Interlude: Alexandria

She coughed as she pushed herself free of the debris of the collapsed building, gratefully gulping down lungfuls of air. She spied Leviathan just half a block away, the water around it once more completely clear, no ash hindering its movements or attacks.

Did something happen to Legend's little pet project? Was she dead?

"This is Alexandria!" She barked into her communicator. "I need a location on the Ward, Ashburn, now!"

"This is Dragon. Her armband's current coordinates place her just two blocks south of you Alexandria, she was calling in a Mover for an emergency. One is already en-route, she sounded very distressed."

"Tell the mover to head somewhere else, I'm on it!" They needed her back in the fight now. She hadn't seen Leviathan's attacks and mobility hampered that way in any other fight. Ever.

Between her and the waves that wouldn't get through the time frozen ice wall they now stood the best chance of winning this fight.

She took to the air, moving with all the speed she had available.

Finding where she was was laughably easy. She could see the glimmer of the ashen idols' healing aura. The last time she'd read her file the girl still had no control over those. Did that change or was she wounded?

She was just there, barely sixty feet away from the hole when...

She couldn't see.

It was dark, like a fog or a mist had fallen over the city, black and impenetrable. She could barely even see her own hand. Instantly, she felt the affects, her sense of direction was completely thrown askew, up was down, right was left. The only thing that let her persevere through the disorientation was her Thinker ability.

She flew straight up, moving up past the reach of whatever this was like a drowning man rushes up to the surface for air.

When she could finally see again, when her mind was free of the disorienting assault, she looked down. A seething black smoke churned below her like a writhing snake pit, spreading through the streets like billowing pyroclastic, swallowing everything. She lost sight of the capes that fell into its path, but immediately the communicators were howling with screams that she could hear from both the armband and with her own ears through the hiss of rain and the rolling of thunder.

Glints of strange non-light glimmered in the black, swirling like a whirlpool in the epicenter of whatever this was.

Then, without warning, it speared upwards into the sky! A looming monolith that dwarfed everything in the city, even Leviathan, who stopped in his rampage turning his full attention towards the howling tempest that was the black spire.

Then… something caught her eye, movement along her periphery. She turned and her alarm turned to horror.

The buildings… every building within what must have been a mile or so was… disintegrating.

There was no fire, no explosions… but brick by brick, piece by piece, the city was literally disintegrating into ash.

She panned her eyes around, down towards the edges of this dark void where capes were stumbling out, fewer than what had been consumed. Screaming as they ran with all the speed they had available to them.

Manton Limited… it was still Manton Limited thank god!

She looked up, above, where the ash was swirling like a hurricane, spiralling slowly...

This girl… was this her!?

"This is Alexandria!" She yelled into her communicator. "If you can hear this; I am ordering a full retreat!"

"Clarification!" It was Chevalier that answered her. "Please confirm orders. Leviathan is still in the city Alex-"

"I'm confirming!" She shouted. Watching as Leviathan made absolutely no move to harass or intercept the Capes that were suddenly on the move. It had apparently found something vastly more interesting to occupy its time with.

"I'm ordering everyone to evacuate! Get out! Get out no-" Then there was the sound… of cracking bone.

"Fucking hell, what is that!?"

Alexandria didn't recognize who spoke. But she saw what caused it.

Ash idols. Dozens, Hundreds of them. Rising from the ash, swirling like an angry cloud, they formed, on the roofs of buildings, inside blown out apartments, on ground level, half swallowed by water, there were… so many, more than she'd ever seen before.

Then, the dark cloud moved.

It slammed into Leviathan like one of its tsunami's and she lost complete sight of it.

She looked down towards the Capes that were, even now, all but trampling over each other to get as far away from this thing as possible as more of the city under their very feet turned to ash and the buildings began to collapse under the stress of their own weight.

Then, she heard a screech below and looked down in time to see Leviathan as its body slammed into a building, the Darkness following his path as more ash idols formed up around it, bigger than the others, their arms, normally wrapped around the idol in a perversion of a hug were now… outstretched, reaching for the monster.

Leviathan's claws and tail whipped around, its water echo moving.

Every blow destroyed one of the idols, every blast of water tore them and their foundations to pieces.

And only more formed. More than what he'd destroyed. Two of them replacing each one he'd managed to eliminate. And they kept grabbing, holding him down, or at least trying to.

The darkness moved, rushing in to swallow the monster again and Leviathan…

Leviathan was running from it…

It… She'd fought the Endbringers for the better part of twenty years...

This was the first time she could ever remember any of them genuinely fleeing.

Leviathan made a bee-line towards the ocean, rushing from whatever this thing was.

Then the ash, the monstrous quantity that had been swirling above them like a storm fell.

It was… like the wrath of a god. It defied belief, a sheer Mountain falling from the sky, making a wall three times as tall and four times as thick as the ice barrier that had walled off the Bay leading into the city. Five square blocks at least was swallowed by the storm.

More than that, the wall moved. It swirled like a tornado all around it, with Leviathan trapped in the eye of the thing. The heat of the ash struck her across the face. With the wind and the rain and everything she could see steam bubbling up from the water.

The ash was getting hotter!

The Endbringer was trapped in mud that was hip deep and getting thicker by the second, holding him in place as it tried to escape.

Hebert… was trapping Leviathan. In a tomb of ash.

The communicator was sheer chaos, a hundred people all screaming for help. Even with her ability she could barely make out anything in the cacophony.

She heard Miss Militia shouting over the communicator for Strider. She even heard Mouse Protector yelling at people to get to the green flares for evac out of the city as fast as possible as the dark fog was flowing in all directions. Alexandria pressed the code to override all comuniques, giving a brief few seconds of unhindered communication for her and her alone. "Insight! We need to know what this is!"

"I DON'T KNOW!" Was her reply. She sounded frightened, terrified even. Alexandria looked down… seeing some capes running and then… collapsing as the fog overtook them.

This is not another Outcry. There's no shriek. Just a silent death spreading through the city. She could see it seep into buildings, if it continued it would get to the shelters further inland. If it did…

No escape for the civilians.

She spotted a green dot flying further into the city, rushing towards the nearest shelter. He'd already come to the same conclusion, and as arrogant as he was David was a Hero at heart.

He wouldn't be able to save everyone. Not at this rate. But he at least had the best chance to try.

She felt and saw the rain visibly shift, moving from its rather uniform angle from east to west to suddenly have it all converge on Levithan's position in a display she'd never seen him do before.

Leviathan was… desperate for more water.

Just then the Armband chimed again.

Tidal wave inbound.

She looked out to the shore, but barely even had time to set eyes on the time-frozen wall of ice before… what seemed to be the whole ocean itself poured into the bay. Three times as tall as anything Leviathan had brought in before, it simply smashed over the barricade, up and over the barrier to surge into the city.

When it reached the streets it wasn't a whitewash flood, it moved with direction, purpose, all but bulldozing through the tight city streets and crashing into the swirling maelstrom of Ash in a direction that went against its flow, trying by sheer brute force to break its momentum and allow the Endbringer to escape.

She saw an orange glow through the haze before Fire swallowed the center of the ash cyclone like a volcanic eruption. Pillars of dark, off color flame burst from the ground. She saw some of the buildings closest to it that hadn't yet fully broken down to ash burst into flames, the sheer heat now spreading across the whole city like a blanket to the scything cold of the rain and wind above.

She saw sparks of light in the dark, felt her teeth grind together as the snap cracks of electricity permeated the night like a chorus of teeth snapping crickets.

The only word she had for this was… Biblical.

These two were creating a Volcanic Lightning Storm on ground level!

When the writhing darkness overtook the struggle, cutting off her sight of the battle altogether, she finally snapped out of it, finding her thoughts again as she pulled free from her shocked stupor.

Now, more than ever, she was sure of her orders.

"I repeat! This is Alexandria. If you can hear my voice... You must get out! Get out right now any way you can!"

(X)

Emma Barnes

It was a whisper at first, a whisper lost in the blackness of her mind. But when it finally reached her, when it finally pierced the dark of sleep it was with an urgency that shot her to full wakefulness, her heart feeling like it was going to leap up through her throat.

"Nadalia!"

"Wake up!" She jerked awake, gasping with a ragged intake of air that made her reel with how cold it was, with the water running down her face and eyes, she flailed her arms, feeling like she was going to drown and all but smacking Lady Photon across the face before she regained her bearings.

The screams, the cold, the water, the flames, the smell of smoke. It all hit her like a world class kickboxer knocking her teeth in.

When her eyes glanced down she all but screamed and flailed all over again

A whole chunk of the city, ten blocks or so was bathed in black. Like someone had upturned a giant, massive smoke bomb mixed with oil or something.

"What's going!?" Emma screamed, hugging Lady Photon all the harder. The woman grimaced as they flew off, not bothering to look panned her eyes over the destruction below, trailing her eyes across the whole expanse of the blackness.

Then, she gasped.

A massive… she didn't even know what it was! It was like god had decided to mix a tornado, a volcano, and a lightning storm all into one massive pile of kill everything. Ash, fire, and dark were clashing with the sea, the wind, and the rain.

"What happened!" She screamed again.

"Hell if I know! Some Cape going completely off the walls trying to solo Leviathan or something. Alexandria called a full retreat!"

Emma looked around, spying other capes flying or running away, gathering at the orange and green flares for a pickup.

"Stop it!"

The voice sent a bolt of pain through her skull, an urgency she'd never heard before was in the Woman's voice, the woman in white.

"Naadalia… the spread... must be stopped!"

Her voice was fluctuating, in one word it was as strong as ever while in the next it sounded so far away, as if reaching her from a great distance.

"Wh-what-" She closed her eyes, feeling pain lancing across her skull. Like someone was taking a drill bit to her temple.

"T… pread of… abyss… MUST BE STOPPED!"

The pain that had been notable before now became downright excruciating. She very nearly threw up over herself and Lady Photon. As it was she pitched herself to the side, heaving even as the New Wave cape struggled not to drop her.

"Hey what the hell-!"

The image came to her, superimposed on her thoughts as words seemed to fail the woman in white.

She reached for her neck, yanking off the crystal that had been resting at her throat.

She gripped it, her fingers aching as she tried with all her might to crush it.

For an interminable moment, it felt like it wouldn't give at all. Not a single hint of any success before…

Her fingers met her palm.

With a snap that left her feeling like there was absolutely nothing in her hand, the crystal shattered and simply… evaporated.

Then from where it had been in her hand slivers of light exploded all at once, going off like shrapnel from a grenade. She screamed in fright, hell, Lady Photon dropped her! She was free falling for all of four feet before the Barrier cape realized a grenade hadn't gone off in her face and she snapped herself down to catch her by the ankle.

"What the fuck is wrong with you! What did you do!?" She shouted.

Hanging upside down, Emma watched as the slivers of light shot through the city like quicksilver.

Fifty of them.

She wasn't sure how she knew. But she knew that there were fifty of them!

(X)

Lisa

Insight, or the former Tattletale of the Undersiders, didn't know what this was.

It was… she felt like an ant trying to contemplate quantum physics. She understood nothing of this black… death that had exploded across downtown at a rapid pace.

She recognized the idols though. She recognized the ash and the flames.

What had happened to Taylor!? What the hell had happened to drive her to this?

She was still, ultimately, a prisoner of the PRT despite her deal. They didn't talk to her about Taylor, didn't broadcast her mental state. Even the people they sent to her didn't know a thing.

Had she recovered? Had she gotten worse?

Was this her fault too? Like the Prison?

She listened to those around her, the Thinkers, the pre-cogs. All of them were trying to coordinate some kind of rapid pace evacuation.

Frankly, if Miss Militia wasn't here, calling the shots and keeping a level head she had little doubt everyone here would be running around like chickens with their heads cut off, herself included.

Thinker's generally didn't react well when their power was completely nullified.

The fact that Miss Militia was doing it practically handicapped by a migraine from… whatever had caused her to suddenly develop Thinker headaches made an already impressive feat downright inspiring.

They were all trying their best, judging trajectory, speed, the level of damage being done to the city, trying to judge what Leviathan was doing, how much potential destruction, short and long term, this dirty storm was gonna end up doing to… everything, all of it being taken in by her own power, giving her a virtual buffet-line to mentally process.

She looked at the screens, eyes panning over the many camera's Dragon's drones were capturing of nearly the whole battle zone.

There was one- one inside the ash storm itself, it wouldn't last very long if its intensity kept increasing.

Lisa's mouth dropped at the next sight as her power filled her in.

Leviathan was being shredded. Similar to what Taylor had done to that Gesselschaft Cape. The ash was like a hundred million saw teeth, shredding and sanding down the outer layer of its skin. Leviathan wasn't concerned with the damage, it was still unhurt. At least by the ash. Its sole concern was to escape the battlefield because something was hurting it as it pushed and shoved its way to escape through the ashen quagmire.

Step by unbelievably slow step it slogged through the muck, fighting for every inch.

When it reached the swirling wall of ash… it stopped...

She looked deeper, searching, trying to see why it had stopped.

When she found her answer… she almost wished she hadn't.

She turned her eyes away from the fight, looking towards the computer that was tallying all the casualties.

There it was…

So if Kaiser was dead… why were his blades sprouting up inside the wall to add another barrier between Leviathan and the open ocean? How many feet of thickness was that? Ten? More? Kaiser had never done that much before.

She looked back to the cameras. Swallowing thickly before hearing the shouts of concern and fear from all the other Thinkers that were just now realizing what exactly they were seeing.

Her power listened to those around her, looked at the multitude of angles and screens that were capturing all they could of the fight.

There was no mistake.

One by one… those… those corpses were standing back up...

And she saw, bursting out of the ashen sea of non-light, one woman, as tall as Leviathan himself leapt on him, stabbing at him with her weapon, trying to hold him in place, even as she herself began to be shredded by the ash.

Fenja…

Fire, lightning, and raw kinetic force rained down from above, some of the blasts going wide, missing by a bloody mile, but the second time around they were more accurate. Brute's hurled themselves in suicidal, dead head charges as Leviathan's claws ripped them to shreds all over again. Leviathan's movements were hindered, but he was still no less deadly.

Lisa shook her head, watching as Barriers, Blasters, Movers, Brutes, and Tinkers all having been registered as dead began to move again… They weren't alive, they weren't revived, they were just… moving. Like puppets on strings. Their bodies were moving strangely, jerky, unnatural movements, as though the puppet master was not quite so masterful.

Then, something else caught her attention on another of the screens.

Knights.

Honest to god Knights.

Their helmets were beyond strange, towering over their heads in a completely disproportional way, but there they were in resplendent, ornate, white armor, weapons and shield in hand as they moved forward towards the Black mass that had consumed downtown Brockton Bay.

She looked to the other cameras, scanning them.

They were there… surrounding the black, smoky darkness like a thin infantry line. They couldn't cover the whole thing, but the inner city, the places inland where the shelters were still filled with civilians. The damage there would be mitigated.

Unless of course they were all gonna end up dying horrible deaths or just decide to book it like Alexandria and Leviathan seem to have decided earlier. Then they would all pretty much be screwed anyway.

"Dragon! Get a drone on those unknowns!" Lisa heard Miss Militia bark out. Lisa panned her eyes to the drone that was currently moving, its camera focusing on the line of knights as they slogged through the water that was hip deep for some, but shin deep for them. They made their way to the edge of the black fog. Then, as one, their weapons glowed with bright, white light, little slivers of light held up to the sky before they moved their swords in front of them, glowing, silver ice forming around them in a barricade, illuminating the edge of the dark just as it slammed into it, holding it back just as the ice along the bay had held back Leviathan's tsunami. They formed a perfect horseshoe and… the black fog...

"It stopped!" Lisa yelled. "Those Knights are doing something to hold it back!"

"Rescue Team! Double Time!" Shouted Mouse Protector. "Or anyone at this rate! We don't know how long this is gonna last!"

Lightning spilled from the storm, lancing out of the swirling tornado to strike at the nearest buildings, and inside of it she saw, just before Dragon's drone was finally taken out- Leviathan's body struck by electricity, the thick blades formed of Kaiser's power acting as perfect conductors, sending electricity spider-webbing through the inside of the storm as they jumped from blade tip to blade tip.

"Where did those knights come from?!" Barked someone else, Myrrdin if she were to guess. "No cape who volunteered had Master abilities like this!"

"Find out later! Evacuate now!" Mouse Protector shouted over the comm. The darkness was being contained… but her eyes could see the edges of the barrier dimming, the light shining from the ice losing its battle against the black fog.

And then… the ashen thunderstorm began to recede... falling to the earth. All the wet ash seemed to fall onto the Earth like rain, crashing down over the city and Leviathan…

The monster was near buried, up to his chest, encased in a thick tomb of ashen mud, swamped as Kaiser's blades were formed around him like a venus fly trap, more and more growing by the second as the Brutes, Blasters, and other capes whose corpses were still moving were hacking away at it, punching, stabbing, and striking with a wild, mindless abandon even as they achieved absolutely nothing by attacking these denser layers of the Endbringer's flesh.

The black fog grew thick, thicker, until where before there was a nebulous, black cloud there was now an impenetrable black. A wall of void midnight.

Her vision of Leviathan grew hazy, like a destroyed videotape where all you could see was the negative of the film, before he was gone entirely.

Then… there was a shriek over the speakers of every screen. She covered her ears, so too did everyone else.

It was the single most bone chilling thing she'd heard in her life.

When it finally ended, she sucked down a breath she hadn't realized she needed. Gasping before she switched her eyes between camera feeds, searching, looking for any of them that could get her eyes on the thing!

Was… Was Leviathan-

"The Knight guys are dying!"

At the shout from the communicator, she switched back to the drones eyeing the knights, watching as the black fog, now having dealt with Leviathan, surged forward like the rolling tide. Smashing into the line of icy barriers.

Almost instantly they cracked, the light of their weapons dimmed before one by one the ice wall shattered like a grenade going off. The Knight directly behind that section of wall was touched by the black and just like that, he too shattered with a scream, the sliver of light he'd appeared in rushing back towards wherever the hell he'd come from.

Like a house of cards, when the first one went, the others followed shortly after, the cracks spider-webbing through the whole line. There was another failure, and another, and another. The knights had bought them approximately three precious minutes before the whole black fog was once more spreading into the greater city…

Then...

(X)

There was a piece of her there. Still in that room, still holding Victoria as she lay dead in her arms.

Her Soul… her soul she did not touch. Her soul was there, guarded, protected. Still with her body...

But it was just a piece, a small piece of her, Taylor, that was there with Victoria, another was elsewhere, with a million eyes, a million voices and hands, fingers and claws tearing and ripping at the monster, attacking with every weapon she had.

But it wasn't hurt. Its mind, its soul, was still. Unmoved. Vibrant and undamaged.

But… it was that. The black. That… confounded quintessence of humanity. That made it flee, made it hurt. She moved it, struck with it. A million minds converging her full focus on it, moving it with an effort she could only describe as moving sand with a net.

And just the same, as she focused her attentions on that, on the monster, as her mind controled the gifts born of flame, conjured flame itself and cut off the monster's retreat, still there were other parts of her. Other focuses and attentions.

She plucked at their minds with her own, pulled at their strings, manipulating souls in empty husks, forcing them to keep moving, acting - fighting.

Just the same as she fought with a hundred minds, more of her struggled still to wrestle greater power away from the woman that would not help. To drive back the Black Knight of two names that dispelled the Fog she needed to win even as they encroached on her sanctuary.

More of her still remembered new memories that happened tens, hundreds, thousands of years long past. And still even more of her struggled to hold on to those that had happened so very recently as to not be memory at all.

A mere fifteen years. The blink of an eye. A mortal inconsequence.

None had meaning, and she didn't even care.

She could see.

See his soul.

See all their souls.

But his… his was frail. Frail and Pallid.

The smallest shard. A piece of a piece of an already dead being with a myriad of Souls, an immense power.

It was no Lord. It was more fit to be a jester. Pretending at power.

With hands that were not hers, fingers that felt alien...

She grasped at it.

Held it in the palm of her million hands, a thousand minds focusing, striking.

It struggled. Fighting with physical might that could rival the greatest of beasts, that could have felled even Dragons.

But a beast, no matter how strong, was still nothing more than a beast.

Her hands clasped closed, smothering it within her grip, suffocating it in the Black Dark.

For a moment, her mind knew peace… vindication, vengeance.

And then… she was still...

Then… then they were here, in her Sanctuary, a hand grasped at hers, pulling her away, even as she struggled to return. She wasn't done. She wasn't finished.

"Take her!"

Her eyes found another, a new one, faceless, with wings, in robes of white, his many arms held out.

"Like a moth, sputtering towards a flame, her wings burn, and she does not even realize. Take her! Take her now! Take her far away! To safety!"

She saw it. Two of it, three, four, more. As many as her, as many as he needed to be.

She reached once more, reached for the Dark quintessence of humanity, fingers brushing once more against its surface.

She could see. She could remember.

The Soul in the cinders… found now, but so easily forgotten.

The birth of Gods. The death of Immortals.

When the Dark spread. Moved with a will of its own to take vengeance on those most foolish of his children.

Two brilliant souls. One defeated, maddened and corrupted.

The other... the end.

Then… existence once more.

Then she was gone, carried away by the guard of an ancient, desiccated tomb.

(X)

Alexandria watched as the Knights shattered, all of their wisps of light fleeing back with cries of anguish to wherever they'd come from, the blackness surging out like an animal finding itself suddenly unchained.

Then…

It stopped.

It simply ceased moving, and bit by bit, shade by shade, she saw it beginning to dissipate, the ash falling from the sky like a light snow fall.

And where it had been thickest, where it had converged on Leviathan…

She saw it.

She saw him.

Leviathan was there, near buried. Completely still. The rain was still falling but no longer was it directed, the oceans still rose and fell but no longer was it in massive tidal waves.

Its claw was outstretched, as though reaching for the sea, still trying to escape in its death throes.

Leviathan… Leviathan was dead.

She didn't think on it. Didn't even concern herself with secrecy or finding a private location.

Leviathan was dead… This…

Everything would change…

Soon the whole world would know.

"Door me..."

The Portal opened and she stepped inside.