"Normally having one out of four combatants dead in an Endbringer battle is a good day," Legend said. "But this isn't an ordinary battle. We have had unprecedented warning giving us days to prepare instead of a more normal minutes or even no warning at all."
His was the voice of someone who you listened to, and I could feel a basic understanding of why from the cult leader whose skills I'd absorbed. There was something about the timber and cadence of his voice that was almost hypnotic.
It wasn't all tricks, though. Who he was and what he had meant to the world was just as important. People listened to him because he was someone who mattered. They trusted him because he was someone who had proven that he deserved to be trusted.
While Alexandria had the powers, Legend had the charisma of a Superman or a Captain America, fictional Capes that I knew about because of the Earth Aleph movies Dad had made me watch.
I was glad he was in Hawaii, far away from all this.
"That doesn't mean that it will be easy," Legend said. "Endbringer battles never are. They are the pinnacle of what it means to be a parahuman. Whether you are considered a hero or a villain in your day to day life, here and now you are a hero."
Everyone stared at him transfixed.
"It'll take luck and teamwork, but we have advantages now that we haven't had in previous battles, advantages that we hope will reduce casualties. Despite that I don't want anyone underestimating Leviathan. They are called Endbringers for a reason, and if you have never experienced one they are terrifying in a way that nothing on the planet is."
He glanced at me and then said, "Some of you may think that you are powerful, and in your hometown you may be the biggest fish in the pond. None of it matters against an Endbringer. We have never managed to kill one, and its not at all certain that we've even managed to damage one in any real and fundamental way. They feel pain and they bleed, but nothing seems to penetrate very far in. The best we have ever managed was to drive one off."
There was murmuring in the crowd at that, and I stared at him, wondering if he was trying to get people to lose courage and leave.
"Leviathan doesn't have the strength of Behemoth or the genius of the Simurgh, but that doesn't mean he isn't powerful and it definitely doesn't mean that he isn't smart. He is cunning and he will display tactics that will surprise you and that will catch you off guard."
He went on. "You may think you are fast, but he's faster than any speedster that has ever been seen on the planet. He is a master of manipulating water, able to use it to hit like concrete. There will be water on the battlefield, and he will use it in ways that will kill."
"There have been failures in the past...Newfoundland, Kyushu. Millions of people dead because of mistakes in strategy on the part of the heroes. There are places where we can afford to simply contain Leviathan until Scion shows up. Unfortunately this is not one of them."
The reminder of the failures of the past threw an immediate pall over the room. All of us remembered the horror of every attack. Some of us, me included had never known a world that wasn't an unending cavalcade of horrors.
He gestured and an image of Brockton Bay flickered onto the screen.
"Brockton Bay is built over an aquifer, which is essentially an underground lake beneath the city. We believe that he will use his control over water to begin to undermine the city. He will wear away at the soil and sand and rock even as he creates tremors and tsunamis above. Given enough time..."
We all knew what he meant. He'd try to drop the entire city into a sinkhole. If he did, no Endbringer shelter would survive, and the people inside them would drown, trapped in the darkness with no chance to even try to save themselves. He'd slaughter every person in the city.
I wasn't going to let that happen. This was my city. I could see a similar expression on the faces of most of the others, even though most of them were outsiders.
Even though this wasn't their home they were here, determined to hold the line. Every city an Endbringer took was one step closer towards humanity reaching that final night. It was one step closer to the collapse of civilization. I was glad to know that there were people willing to fight even when some would say it wasn't their business.
Legend stared at us for moment before he shook his head.
"We have to end this fast. Every wave he brings will be stronger than the last. That means that we need to keep him in sight at all times. We have to hit him and keep hitting him. Every time that he escapes us and we have to chase him is more time that he has to finish what he came here for."
"Just as importantly we have to hurt him. Killing him is a fool's dream, but he can be hurt enough that he retreats back where he comes from. Hurt him enough and it might take him longer to attack somewhere else. If you have enough power to hurt him, we need you on the front lines. If you don't, support those who can."
It was raining, and the rain was getting harder. We could hear the wind pounding at the plexiglass windows. Even with the threat of Shatterbird gone the PRT hadn't returned to glass windows. They'd continued the transition to inch thick bulletproof plastic windows. I couldn't help but think that was directed at me.
The rain was a sign that my precognition and Tattletale's predictions were right. They were a harbinger of Leviathan's arrival.
"We've never gotten through a single confrontation with an Endbringer without terrible losses. Sometimes we lose civilian lives by the thousands or millions. Sometimes we lose an entire city. Sometimes it is our greatest heroes who fall."
"But this is the greatest task that we are given, the reason that society tolerates parahumans at all. We are the light against the darkness, the bulwark against which the tide crashes. We are the line that keeps civilization alive, and without brave men and women like you the world would be lost. Every one of you is a hero today, whatever you are in your daily lives. You will be remembered."
He glanced at Armsmaster, who stepped forward.
"Those of you who have been in Endbringer fights before will recognize these," he said. He held up one of the armbands I had been working on for the past several days. "These armbands of Dragon's design are adjustable and they should be worn on your wrist. The button on the left allows you to communicate with other armband wearers. The button on the right is used to alert people of your location if you are hurt or in an emergency."
He continued. "Only Protectorate members and Endbringer veterans will be able to send messages systemwide. Everyone else will be screened by a program designed by Dragon to cut down on clutter. If you need to override this three to five second delay call out "Hard Override." Abuse of the system will mean privileges will be revoked."
"This year however," he said. "There is an additional feature to these armbands. Each armband is set to monitor life signs. If life signs cease, a small charge will explode, leaving the user in a moment of suspended time."
A cape I didn't recognize raised his hand. "What does that mean?"
"It means that you will be held in stasis, immune to all further damage even by Leviathan himself until someone comes to release you. If you have just been beheaded it probably won't be of much use. If however you have less intense damage..."
"Then someone might be able to bring us back," the Cape breathed. He glanced over at Panacea, who blushed.
"You may have heard that there is a power thief in town. One of the Capes she has stolen powers from is Bonesaw. It is not entirely impossible that even a beheading can be reversed, assuming that she survives and has enough time to work on you."
"If this works it could mean a revolution in Endbringer battles for the future. It may mean that the kinds of casualties we have seen in the past may be a relic of a bygone age. It might also mean that the Endbringers change their tactics. It's impossible to know."
Legend spoke up. "We have hope, though, that this battle may have lower casualties than battles in the past. Even Leviathan will take some time to adjust to something new."
"Those who have faced an Endbringer before stand!"
Protectorate members all stood. A third of out of town Wards stood. There was a team of corporate Capes and half of them stood as well. I didn't see any villains that I recognized, although I hadn't really studied many capes from outside the Bay.
"When in doubt, obey the Protectorate. We have the training for this, and we have decades of planning for this. The others who are standing are also the ones you should be listening to unless we directly contradict them. They have survived situations exactly like this and have the experience and instincts to help you survive as well."
"You will be divided by your abilities. Those who think they can take hits from Leviathan and survive or if you can produce expendable combatants you will be led by Alexandria and Dragon."
That was all I needed to know.
I stood up.
I'd thought long and hard about what I needed to do before I'd slipped away last night to a warehouse Downtown that was still guarded by the PRT. I'd slipped inside and released my field of null time, releasing Crawler just in time for me to steal the powers that made him what he was.
He'd reverted to a man, dead flesh sloughing off around him before I'd killed him.
For a long time I'd worried about taking his kind of power, but I couldn't afford to hold back now. People and the entire city was depending on me, ad if I wanted to survive to see Dad again I needed every advantage I could get.
I could feel his power now, crawling under my skin. It almost seemed eager, waiting in anticipation to begin modifying me into the ultimate being, no matter what that meant for my ability to live a normal life.
Hopefully I could reduce any changes that I didn't like with Bonesaw's skill and my biokinesis.
I stepped toward Alexandria, who looked me up and down.
"You think you can take a hit from Leviathan?" she asked.
I nodded, wondering why she had to ask. Unless Leviathan killed me immediately I was only going to get tougher and more dangerous as the fight continued.
"I have the powers of Lung," I said. "Crawler, Hookwolf, Fenja."
I gestured and a moment later the Siberian appeared beside me. I'd figured out how to change her projection so that she wore a simple tunic and a domino mask. It wasn't much, but it was a lot better than letting the world see Mom naked. Dad wouldn't have forgiven me for that.
Alexandria stilled for a moment, and I could tell that she was tempted to take a step back but was keeping herself from it.
The other Capes in the room froze as well.
"I took the Siberian's power," I said. "She was a projection and now she will fight beside us."
"Can you fight while directing her?" Alexandria asked neutrally. It had to be difficult looking at someone who had killed her friend, who had injured her.
"I don't think the man who controlled her before could," I said. "But I have another power that creates ghosts that have some independence. I can give her that and continue to fight."
"And she won't return to her...previous proclivities?"
I shook my head. "She is my creature."
Everyone in the room relaxed, and suddenly the mood seemed to lighten. Having the Siberian on our side for once meant that everyone's chances of survival had just increased, possibly by quite a bit.
Clockblocker approached and handed me one of the armbands. He kept staring at the Siberian, and I noticed that he was careful to stay as far as he possibly could from her. She didn't get an armband as she was just an extension of me.
I'd been working on the Armbands for days, so I was intimately familiar with their functions. I quickly input my name and received a recognition response.
The PRT had been alerted about how to undo the stasis fields on all of these devices, although the means they used were markedly different than on my other stasis bombs. The last thing I wanted was for the PRT to be able to take Dad because I'd given them the keys to the kingdom.
Legend was continuing to direct people to the groups they belonged in best. Some went for support, especially the Movers. I could have qualified for that except that my services would better be used elsewhere. Some were combat capable but unable to survive a hit by Leviathan, and some were long distance attackers. Each were directed toward the appropriate set of leaders.
The Sirens began blaring in the distance and everyone tensed.
"While we aren't sure when Leviathan will attack exactly," Legend said calmly, "Our Thinkers believe that it most likely will happen in twenty to thirty minutes. We are setting off the alarms now in order to give the civilians who have chosen to remain in town time to get to their nearest shelters."
I nodded. There had been an attempt to get people to evacuate the city over the last three days even more than they already had, supposedly because of the nuclear explosion. They'd been told that cleanup efforts would be underway and that there might be danger in the meantime. They hadn't told anyone about the impending Endbringer attack because that would have engendered an even bigger panic than a small nuclear weapon.
The bomb would just kill you; an Endbringer would be cruel about it. Worse, there was a fear that informing the public might make the Endbringers show up in a different location just to spite the rest of us. There were some paranoid Protectorate Thinkers who believed that the Simurgh controlled the other Endbringers and that she knew far more about human activities than she let on.
I frowned as I looked out the Plexiglass window. I could see the Bay from here. While this place was marginally safer than the Rig, from what I knew of the tsunamis that Leviathan created this place wasn't safe at all.
Studying previous fights with Leviathan from Protectorate footage had been a good use of the extra time I'd gotten by not sleeping. Apparently Crawler's powers considered not sleeping to be damage, and now I could get by on only a couple of hours a night.
"Would it be all right if I created a Seawall?" I asked Alexandria in a low voice.
"What?" she asked.
"If he hits us with a tidal wave there's a good chance we aren't far enough inland to make any difference."
There were force fields to help protect the structure, but they'd been designed to protect against conventional weapons, not millions of tons of water. We'd be lucky if the entire building didn't collapse on top of us.
"And you think you can do something about that?" she asked. "In the next twenty minutes?"
"Mannequin had architectural knowledge from when he was Sphere; I think it was designed to set up extrasolar colonies. I have Kaiser's powers...I'm not sure it'll completely stop it, but I think it'll help keep us all from drowning."
She spoke into her communicator in a low voice. A moment later I was looking outside the window, and metal began to sprout from the ground. I began creating a wall, one that grew to be ten, twenty, thirty foot tall. I then began to thicken it. It was going to have to withstand the energy of thousands or maybe even millions of pounds of water. Many stone sea walls were fifty feet thick. I wasn't sure I was going to have enough time to create anything that formidable.
The wall grew thicker and thicker. Even with Krieg's power it took almost a minute to grow the thing by a foot.
Even so, it was only fifteen foot thick when I began to feel something vibrating beneath me. It was less a sound than a sensation, something so massive and powerful that the floor and the walls were vibrating. Without enhanced hearing no one else would have noticed it, but to me it was as obvious as anything.
The winds carried the sounds of rushing water to me a moment later.
"It's coming!" I yelled.
Everyone stared at me and I wondered why they weren't reacting. It took me a moment to realize that I'd switched into my enhanced speed mode. Everything around me had switched into slow motion, and only Velocity and a couple of the other capes were responding yet.
Now everyone heard it, a sound that was growing in scope until it sounded like the end of the world.
Everyone started to react, but it wasn't going to be enough. I could see the fear and horror on people's faces.
As thousands of tons of water hit my wall, the sound was like that of the end of the world.
