Leviathan had more than halved our ranks with the wave. I could see people face down in the water. Others were crumped up, their bodies contorted, broken, still.
And the damage to the city was just as bad, in a different way. I stared at the wreckage, the block and a half of shattered buildings, and saw a looming mess of arches and massive iron beams and girders, unable to comprehend what it was.
It dawned on me. The PHQ. The headquarters of our local superteam, tourist attraction, torn from whatever fixtures had rooted it in place, smashed to ruins against our coastline.
The Armband spoke. Losses are as follows: Debaser, Ascendant, Gallant, Zigzag, Prince of Blades, Vitiator, Humble, Halo, Whirlygig, Night, Crusader, Uglymug, Victor, Furrow, Barker, Elegance, Quark, Pelter, Snowflake, Ballistic, Mama Bear, Mister Eminent, Flashbang, Biter…
The names kept coming. I almost wanted to cover my ears, but not knowing for sure was worse.
…Cloister, Narwhal, Vixen, The Dart, Geomancer, Oaf, Tattletale…
The recitation continued, but I was numb to them. Tattletale? I started, looked around, as if I could find her. Where had she been?
No, what I suddenly really wanted to know was what the armband meant by losses. Were all those people dead? Was Tattletale dead? Why wasn't the armband directing me to help someone? Was there no point, or were our numbers so reduced we couldn't afford to?
I could hope it was the latter, but having seen some of the injuries I had, it didn't make me feel better. It was almost worse, thinking that Tattletale might by lying somewhere, bleeding out or unable to breathe, not getting help.
"Be ready!" Armsmaster called out.
Leviathan heaved himself up out of the building's remains in one motion, used his tail to pick up and fling a mess of broken wood, concrete and rebar at us. Aegis threw himself into the cluster of projectiles, but two capes were struck down by smaller chunks. A third was folded in half by the arc of water from Leviathan's tail.
Brigandine deceased, CD-5.
I couldn't afford to dwell on what might have happened to Tattletale. I wiped beads of water from the lenses of my mask with my gloved hands, pushed my hair out of my face, and made a note of my bugs. There were scant few in the way of bugs that could navigate in this storm. Myrddin had banished the water from the wave, somehow, but the downpour was making the streets flood fast enough that I didn't trust anything to crawl. No, my power was dead useless, here.
Leviathan turned around, lashing his tail behind him to cast three lashes of water our way, then crouched.
"He's running!" someone called out.
Leviathan dashed away from us, fast, only to skid to a stop and turn a corner for cover as Legend, Lady Photon, Laserdream and a half dozen other heroes opened fire from the skies above.
Others had picked themselves up, were moving into the side streets and alleys to follow, intent on cutting him off. I looked around, glancing over at the injured and wounded, knowing Tattletale was among them.
Eidolon was staying behind, raising his hands, and green sparks began rising from the ground, clustering around Eidolon and the fallen, obscuring them.
A second later, he and half of the bodies that had been scattered around the battlefield disappeared, the sparks blooming outward in twenty small firework explosions.
I took that as my cue to join everyone else in the pursuit. Eidolon could help the wounded. I couldn't, really.
I ran after the others, nearly tripping into a pothole in my hurry. My armband showed a green icon for Leviathan, and I followed it.
Rounding a corner, I came up at the rear of a small crowd, perilously close to the Endbringer.
Fog was blocking one route, while Sundancer stood at another, her superheated orb between her and Leviathan. The remaining capes were divided between the other two possible alleys Leviathan might have moved through and the air above him. Legend was hammering Leviathan down to the pavement with a series of laser blasts.
"Care!" Miss Militia cried out, "Fire in the hole!"
She fired a shot from her grenade launcher, grabbed another grenade with a blinking LED from her vest and loaded it into her gun. Why? She'd shown with the bazooka that she didn't need to load ammunition, hadn't she?
Then I realized why. It wasn't the kind of ammunition you found in normal guns. The first shot exploded into a mess of golden sticky ribbon, familiar, though it somehow escaped my memory where I'd seen it. The second exploded in midair, near Leviathan's shoulder, leaving the tips of the scales and one gaping wound glinting like crystal. As Leviathan moved to recoil, the edges of the crystal separated from his flesh and seeped with that dark ichor.
The third was a modified explosive I recognized. It bounced off the ground between Leviathan's foot and the hand he had planted on the ground, landed a ways behind and to the side of him, and exploded much like any other grenade might. What I recognized was the shimmer in the air around it, a near perfect sphere encompassing the surrounding area, catching Leviathan's leg, the end of his tail, part of his waist and stomach.
The explosion made Leviathan rear back, and the water that followed in his wake moved slower in that bubble, slowed down with each passing second.
Leviathan himself wasn't as affected, and he had one foot and an upper body outside of the bubble to help him pull himself free. He raised his leg free of the golden string goop and up out of the sphere, lashed his tail toward the crowd I was at the back of, catching three people, entwining the tip around their arms, legs and necks. He flicked them into the center of the time distortion bubble, where they got caught, unable to make their exit fast enough to avoid being frozen in time.
Jotun deceased, CD-6. Dauntless deceased, CD-6. Alabaster deceased, CD-6.
He lashed his tail, sending out a scythelike blade of water toward the other group, turned and leaped.
Miss Militia down, CD-6.
Fenja and Menja moved to attack him, each tall enough to be at his shoulder level, but Leviathan was quicker. He darted backward, gripped the side of a building, and turned to run up the wall. He used his tail to radically adjust the angle of his ascent, hooking it on an open window and swinging himself forward over the edge of the roof, before anyone on the ground could get a bead on him. Debris fell where his tail had pulled through a section of the wall.
Though he'd disappeared from my line of sight, I saw his afterimage continue rising. Shielder, floating in the air with the help of his sister, used a forcefield to stop the pair of them from being pulverized. The shield flickered out of existence a fraction of a second later. His reserves were exhausted, after helping save me and others from the last wave. He wasn't strong enough to take a hit from Leviathan or his afterimage.
Legend fired a barrage of lasers at Leviathan, but the Endbringer was quick to hop to one side, landing on the roof's edge. He made a sudden, standing leap a good eighty or a hundred feet into the air, tail extending to reach for the airborne heroes.
The whiplike tail struck Legend, and there was a firework display of light and sparks, Legend tumbling out of the sky, head over heels. In the same movement, the tail reached for Laserdream and Shielder.
Legend down, CD-6, The armbands announced, just in time to coincide with Legend hitting the ground.
Laserdream put her own shield up, and I could remember how Photon Mom, Laserdream and Shielder all had the same basic powers. The difference between them was that while Photon Mom's powers were well rounded, Shielder had a far, far, better forcefield, almost no flight ability and weak laser blasts. Laserdream was the opposite… her lasers and flight were good enough, but her forcefield, not so much.
Leviathan wrapped his tail around the spherical forcefield that surrounded the siblings, bringing it and the pair down toward the roof as he fell. When they were halfway down, the constriction of the tail broke through the forcefield, snaked around Shielder's body and Laserdream's arm.
The Endbringer landed on the roof with a shuddering impact and a showering of detritus, crashing through the roof. He bounded up to the edge of the roof, lunged off it.
I could see it like it was slow motion. Laserdream's hand glowed and she fired, using the concussive force of her laser to get her trapped hand free, flew up and back out of the way as Leviathan continued to fall.
Shielder, still in Leviathan's grip, had his upper body brought down against the ragged edge of the building in passing.
Shielder deceased, CD-6
Laserdream's ragged scream was like something distant, something I was barely aware of, because Leviathan was landing back in the area where the two alleys met. He leaped in Sundancer's direction, caught the ground with the claws of his hands and feet to halt his momentum. His echo surged forward, some striking the superheated orb, where it blossomed into massive clouds of steam. The rest went low, catching Sundancer below the waist, sweeping her legs out from under her in one violent rush. She flipped forward, her upper body colliding with the ground. The miniature sun winked out of existence.
Sundancer down, CD-6.
Turning on the spot, Leviathan moved his claw, creating a wave with all of the water he'd generated since entering the alley, driving it into one of the two gathered groups. As those capes stumbled and fell back, Leviathan leaped over the time distortion bubble, landing at the front of the other group. The group with some of the local wards, Velocity, some of Empire Eighty-Eight, and out-of-town capes I couldn't name.
The group I was at the rear of.
Someone stepped up to grab him mid-lunge – some woman I didn't recognize, who Othala was touching. She was granting this woman some form of invincibility that let her take a hit and not get knocked away by Leviathan.
Invincible though she might be, she couldn't do anything to stop the afterimage from crashing against and around her, through our assembled ranks.
I was shoved back – not by the water itself, but the tide of bodies that were struck, crushed and thrown by the afterimage. As I was pushed backward, hard, I was spun by an impact at my shoulder. My arm slammed against a windowsill, and it exploded with a sharp, jarring pain. I landed on my back, saw someone else get sent head over heels over the crowd, colliding against the wall with an audible cracking sound, landing limp as a rag doll, a matter of feet from me. He had a trumpet and a flag on his chest.
Escutcheon deceased, CD-6. Herald deceased, CD-6.
Kaiser – I hadn't even seen him in the group – erected a latticework of blades across the front of the alley, between us and Leviathan. It wasn't enough. Leviathan tore through them like I might tear through a wicker basket. Edged pieces of steel spun through the air and clattered to the ground.
Kaiser changed tactics, creating columns of steel instead, each three or four feet across, harder to shatter. They were slower to emerge, but they bent rather than broke.
Leviathan responded by pushing. He exerted his full strength on the barrier of blades and the columns, leaning against them. The walls broke around the base of the columns, and the pieces of steel fell.
A stab of pain from my arm reminded me I was hurt. Fuck, it hurt a lot. It throbbed, and each throb seemed to be worse than the last. I felt shaky as I used my good arm to stand.
Leviathan didn't make noise. I kept expecting a roar, or hiss, or something, but Leviathan was dead silent. I somehow imagined a victorious howl as he broke through the barrier, crouched, and lunged into the crowd.
He stopped, and I thought he was using his afterimage, halting so it could rush forward, but even the watery echo stopped a second after it appeared, only the very edges of it continuing forward to crash violently against the sides of the alley.
For several long heartbeats, it was nearly quiet, but for the sound of rain, people's noises of pain, mine included, and the sound of one of Kaiser's iron columns ripping free of the wall and falling atop a pile of blades.
It took me a second to realize what had happened. Leviathan hung frozen mid-pounce, and his emerging afterimage similarly stood there, frozen in time. In the midst of the afterimage was Clockblocker, half-immersed in water.
"Someone get him out of there! He's going to suffocate!" I shouted, my voice made that much more edgier and strained by the pain I was in. My voice, though, coincided with no less than five other cries, all rising to be heard over everyone else. Trap Leviathan, contain him, use more of those grenades to get him before he got free. Someone was even shooting arcs of lighting at Leviathan's frozen form. Too many commands from too many people who hadn't fought with or against Clockblocker, who didn't know how his power worked, who had conflicting ideas on what we had to do.
This chaos would fuck us over, keep us from accomplishing anything before Leviathan got free. We needed order, and most of the people who could have given it to us were out of action or nowhere nearby.
The armbands. Armsmaster had said it prioritized orders based on need.
My left arm hung by my side, and I couldn't even bring myself to raise it. Just gravity and the weight of my hand pulling down on it was excruciating. The idea of pressing the buttons was too much.
I reached for the person next to me, grabbed her wrist. Some woman with a crescent moon on a blue costume. She gave me a startled look with a lost, shellshocked expression. When I first pressed against the communications button, she moved her arm, as if she thought I was guiding her movements.
"Stay still!" I snarled at her. When I pressed again, depressing the two buttons with my pinky finger and thumb, she held her arm firm.
I shouted into the armband, "Clockblocker down, CD-6! Need a teleporter to get him free, stat!"
The time freezing effect of Clockblocker's power lasted anywhere from thirty seconds to ten minutes. How long had we spent, here, since Clockblocker had given us this momentary reprieve? It was hard to judge the passage of time with the adrenaline, the frenetic pace of the ongoing battle.
Trickster appeared in the place of the blue moon Woman, tipped his hat at me.
"Clockblocker, in there," I pointed with my good hand.
Trickster frowned, looked around.
"I apologize for desecrating your body, brave hero," he spoke, looking down at where the cape with the trumpet icon on his chest had flopped, dead. "You do good work even in death."
Was he mentally cracked? Was he serious or was he playing around? I suspected the latter, but kidding around and wasting time in a situation like this?
In a second, the cape was replaced by an unconscious Clockblocker. The pane of his helmet was cracked and leaking a trail of blood. I bent down to examine him, was pushed out of the way by someone else. Some woman with a costume that outlined her bones, like a really good version of the skeleton costumes you saw on Halloween. She began using her fingers to check Clockblocker's neck, and I couldn't help but suspect she was a doctor.
"Listen!" the voice that cut through the shouts and the frantic chatter was authoritative, strong.
Armsmaster. He had Myrddin, Eidolon and Chevalier just behind him. People turned to listen, myself included.
"He's torn through our front line, he's taken down some of our best, and he's deliberately targeted and eliminated most of the capes who were in Bastion's group. We have precious few left who can take a hit from this creature and survive it, and we're running low on those who can wall off another tidal wave or block his path.
"We're not going to be able to go on with Plan A." The words hung in the air.
"This brute is hurt, but we don't have the resources to hold him down while we hurt him any more. We're too tightly packed, like this, and it's too easy for him to take us down in droves. Two or three more minutes of this, and there won't be any of us left."
Armsmaster turned, looked up at where Leviathan stood, frozen. He pointed up at the Endbringer with his Halberd. "We spread out. The second this beast is free, he's going to look for a way out, to run and heal up what we've done to him. So we cut him off, we slow him down and keep him from getting to any areas where he can do real damage.
"Eidolon is going to leave, do what he can to minimize the damage from the waves and ensure the rest of the city doesn't get leveled while we're fighting here. The rest of us are going to slow Leviathan down best we can, take any opportunities we can to hurt the motherfucker. In just a second, we're going to organize you guys, put the toughest and strongest closest to this bastard, space out the people who can hurt him, get the weakest ones positioned to pass on word if they see him slip past us.
"This is our plan B. We stall, from here on out we prioritize survival over putting this abomination down, and we fucking pray that Scion notices there's an Endbringer around and shows up before this city and everyone in it is a memory."
Posted in 8.3	| Tagged Alexandria, Armsmaster, Assault, Bastion, Battery, Chevalier, Dragon, Fog, Kaiser, Legend, Leviathan, Miss Militia, Narwhal, Night, Othala, Panacea, Regent, Tattletale, Taylor, Victor	| 142 Replies
Posted on March 6, 2012 by wildbow
There was a quiet murmur through the room at Legend's words. One in four dead. And that didn't mean the rest of us would get away unscathed.
"I'm telling you your chances now because you deserve to know, and we so rarely get the chance to inform those individuals brave enough to step up and fight these monsters. The primary message I want to convey, even more than briefing you on the particulars of his abilities, organizing formations and battle plans, is that I do not want you to underestimate Leviathan. I have seen too many good heroes," he paused for a fraction of a second, "And villains, too, die because they let their guard down."
Legend paused, glanced out the window. The storm clouds had reached the beach, and torrential rain stirred the water into a froth. Not just rain, but buckets of water.
"We think of Leviathan as the middle child; he was the second of the three to arrive. He is not the physical powerhouse Behemoth is, nor the cunning manipulator that the Simurgh so often proves to be. That said, I would advise you to think of him as having many of the strengths of both siblings at once. You've seen the videos on television and the internet. You know what he is physically capable of. I want to be clear that despite the image he might convey, he is not stupid, and he can display a level of cunning and tactics that can and will catch you off guard.
"I will tell you what you may not know from the videos. He feels pain, he does bleed, but few attacks seem to penetrate deep enough past the surface to seriously harm him. He is like the other two Endbringers in this respect.
"What sets him apart is his focus on water. You're likely aware of his afterimage, his water echo. This is no mere splash of water. At the speeds Leviathan can move, surface tension and compressibility make water harder than concrete. He also has a crude hydrokinesis, the ability to manipulate water, and there will be water on the battlefield. We believe that this is what lets him move as fast as he does when he is swimming. Faster than he is normally, far faster than any speedster we have on record."
He went on, "Were it just that, this fight might still warrant a show of force like what we've gathered here. But things are more serious than that, which brings me to our primary concern. As much as Dragon and Armsmaster's advance warning might give us the opportunity to make this a good day, other issues threaten to make it just the opposite.
"I spoke of Leviathan as a hydrokinetic. I can't state this enough – Leviathan is primarily a hydrokinetic on a macro scale. There is no better illustration than the days where Leviathan won.
"Newfoundland," he spoke.
I knew exactly what he was speaking of, and mouthed the date as he spoke it, "May ninth, 2005. Nearly half a million dead. The Canadian island simply gone, after the shelf of land holding it up cracked in the face of what we now understand were incredible pressures beneath the water level.
"Kyushu, the night of November second and the morning of the third, 1999. His sixth appearance. Nine and a half million killed when the region was swamped with tidal waves from every direction while Leviathan disrupted prearranged evacuation attempts. Nearly three million evacuees rendered homeless, a nation sundered.
"These were errors, grave mistakes from defending heroes. We had but one strategy at the time – to hem him in, minimizing the effects of growing waves and casualties until Leviathan was beaten into a retreat or Scion arrived. These areas, however, were too vulnerable. Waiting let Leviathan build up the strength of his attacks, and we lost."
He paused. "We have since classified the locations the Endbringers target as either hard targets or soft targets. The hard battlefields are where we stand our ground, buy time, wear him down. The soft ones are locations where we cannot afford to do this."
The television screen showed a cross section of Brockton Bay as seen from ground level. The West end of the city was bordered by hills, and the terrain sloped gradually from the base of the mountain down to the water. Directly below the image of the buildings that marked the city's location, there was a large cavern, bordered by rock on all sides except the part nearest the beach, which was sand. It was marked blue – filled with water.
"Brockton Bay, this location, is a soft target. The city was originally founded at this location because of the proximity to the coastline for trade routes and an aquifier that provided the first settlers with access to fresh water. This aquifier, essentially an underground lake beneath the city, is our weak point. From the moment Leviathan shows himself, we expect Leviathan will stir and manipulate this underground reservoir to erode the surrounding sand, silt and rock. Add the tidal waves from above, with the resulting tremors and impacts…"
I doubted anyone failed to understand what would follow. A section of the city, perhaps most of the city, could collapse into the aquifier.
He paused, "We have to end this fast. Each wave he brings on top of us is stronger than the last. This means we have two priorities. First, we cannot let him out of our sight. From the moment the battle is initiated, we hem him in, sustain an offensive onslaught. If we let him slip past our defensive lines, precious time will be wasted chasing him, getting him in another situation where we can contain his movements.
"Our second priority is that we need to find ways to hurt him. If you cannot, if your attacks are deflected or prove otherwise useless, work to support those who can. It is vain to hope to kill him, but he can be whittled down enough that he will flee back to the ocean, and if we hurt him enough, it may delay the time before he is capable of making another attack elsewhere."
Legend frowned. The windows were rattling with the force of the rain against them. It was almost impossible to see through them with the water that streamed down, and the overall gloom beyond.
"This is what the Endbringers are. As of yet, we've been unable to stop them, unable to get through even one confrontation without grievous losses, be it civilian casualties, the loss of a city, or the loss of the lives of some of the bravest and strongest of us. And they will keep coming, one after another, winning these small victories, and winning some major ones.
"You are doing a good thing. The greatest thing. This is why we are tolerated, why society allows and accounts for the capes that walk the streets and fight in its towns. Because we are needed for situations like this. With your assistance, we can forestall the inevitable. Your efforts and, if you choose to make them, your sacrifices, will be remembered."
He looked to Armsmaster.
Armsmaster spoke, authoritative, less impassioned, but confident, "The Wards are handing out armbands of Dragon's design. These are adjustable to slide over your arm and should be tightened around your wrist. The screen on the top of the armband notes your position on a grid, as well as Leviathan's last updated location. Use this. You'll also note there are two buttons. The button to the left lets you send messages to everyone else wearing an armband. It will not, unless you are a member of the Protectorate or otherwise a veteran of these fights, directly communicate what you say to everyone else wearing an armband. Dragon has a program screening messages and passing them on through the network based on priority, to cut down on unnecessary chatter that could distract from crucial information. If you must bypass this three to five second delay, speak the words 'Hard Override' before conveying your message. Abuse of this feature will lose you the ability to send any further messages."
"The second button is a ping. Use it in the case of an emergency, to alert others if you are in danger or hurt. If it is not an emergency, but you want assistance, such as a flier to get you to another vantage point or you see an opportunity to turn the tables, press both buttons, tell the armband what you want. Dragon's program will prioritize your needs, with assistance being directed your way if others are not occupied with more pressing matters. The armband tracks your condition and will automatically send a ping if you are badly injured or unconscious."
Legend called out, "Capes! If you have faced an Endbringer before, stand!"
I watched as the rest of the Protectorate, about a third of the out-of-town Wards, Bambina, half of a commercially sponsored cape team and the Travelers stood. I couldn't help but notice Armsmaster lean over toward Miss Militia, whisper something in her ear, and point at the Travelers. Miss Militia shook her head.
"When in doubt, follow the orders of the Protectorate first! We have trained, organized and planned for this! The others who are standing, now, are the ones you listen to if we aren't contradicting their order! They have been through situations much like this, you go with their instincts!
"We are splitting you into groups based on your abilities! If you are confident you can take a hit from Leviathan and get up afterwards, or if you have the ability to produce expendable combatants, we need you on the front line! You will be directed by Alexandria and Dragon!"
As a share of the crowd moved toward one corner of the room, Armsmaster stepped down from the podium to approach Tattletale, Grue and Regent, "Where's Hellhound?"
"At least call her by her real name," Tattletale glared up at him, "She's not here. You knocked her dogs around enough to know they aren't that tough, and that means you're implying they're expendable. Be glad she wasn't around to hear that and figure that out."
Armsmaster opened his mouth to respond, but broke off when Legend called out his name.
"Armsmaster and Chevalier will be leading the hand to hand combatants who do not fit in Alexandria's group! Anyone who thinks they can harm or hamper Leviathan in close quarters, you'll be assisting and reinforcing the front line!"
Armsmaster strode away from the Undersiders, and I saw Assault, Battery, Brandish, Night and Fog move to join that group, among others. Smaller than the first group, but I suppose it took a certain amount of bravery to be willing to get close to an Endbringer when you weren't invincible or close to it.
The boy with the metal skin began to pass through my row. He handed me an armband from a bag, and I slid it over my hand and cinched it in place. A flat, square screen showed a satellite view of the building we were in, and the surrounding parking lot and beach. A display read: 'State name'.
I pressed the communicator button and spoke, "Skitter."
My name appeared on the display, with a yes and no display in the corners over the respective buttons. I confirmed it.
Legend was still organizing the groups. "-forcefields, telekinesis, whatever your power, if you can interrupt Leviathan's movements or help reduce the impacts of the waves, you're the backup defense! Bastion will direct you!"
I was also all too aware that the size of the group that was still sitting was dwindling, and I had no place to go.
"Movers! We need fliers, teleporters, runners! You'll be responding to pings! Rescue the fallen, get them to emergency care, assist any others where needed! Myrddin will give you your orders!
"Long ranged attackers, with me! If you fall in more than one category, go with the group where you think you'll be the greatest assistance!"
Did I count as a long ranged attacker? No, my power wouldn't hurt Leviathan. I turned to look at those of us who were still seated. I recognized Grue, Tattletale, Regent, Othala, Victor, Panacea and Kaiser. There were a half dozen more who I'd never seen before. People from out of town.
"The rest of you-" Legend was interrupted by shouts. Bastion bellowed, pointed, and the people in his team moved.
Layers of forcefields went up around the far wall in front of and behind the front windows, and they weren't enough to take the hit. The building rocked with an impact, the forcefields to the left collapsed, and the water began to rush in, carrying chunks of brick, glass and the metal windowframes into the lobby.
One of the television screens toppled in the onrushing flood. The other two showed a flickering series of images, a half second of each. The coast of Brockton Bay being struck with a wave. The ferry, the harbor down at the south end of town, the boardwalk, all smashed by the initial wave. I saw a glimpse of a tall figure in the middle of one shot, little more than a blur behind the spray of water and the rain.
There was a loud groan, and the ceiling at one corner of the room began to descend swiftly toward the ground. Narwhal flicked two fingers up in that direction, and shored the ceiling with some forcefields, but I saw other portions of the ceiling begin to sag, gallons of water pouring through the gaps in the ceiling tile.
"Strider!" Legend bellowed, over the noise and chaos, "Get us out of here!"
A voice sounding from the armband, female, synthesized, except I couldn't make it out over the noise.
The air was sucked out of my lungs, and there was a noise like thunder. My entire body was rattled down to the core, and I thought I might have been struck by lightning. I was outside, I realized, on my hands and knees in what I first took to be the middle of a shallow river. The rain that pounded down on us was more like a waterfall than any rainstorm I'd been in. The taste of the salty ocean water filled my nose and mouth. My soaked mask clung to my lower face, forcing me to hang my head to keep my breaths from pulling more water into my mouth. A few coughs and heavy exhalations cleared the worst of it away.
We'd arrived in the middle of a road, one I'd crossed several times when going to the loft or leaving it. It was still dark out – either the sun either hadn't started to rise yet, or the storm was enough to obscure it. The 'river' that I was kneeling in was the ebb of water from the first tidal wave, receding downhill toward the beach and the ocean. It brought waves of trash, litter, broken windows, wooden boards and dead plants with it.
I looked around, saw the other heroes and villains composing themselves, climbing to their feet in the knee deep rush of water. A few fliers were conveying our ranged combatants up to the rooftops.
At the end of the road, downhill, was the Boardwalk, or what was left of it. From what I could see through the downpour, the wooden pathways and docks had been shattered by the initial wave, to the point that many were standing nearly straight up, or were buckled into fractured arches. Water frothed and sprayed as it rushed back against the ragged barrier that had been Brockton Bay's high end shopping district.
He was there, too. I could see his silhouette through the rain and the spraying water that was the tidal wave's aftermath, much as I had on the television set. Thirty feet tall, the majority of him was was muscled but not bulky. His hunched shoulders, neck and upper torso were the exception, bearing cords of muscles that stood out like steel cables. It gave him a top-heavy appearance, almost like an inverted teardrop with limbs and a tail.
His proportions were wrong – his calves and forearms seemed too long for his height, his clawed fingers and digitigrade feet doubly so. He moved with a languid sort of grace as he advanced through the spraying water. His arms moved like pendulums, claws sweeping against the water's surface, while his upper body swayed left and right, as if to give counterbalance to his great height. His tail, forty or fifty feet long and whiplike, lashed behind and around him in time with his steps, perhaps borne of the same need for balance that gave him his teetering gait.
Gallons of water poured around him in the wake of his movements, roughly the same amount of mass as the body part that had just occupied the space. This 'afterimage' streamed down him and splashed violently against the water he waded through.
As he got closer to the heroes and villains that were organizing into lines, shouting something I somehow couldn't hear over the buzz of fear and adrenaline, I could almost make out his face. It was something you never really saw in the videos or pictures. He had no nose or mouth, no ears. His face was a flat, rigid expanse of the same scaly skin that covered the rest of him, like the scales of a crocodile's back. The hard, featureless plain of Leviathan's 'face' was broken up only by four cracks or tears – one on the right side of his face, three on the left. In each of those dark gaps, the green orbs of his eyes glowed with a light that pierced through the rain. His head moved faster than the rest of him, twitching from one angle to the next like someone's eyeball might flicker left, right, up and down, taking us all in, uncannily out of time with the rest of his body.
"Get ready!" Legend howled the words.
It was hard to say whether Leviathan heard the command or if Legend had spotted some tell, but Leviathan dropped to all fours at the same time Legend gave the command. With Legend's cry still ringing in the air, Leviathan moved.
He was fast.
Fast enough that his clawed hands and feet didn't touch the road beneath the water – after the initial push, his forward momentum was enough to let him run on the water's surface.
Fast enough that before I could finish drawing in a breath, to scream or shout something or gasp in horror, he was already in the middle of us, blood and water spraying where he collided with the lines of assembled capes, and the armbands were beginning to announce the hopelessly injured and deceased. Carapacitator down, CD-5. Krieg down, CD-5. WCM deceased, CD-5. Iron Falcon down, CD-5. Saurian down, CD-5…
Posted in 8.2	| Tagged Alexandria, Armsmaster, Assault, Bambina, Bastion, Battery, Brandish, Chevalier, Dragon, Fog, Grue, Kaiser, Legend, Leviathan, Miss Militia, Narwhal, Night, Othala, Panacea, Regent, Strider, Tattletale, Taylor, Victor, Weld	| 71 Replies