Agony.
I blinked the pain away, wondering why my leg was throbbing. I'd gotten scuffed up in the Endbringer's initial assault, and I probably had some fractures I wasn't aware of.
"Fuck, we're still getting torn apart out there, even with its hydrokinesis nullified." Strider rasped as he reappeared with a barely-conscious Myrrdin over his shoulders.
Guardian stood grim, perched on the edge of the wobbling skyscraper as Leviathan weaved between a coordinated assault between the Triumvirate and two dozen capes in the distance.
His entire focus was spent on maintaining the most complicated and intricate forcefield lattice I'd ever seen, with hundreds of meters of metal wire suspended in the sky around us and held up with his power folding on itself. With this much metal around us, we had been able to hold out against Leviathan's assaults several times, albeit with some trouble.
Leviathan had managed to smash its way through the force barrier three times. However, whenever the forcefield matrix had begun to crack, Strider would teleport us to a building some distance away. Far away enough that Leviathan couldn't reach us without running into a wall of Alexandria type capes. In a matter of seconds, Archive would pull an identical lattice mesh she had stored, which had been produced by Kaiser's power en masse.
It was funny that if Guardian and Kaiser weren't complete and bitter arch-enemies, they would have had made an unbelievably powerful tag team.
Frenetic deceased, BW-6. Rime down, BW-4. Anomaly deceased, BW-7. Alabaster deceased, BW-7
"I need to be down there" Strider growled through clenched teeth, staring down at the battle from the roof.
"I'd resist the urge if I were you, Strider" Guardian responded sternly. "We need you bringing downed capes to safety here, and you're far too valuable to risk in another close call. The damned thing would have executed you if I hadn't risked my neck to shield you, long enough for you to teleport us out."
"Take the safe rescues that Dragon's programs reroute to you, but until then, sit your ass here with us." Artificer admonished. "Antares is the most important cape on the battlefield right now, arguably as important as the Big Five."
"Besides" I added, "We came up with a plan."
Antares stood on a makeshift tower, created from stacking Guardian's shields on top of each other to get a perfect view of the battlefield. The entropy manipulator had been a joke. He was a C-lister and an entertainer, and he had taken it in stride. He had built an entire online persona around his vapid and outrageous flamboyance, but none of the eccentric entertainer remained here. His usual flippant demeanor had twisted into one of stern concentration and determination the moment Leviathan had shattered his smartphone.
Antares was a YouTuber spoken in the same lines as Uber and Leet, whose ability to accelerate entropy and other thermodynamic properties had in the course of the last hour, become the most spectacular counter to Leviathan's hydrokinesis the world had ever seen.
I hadn't been there when it happened, but from what I could piece together, Tattletale had requested an escort to get a better view of the battlefield. Realizing that Crown was the only cape who could fight Leviathan up front, Phaseshift had gone up to protect her in case anything went wrong.
Minutes later, a massive multi-story tall tidal wave that had surged in their direction, which promptly….dispersed into harmless water vapor. To top things off, the wave's forward momentum had completely dissipated, and a fine, misty fog filled the air wherever Leviathan attempted to summon his tidal waves.
Antares had also been streaming the battle live until the phone lines went down. PHO was going to have a field day with that stunt tomorrow, and the clip had probably gone viral already. Leviathan's response had been swift and brutal, and the Endbringer had immediately turned its full attention on him. However, Strider had reacted quickly,and managed to teleport to safety with Antares.
Needless to say, protecting Antares had quickly become a priority for anyone who'd witnessed the feat, and capes all around had rushed to defend him. Now we had a small platoon of capes working to keep Antares protected.
Once Eidolon had gotten word of what Antares was capable of, he had quickly rushed to join the fray. Eidolon had immediately dropped Leviathan thirty feet into the ground with a Gravity Pulse. In that moment, Antares turned his power across the stormclouds above. With a sweep across the sky, the category 5 hurricane had weakened into a gentle drizzle,until Leviathan got out of the ground and attempted to start the storm anew.
Antares promptly shut him down, and the Endbringer redoubled its efforts to eliminate him. Strider had reappeared with Clockblocker a second later, putting a freeze on the forcefield lattice Kaiser and Guardian had set up.
With Antares focusing on Leviathan, any attempts Leviathan made at summoning his water shadow immediately failed, and there was nothing the Endbringer could do to reach him. Nor could Leviathan touch unconscious capes the teleporters pulled into the frozen mesh from the battlefield.
Now, the Protectorate's strongest capes were actually managing to keep it pressured with the water evaporated into a heavy fog of water vapor. It helped a lot that Eidolon was completely focused on battling Leviathan directly instead of managing battlefield control for once.
"You absolutely sure about this Tattletale?" Clockblocker remarked unsurely. "Antares is doing some serious work shutting down the damn monster's mobility and water, but actually killing an Endbringer?"
"I have to agree. I ran your estimates through a simulator, and if its core is as dense as you guessed, then there isn't enough mass in the known universe to actually break the damn thing." Dagger pointed out.
"I'm positive", Lisa answered them, "Flechette's power doesn't care about conventional physics. It lets her cut clean through anything, and I mean anything."
Lisa turned to me, "How's the web coming along, Skitter?"
Pain.
"Almost ready" I answered, blinking away another momentary spike of pain. I looked up at Parian, Artificer, and Flechette. Artificer was busy spraying some sort of chemical adhesive in the air while parian wove the strings to attach them together and lengthen their range.
"You'd better not be jerking our chain about all this, blondie" Flechette snarled at Tattletale.
"Come on Flechette, you saw how your bolts passed cleanly through the thing. I know you can kill it, unless Leviathan wanted to let me see all that as a ruse."
"Just stick to the plan everyone" Guardian grumbled. "Strider, Cache, Archive, get ready. I'm about to contact Eidolon. We should be able to hold him for about three seconds right? Dagger?"
"According to the Energy-Pressure models I threw together based on all past Leviathan battles? Yeah." Dagger's visor continued to flash as she typed away at a miniature keyboard. "Leviathan might be holding back, but if past Endbringer battles are any indicator, it won't show any new cards until we actually manage to threaten it. The forcefield you'll be able to throw up can withstand something on the order of tens of Gigapascals, which will hold him tight for about... two point eight four seconds. That is of course, unless the creature increases its physical strength threshold again."
Pain.
I winced, bracing myself before speaking up. "Everybody here knows the plan. We go in fast and hard. Between all the capes here with transportation abilities and pocket dimensions we can drop several tons of metal on Leviathan. As you know, Guardian's shielding power increases exponentially with the amount of metal present."
Kaiser clucked his tongue in irritation.
"If Tattletale and Dagger are to be believed" Guardian added, moving to my pile of silk. "Any actual damage done to Leviathan is superficial. It's all just another misdirection from the bastard. If we're going to attack it at all, we need to disable it for the killing stroke immediately after. With any luck, severing the tail and legs should buy us enough time to dig up the actual core. We'll be trying to do everything in our power to hold him down while Parian, Vista, and Flechette set up their combination attack."
I swallowed a lump forming in my throat, before speaking up again, trembling. "Endbringers have historically only escalated when we begin to give them a modicum of trouble. That means we need to cripple if not kill the thing before it can pull out any new tricks. We'll only have one shot at this."
"Right, kill a creature that's notorious for letting you think you've got it before massacring everyone in sight" Impulse deadpanned. "I hope you all know this is suicide."
"I know, Impulse. Someone has to step up though" Guardian responded, squeezing my shoulder reassuringly. "It's been too long since the world has seen a single ray of hope when it comes to Endbringers. It's about time we gave them one."
Agony
The world rushed by in a blur.
A black butterfly fluttered through an endless blue expanse.
-ooo-
I woke up, and I screamed.
I didn't know why, I just screamed and screamed..
I thrashed and rolled to the right, feeling a searing pain as needles and pins raked my arms and legs, causing the monitors around me to beep furiously. An eternity later, I could dimly make out a group of people in scrubs rushing in and holding me down. I lashed out in panic, kicking and punching and biting. A sharp jolt of pure agony ran up my leg, and I spasmed upwards.
I was feverish, and everything just hurt so much, to the point that I wasn't thinking at all. I felt terrified, and I didn't know why. Why did everything hurt so much? Where was I? How did I get here? What happened? I vaguely felt a pair of hands cupping my face, and everything blurred out.
-ooo-
Agony.
-letale Down, CA-9
Antares Down, CA-9
Menja Deceased, CA-9
Othala Down, CA-9….
I coughed and sputtered, lifting my mask to give myself some room to breathe. 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.
The surprise attack had gone well. The pocket dimension capes had gone first from the air, dropping literal tons of metal down at Leviathan while Eidolon held him down for a moment with a gravity manipulation power. Guardian had then trapped him in place by carving his forcefields into the mass of steel. Then, Parian used her to power to surround the makeshift prison with the silk that had been infused with Flechette's power.
With a creak and groan, the Endbringer had burst out of the hunk of scrap and forcefields used to contain it, and Parian tightened the lines. The massive web of silk carved straight through the metal, and dozens of silk lines criss-crossed through Leviathan's body causing the creature to fall apart in chunks much to the disbelief of every cape that was present.
….Laserdream down, CA-9
Artificer down, CA-9
Kaiser deceased, CA-10
Then, my world had exploded in white hot pain, and now I found myself slowly crawling to my feet in a daze, wondering what exactly had happened.
About four blocks away, flying capes swarmed around the Endbringer, dodging telegraphed lightning bolts from the sky and pummeling the injured monster with a barrage of high-powered attacks. Crown, Phaseshift's heavy hitting plasmakinetic ate a lightning bolt and spat it directly at the torn-up Endbringer. Leviathan barely flinched from the attack - a lightning bolt that would have easily dropped a high level brute as it continued to stand and fire narrow jets of pressurized water.
Despite the pounding headache I had, it was clear what had happened after a moment of collecting myself. Leviathan had sent a lightning bolt to come directly down on our heads. The incomplete forcefield lattice was the only thing that had prevented us from being barbecued on the spot. Our combination attack had been successful, severing both of Leviathan's legs and shredding its torso into hamburger meat. However, with Antares taken down, the skies had begun to darken again, and Dragon's communicators were already reporting increasing tidal activity in the area. I took a moment to compose myself, and my body spasmed as I felt another wave of pain shoot up my spine.
Agony
"L-Little owl…" a voice choked out nearby.
My eyes widened in surprise at the nickname. There were only a handful of people in the world who knew about that nickname, and the only one who consistently called me by it was dead.
I slowly turned towards the voice, and my lightning-addled brain throbbed in pain. Guardian was lying in a bloody and charred heap on the ground.
It was clear that he had taken the brunt of the lightning bolt while trying to build his forcefield lattice. His chest plate had been charred by the lightning bolt, and it had been partially glued to his chest. His trademark visored face mask had been blown apart by the force of the lightning bolt. Guardian winced as he pulled his leg off a metal spike he had landed on, and he rolled over, dragging himself into a seated, slumped against the wall. I stared down at him with a deer-in-headlights look as he met my eyes with a sheepish grin.
The Guardian of Brockton Bay's identity had been revealed to me, and it took me a moment to realize that Guardian was someone I knew very well.
Before he had vanished from my life, at least. Before I had lost Emma for reasons still unknown to me in the same year.
I leaned over with my knife, cutting away what I could before the rest of his armor could cool and weld to his chest. He shifted away reflexively, and choked in pain.
"Don't try to move, Alan" I whispered. "You're in pretty bad shape."
"Heh, I'll...I'll be fine unless that fucker takes a moment to come over and finish us off. I got up from injuries way worse than this when I brought down The Merchants."
He coughed, spitting out blood before forcefully ripping out the pieces of his armor still stuck in his skin through clenched teeth.
"How long have you known?" I asked quietly, frantically cutting away at his armor. It was fortunate all things considered that the armor had only melted in above his sternum.
"Since the first night I ran into you kicking Lung's ass. By the way, you have very nice hair and all, but you should make more of an effort at concealing your identity. You should definitely wear a different hairstyle and distort your voice a little if you're going to do this stuff."
"This isn't exactly the best time to lecture me on being a cape, Alan. I guess now I know why you let us go when you found us after the bank incident."
"You're right on the mark kid, but I digress. Where's Kaiser? I...I can still fight, and we need to set up the dome again" he sputtered with clear false bravado. "Get Antares here some smelling salts and everything."
I glanced around, head throbbing in pain, before my eyes settled half a block down. The E88 leader had been flung clean off the roof by the force of the lightning, and had landed on a poor angle. We had been lucky, dropping down into the building from the fourth story instead of being tossed off outright. I numbly recalled that the armband had pronounced him dead about a minute ago.
"Kaiser's dead" I responded. "Looks like you two won't get to terrorize Downtown with your little lover's spats anymore."
"Well, isn't that a damn shame" he chuckled through ragged breaths. "We made such a great team too. It's rather unfortunate that we spent so long trying to take each other out."
"What now?" I asked uncertainly.
"Take charge, kid."
"Huh? What could I possibly do in this situation?"
"You have a gift...I've known it ever since the first time I saw you in action. You and me...we can slug out on the front lines if we really have to, but that isn't where we belong. We fight with our brains. You took down Lung, something no-one has been able to do before. Remember the plan...this is just another Lung, Taylor."
He painfully brought his armband up to his mouth, and activated the armband.
"Guardian speaking." he coughed, as he out a mouthful of blood. As you might know by now, Antares is down, and I am too injured to continue leading our desperate little assault. I am turning my haphazard Endslayer operational control over to Skitter. Her power allows her unparalleled field surveillance. We have over a dozen injured capes under the caved-in roof across the street from Fugly Bob's. We're going to need a teleporter evac at first available opportunity."
His wounds were already knitting together before my eyes, but it'd be a while before he could get up from that.
"Kill the fucking bastard, Taylor. Make it pay for everything it's done"
With one more ragged cough, he dropped his head back onto the ground, and sank away into blissful unconsciousness.
Guardian Down, CA-9.
I turned to glance at the battle again. Leviathan was standing on one leg, using jets of pressurized water to stay upright as its flesh knit together, noticeably slower than ever before, The capes still lucky and strong enough to stay on the field were going all out against it, hammering its exposed core with everything they had.
I looked back down on my old friend's broken form, and I clenched my fists in anger.
The Guardian of Brockton Bay and Tattletale had both gone down, but it had taken the three of us to throw together the haphazard plan. The plan we had conjured had worked. We had already made Leviathan bleed more than anyone had in the entire history of Endbringer battles. The damage was really all for show if Lisa was to be believed, but we'd still grounded its and exposed its core.
It was time to finish the job.
Agony.
I jerked in alarm as my vision blurred, then everything shattered into a chaotic whirlpool of fuzz, static, and pitch-black butterfly wings.
-ooo-
"We're losing her!"
"Get me half a cc of epinephrine, stat!"
The EKG besides the patient's bed beeped rapidly, then drew out into a long, flat green line, and the hospital floor descended into abject chaos.
"What in the world is going on in here?" Panacea demanded as she stomped into the room. She turning her gaze on the patient and blinked in surprise.
"I just healed her injuries yesterday, I was pretty damn thorough with the job too."
"I don't know what's going on, Ms. Dallon. She just woke up screaming and kicking, and the next thing we knew, her bones just started...cracking."
"Out of the way" Panacea commanded. She walked up to the patient and cupped her hands around the girl's neck.
Seven ribs that were bent and fractured with obvious impact trauma. Microtears all over her aorta and left ventricle. Ruptured appendix, lungs, and right kidney. Spine shattered below the sixth thoracic vertebrae. Shattered left femur with a sprained ankle. Trauma-induced peripheral neuropathy. I'm positive these are the same injuries I healed yesterday, but at a significantly reduced level of severity. What the fuck?
Panacea focused, repairing the physical damage wherever she found it. Then, she restarted the girl's heart before oxygen death could set in.
A second later, the EKG began to beep rhymically again, and the flat chime of death was replaced by the wonderful pulse of life.
-ooo-
...Leviathan's macrohydrokinesis had resurged to unprecedented levels, and the rain began to pour in the relentless torrent it had been early in the battle. Tidal waves slammed into the docks, toppling buildings and flooding the streets beneath us.
I sat on the third floor of the building next to Fugly Bob's, eyes closed as I gathered insects to speak into the assorted armbands I'd collected on the floor in front of me.
..Glory girl deceased CA-5
Hookwolf deceased CA-6
Lady Photon deceased CA-4
Shielder deceased, CA-5
Strapping Lad deceased CA-6
Manpower deceased CA-6
Shieldwall deceased CA-7
Brandish deceased CA-6
Seventeen more deceased. Calculating losses….
Capes fell in droves defending Flechette, victims of its newly revealed hydrokinetic kill radius. The Endbringer tossed a constant barrage of pressurized water jets and lightning bolts at her direction, and teleporters. The downpour, constant pressure, and heavy winds were interfering with her ability to take aim and finish off the Endbringer.
Agony
A swarm of blue butterflies filled my mind's eye vision, and everything faded to black.
-ooo-
I drifted, with an endless reel of images rushing by. The chaos swirled into a blend of abstract edges, and shattered into a disturbing cacophony of fractals and alien geometries. It was like I was staring through a kaleidoscope, which assaulted me with an endless barrage of noise, tastes, and smells. I couldn't think or move.
The picture shattered, and fell like glass in my line of vision, leaving me in total darkness.
I dreamed.
I dreamt of my parents.
I dreamt of Lisa taking me shopping for the first time.
I dreamt of the endless gauntlet of good-natured pranks Aisha and Mortimer would conspire to spring on Gabriel.
I dreamt of Alec and John, competing, and shouting obscenities while playing their video games..
I dreamt of Petyr, climbing to his feet and staring down Bonesaw with a broken ankle buying me enough time to escape.
I dreamt of a happier time, in a nostalgic past, where families would get together for holiday dinners. Whole and unbroken. No serendipitous accidents to rip us apart.
I dreamt of a single ethereally beautiful blue butterfly, fluttering its wings in the endless void.
-ooo-
My eyes fluttered open, and I found myself staring up at a white ceiling. I could dimly hear the unfortunate and telltale hum of a cardiogram nearby, and I looked down only to see a bunch of wires sticking into me.
...Was that a catheter?
I looked around, sitting up to stare at the white walls, surrounded by the smell of rubbing alcohol and various chemicals.
Well Taylor, looks like you managed to land yourself in a hospital. Again.
I stared straight ahead, directly at the unblemished white wall in front of me. I was tired and spacing out, and having trouble remembering what had happened to me this time.
Ah right, and then an Endbringer had suddenly appeared over Boston, but why couldn't I remember anything about the battle? Was I Mastered?
I was in the middle of trying to collect my thoughts when the door to the room clicked, and I tensed as the door slammed open. A team of a doctor wearing a white lab coat and a pair wearing blue scrubs and surgical masks rushed into the room shouting and yelling at each other while fumbling with a cart full of medical supplies. All three of them had serious expressions across their faces, and started towards me with looks that could kill.
They stared at me in surprise, and the tension faded from their bodies, replaced by relief.
"Holy shit Dave... She's awake." the doctor to my left blurted out.
I pulled off my respirator, "W-what's going on?" I asked weakly.
The man in the white lab coat stepped forward, crouching down next to me. His nametag said "David Moskowitz" and he fit the very picture of a stereotypical doctor.
"Miss Hebert," the Dr. Moskowitz started. "You are currently at Brockton Bay General Hospital. The current date is the fourteenth of April, and it is two thirty seven in the afternoon. Do you know why you're here?"
Claws. Teeth, yellow, smoke-laden skies. Burning buildings. The screams and death rattles of civilians being slaughtered en masse.
I still couldn't remember any details.
I shook my head.
Huh? Fourteenth of April? Was I out for half a year? Wait. Brockton Bay?
"Poor girl" the doctor muttered. "What is the last thing you remember?"
"Walking down the street" I answered honestly. The last thing I honestly remembered was rushing to my closet to get suited for the Endbringer battle.
"...Then I woke up here" I continued numbly.
"Would you like to know what happened?" the doctor asked gently.
I nodded numbly, and he stared down at his clipboard.
"Approximately seventy-two hours ago, a frantic, anonymous call was dialed to emergency services. First responders found you two blocks along the ambulance route, lying on the side of the street. You were found screaming and wailing, covered in bruises, bruises, and a wide array of other injuries. You were healed by Panacea in the ICU and… like clockwork, the injuries reappeared again on the 12th and 13th, exactly at this time. The injuries required her intervention both times, so you really have Miss Dallon to thank for saving your life."
As if on cue, a cowled figure hurried into the room, brushing past the doctors. It was another sight to add an already bizarre experience - Panacea in her old costume. The costume she'd abandoned before joining me on the manhunt to chase down the surviving members of Slaughterhouse Nine.
"Amy?" I blurted out.
Panacea responded by blinking in surprise with no sign of recognition on her face whatsoever.
"I'm sorry" she said slowly, "Have we met before?"
