A Shadow, an Eon, and a Worm 41

Explosions, destruction, and regrouping.

Swarm searched around with her bugs, pushing her range out as much as she could to try and find anyone else that might be in trouble. Given the situation right now, she wasn't entirely sure that there'd be anyone else that she could find- with Behemoth there was a good chance most people were already dead- but if she could find people trapped under rubble she might be able to save them. Even if it wasn't likely that she'd be able to move the rubble alone, maybe there'd be enough Capes nearby that she could signal someone to help her...

Something caught the edge of her attention, making her pause and shift her bugs towards it, trying to get a clearer idea of what it was-

And the world spun, like she'd moved too quickly, and she stumbled, swaying on the spot as things seemed to freeze around her.

It was over a few moments later, the world coming back in a rush of blood in her ears as she fell to her knees, retching. Some part of her had made the decision to try and block out her bugs, leaving her with only the orange-tinted view from her goggles to focus on, which helped slightly.

"What just happened?" She mumbled, as soon as she felt she could without trying to vomit. None of the quakes earlier had done that to her, and as far as she could tell there hadn't even been a quake that could have set it off for her... though with how she'd been feeling she wouldn't've been surprised if she'd missed it, honestly.

Carefully, she stood up, then stared.

"Oh."

A tower-like structure was looming, a good few miles across the battlefield from where she was, barely big enough to peer over the remaining structures still standing but definitely enough for her to get the idea. It was glowing a fairly familiar lilac colour, one that she'd last seen barely half an hour before when Deoxys had created their clones, which gave her an idea of what had probably caused it. The inside was filled with a vibrant glowing white, which made her wince and look away a moment later, shielding her eyes with her arm. The shields had dimmed it a bit, but the brightness of what had obviously been an explosion still flared through well enough that there was no way she wanted to look at it for much longer.

I guess I know what knocked me over. She chuckled faintly, still somewhat awestruck. I'm going to assume that was Jirachi or Deoxys' doing... and that it was probably Behemoth in there.

'Probably' being the operative word there, given the explosion that was still fading away inside the shields.

Lucky that whoever planned that thought to direct it all upwards. She added to herself, as she started to search around her with her bugs again- this time being careful not to look too closely at the shield tower. Otherwise that probably would've done a lot more damage than just whatever of the shockwave managed to escape. I think we're lucky that it probably only really hit us Capes, and didn't manage to take down any of the buildings... though I feel sorry for any of the fliers that caught the brunt of that. They probably got knocked out of the air.

Hopefully none of them had gotten too badly injured by it all. That would really be the cherry on top of this Endbringer-sized pain in the rear. Though Swarm was also pretty sure that this was the fastest an Endbringer attack had ever been ended, so it was possible that anyone who'd gotten hurt in the last blast would forgive them for that.

For now, Swarm would focus on continuing her search and rescue efforts, at least until it was either too dark to keep going or until one of Team Inari- which the two legendary Pokemon probably counted as now- came and found her to head back to the Bay.

Given what the Pokemon members of the team had managed today, she needed to find some way to catch up to them, and keeping up search and rescue was the only thing she could really do now that the fight was over- there was no way it wasn't over, with an attack like that hitting Behemoth. She'd seen how much Eon and Shadow had done to Leviathan, so someone even more powerful would certainly be making Behemoth turn tail and flee the second he was able to. In her mind there was no chance that this fight would be continuing.

So as much searching for people who needed help as she could manage was the only thing left for her to be able to do. Though she should probably keep an eye out for more aftershocks, either of the earthquake kind or the 'things are falling' kind, to make sure she didn't get knocked over or disoriented like that again. Plus, the earthquakes from Behemoth's retreat would have a pretty good chance of knocking more things down if anything was unstable, which might end up being a bit dangerous to get around.

This time, she'd also be careful not to look too closely at the shield that was still present over the top of the buildings, even though the explosion in it seemed to have faded away by now. If Deoxys was holding the shield up for some reason, Swarm was happy to assume that there was a good reason, and just leave them to it.

The sound of the explosion made everyone in the healing rooms jump, though fortunately there wasn't anyone around at the moment that needed help. Shadow glanced around as she picked herself up, having stumbled slightly when she'd started, the world having gone slightly dizzy for a moment from the faint concussion that had rippled through, and could see that everyone looked just as confused as she felt.

"What the hell was that?" Someone- probably one of the guards, given that she didn't recognise the voice- asked.

"No idea." Another person replied, sounding worried. "But it was probably something to do with Behemoth..."

Automatically, Shadow looked at her armband, heart abruptly in her throat, waiting for the band to start reeling off the names of people who had gotten hurt by the explosion- maybe Behemoth had pulled out a bigger attack, or hit something with fire or lightning hard enough to cause something like that? Or maybe it was some sort of new power that they'd never seen before, used because of the damage that was hopefully being done by the other Pokemon on the field- so that she could prepare herself for the influx of injured and scour the list for any of her friend's names at the same time...

But the band stayed uncharacteristically silent, as it had been since the last alert to brace for-

She sat down heavily, bringing her paw up to her head. "It was probably Jirachi or Deoxys." She announced generally, when a few people looked over. "We were asked to brace, yeah? Because the others had a plan." The band had said Inari, and Shadow had no doubt that Eon had been more involved in the decision making than just spreading the word to back off. "So it was probably them."

Now that the panic had passed, Shadow was just curious as to what the hell her team mate had been a part of- and what it had been able to do to the Endbringer. Hopefully they'd been able to do enough damage to him to make him flee, since that would make this an incredibly short attack with amazingly low casualties- at least, for a Behemoth fight, where the average number of deaths was one in four- and actually for pretty much any Endbringer, really. Only the Simurgh had any sort of low casualty numbers, and that was because she was apparently focused on mind controlling people more than she was killing them.

"What do you think they did?" Amy asked her, as people started bustling around again, and Shadow shrugged.

"I couldn't begin to guess." She admitted. And she couldn't, either. There was any number of things that could have theoretically happened to make that explosion. Maybe Eon had managed to land a good hit with a lot of boosts- something like Freeze Dry, perhaps, that didn't have an element Behemoth was known to manipulate. Maybe Deoxys had entered their Attack Forme and charged him, managing to land some high damage hits and splintering him. Or their Speed Forme and had gone for lots of weaker hits instead.

Possibly Jirachi had been able to hit him with something and done a lot of damage, or all three of them had teamed up and blasted Behemoth with something at the same time, using each others Moves to break through the barrier of his durability and made something explode at the same time.

"There's a lot of possibilities, really." She continued. "So I don't really know what would've happened... I'd need to speak to Eon. Though if I had to guess? Probably Jirachi or Deoxys in some way. Eon's pretty good, but there's not much he can do to match the raw power that Po- that spirits like them have, and that's without them boosting as well. So it was probably one of them."

"It sure sounded pretty impressive." Amy agreed, glancing over to the door. "Hopefully they've managed to put Behemoth down for a bit so that people can recover."

"Would be nice, yeah." Shadow sighed. "This hasn't been anywhere as frantic as Leviathan was, but I think it's been worse just because of how many people aren't coming to us."

Her tails curled into a ball behind her, ears drooping, and Amy ran a hand across her crest in comfort.

The armbands chimed, once, making everyone pause for a moment and glance at them.

"Behemoth down." Dragon's voice said over the speakers, sounding like she didn't quite believe her own words. "The attack is over. I repeat, Behemoth is down, the attack is over."

"Holy shit."

Shadow wasn't sure who'd said that- partly because it came from so many mouths that she wasn't certain it had been one person who started it- and stared up at Amy in shock.

"Behemoth is... down?"

"We need to find Eon." She said, spinning to get her bag from where it was being stored.

"You go find your team mate, I'll stay here and handle anyone who comes through now the attack's over." Amy assured. Shadow felt a little guilty for leaving her friend to deal with everything- now that the attack was over, search and rescue efforts could begin in earnest, since no-one was having to deal with the Endbringer running around the field- but it wasn't like she'd be of much use at this point. Most of the people coming in would either have very minor wounds that could be funnelled into the other healers, larger wounds that her Heal Pulse couldn't fix without help like broken bones or large tears, or enough damage that her Moves wouldn't be able to help out at all and could actually cause more problems with. Plus, there wouldn't be as many a lot of the time, so the main bonus of her abilities in this situation- being able to heal a full room at once- wasn't going to be as useful here.

And she needed to find Eon. He'd been a part of the attack that had somehow downed an Endbringer, whatever that ended up meaning, and the last time that'd ended up happening during Leviathan he'd been downed in return for helping set it up, and even though the band hadn't said anything about him being taken out it didn't mean he couldn't be hurt or exhausted somewhere...

So she had to go find him, even if it meant leaving the other healers without her help for some or even all of the rest of the time she was here.

She had to find Swarm, too, she noted to herself as she hurried out of the healing units and started looking around. While it wasn't as likely that she'd gotten into trouble during this fight, there was still far too much of a chance that she'd ended up injured in some way, given all of the debris going around, and she desperately wanted to make sure that her team was entirely safe.

Eon first, she decided, seeing the tower of Psychic energy that was slowly fading away in the distance. That was undoubtedly where Eon was, or at least near to where he was, but even if Eon wasn't there then Jirachi and Deoxys would be there- that was definitely Deoxys' shields at work, and there was no way that Deoxys was going to be far away from Jirachi, given that they were his Guardian- and the two Legendaries could point her in the correct direction for her leader instead. She didn't feel too bad about taking a bit longer to reach out to Swarm, given that the fight was over now and it wasn't likely that she was in any sort of danger, at least right now, and... well, she needed to get a report from her leader so that she could do her job as the second in command and start to deal with everyone else.

Plus, she trusted Swarm. She wasn't the most powerful member of the team, but she was smart, and she knew how to leverage the powers she had to keep herself and others safe, which was probably the most important thing to know when you were on a Rescue Team. Shadow could trust that she'd be ok until someone was able to find her, especially since the armbands hadn't reported anything on her this fight.

Taking a deep breath and another look around, she spared another moment to mourn the amount of destruction caused during the fight and took off. Heading towards what had been the centre of the fight was a little bit nerve wracking, even after two years of rescue work and another Endbringer attack under her badge, but she knew Dragon wouldn't have reported it as over unless it was definitely over- which was more than she could say about some battles that she'd been in in the past while on the job- and since Deoxys was taking down their shield, she was pretty confident that everything was under control over there, so there wasn't a need to worry about things.

Get over there, find Eon, get a report on what went down from him- or Jirachi, I guess, he could probably tell me as well- then go find Swarm and start helping out with the cleanup and search and rescue stuff. She told herself, picking her way through debris. We can stay well after it starts getting too dark for most people to see, too, since we have better night vision and can provide our own lights. Hopefully we'll be able to get this place into the position to start rebuilding sooner rather than later. That would be nice, given that there were still some parts of Brockton Bay that were being repaired after Leviathan's attack two months ago, because of how hard it had been to remove some things.

Eon shuddered slightly at the sound of the explosion, ducking down behind the nearest piece of reasonably-sized debris and covering his ears from the noise. While the shields muffled it all enough that it wasn't likely anyone further away had heard it, up close it was still plenty loud to his sharp ears.

Fortunately he was well versed in dealing with things like this during combat- because a lot of Moves had explosions as side effects or were otherwise very loud- so aside from a brief pause where the entire world seemed to be staring at them, he was barely stunned.

Even still, he remained behind the protective barrier that the fallen buildings made up until the after effects had definitely faded, then carefully peered over.

There was still some light within the shields, but for the most part everything was handled. Behemoth was gone, and Deoxys had started to collapse their shields downwards, removing them layer by layer from the outside in as if to ensure that any of the energy that was still left over from the Doom Desire didn't manage to escape outwards and cause more damage. Jirachi was floating slowly out from his position underneath the shields, the third eye on his chest drooping closed, and he was rubbing at his actual eyes and yawning.

"Are you alright?" Eon called, sweeping out from behind his makeshift defence and bounding over. He approached quickly, but kept his distance as he circled around the Legendary for a visual check- it was likely that Deoxys was still extremely protective of Jirachi, for good reason, and Eon didn't want to accidentally aggravate them by getting too close and potentially setting off danger senses that were still far too close to the surface in the aftermath of the fight.

Though Deoxys was currently occupied taking down the shielding that had been containing Behemoth, the residual energy fading fast, so there was a chance they were too distracted to notice.

'Fine.' He assured, mental voice sounding exhausted. 'Doom Desire is just... difficult. That's all.'

"I'm sorry I had to ask you to do that-"

'Don't be. I volunteered it, and I did it. I knew it'd make me tired, but it was worth it.' He replied, before yawning again. 'Urgh... I wouldn't say no to some time off, though...'

"We- that is, Inari- we're gonna be here a little while longer to help with search and rescue." Eon told him. "But you and Deoxys could take a break somewhere safe to regain your strength. No-one would really hold it against you if you decided to go home, either- ah, wherever home is for you right now- since there's a good number of Capes every attack that leave pretty soon after because they can't help out. Since Behemoth is down-"

Eon paused. Blinked. Looked at the ground, whole aside from the craters where Behemoth had stepped. Then up at the shields, which were still being taken down.

"Did." He paused again, shaking his head. "Wait, did you manage to destroy Behemoth?"

His voice sounded slightly incredulous even to his own ears- which was ridiculous, he knew. Behemoth was tough but Jirachi was a Legendary, the Wish Maker, and their Moves already did a lot of damage to Endbringers without even bringing that into the equation in the first place- but apparently Jirachi was too exhausted to pick up on that, given that he just nodded, bobbing in place as his levitation failed to compensate for it. 'I think so, yeah. It was a lot of power, so I'd be surprised if it made it.'

'Agreement; Opponent Unit: Behemoth has been destroyed.' Deoxys confirmed, floating over. They were followed by a small box made of shields, which contained a number of large chunks- presumably left behind by Behemoth after his destruction.

"...By the Netherworld." Eon murmured, looking at Jirachi with some slight amazement. "That is... incredibly impressive, Wish Maker."

'Just call me Jirachi.' He shrugged, bobbing again. Deoxys- still in their Defence Forme- reached out with their paddle-like hands and herded him closer to their chest, near to where the core crystal lay, and he gladly took the moment to lean against them. 'We've fought together, you might as well.'

"If you insist." Eon accepted, stepping forward to examine the pieces in the shield. "These were left behind by Behemoth?"

'Affirmative.'

Eon felt dizzy. Light headed, a little bit in shock-

And something more familiar, he realised after a moment, with no small hint of wariness.

"Oh dear." He grimaced, pulling away. "Deoxys, would you do me a favour and open a small hole in your shield? Just enough to put my paw through."

'Affirmative. Query; reasoning?'

"I'd like to test something, very quickly." He explained, looking around. There wasn't anyone nearby enough to possibly see it, given that everyone had backed away from Jirachi's attack-

But there was one thing that could make it a bit less likely that anyone would appear.

Eon sat down, freeing himself to reach up and press the communications button on the armband. "Dragon." He said clearly, waiting a moment for it to connect.

"Eon?"

"Spread the word, the fight is over. Behemoth is down." He informed her. "Cleanup can begin."

"...You're certain." She replied, after a long moment of silence.

"Absolutely." Eon nodded. "Behemoth is down, totally destroyed." He didn't think it was a good idea to mention that there were still pieces left around over a channel like this, no matter how much he trusted Dragon's ability to keep things secure. There was still a chance that someone might be close enough to overhear, on either end- more likely on his end, since Dragon had hers on the internal speakers of her suit- or the even lower chance that someone could have hacked into Dragon's communication lines and could overhear things that way. "Jirachi did it."

"...I see." She sounded disbelieving, and honestly Eon couldn't blame her; the Endbringers had been a problem since the 80's, starting out with Behemoth himself, and he was known for being incredibly durable, so the idea that he could have been destroyed was...

It was understandably awe inspiring, he supposed.

"I'll spread the word around and get people started on moving into cleanup, then." She added, still sounding baffled, but seemingly putting it to one side in order to start working on the practicalities. "And- thank you."

"Our pleasure, Dragon." He assured, ending the call. "Ok, that should keep people from getting too close for at least a little while." He told the two Legendaries. "Mostly because they'll be too busy being in shock."

'It's really that big a deal?' Jirachi asked, frowning slightly. 'I didn't realise...'

"I'll give you a better history of it later- or Swarm will, she's local so she's more of an expert in this sort of stuff- but Behemoth was really bad news." Eon said. "So yes, it's a really big deal to get rid of him."

He focused on the chunks being held in the shield again, where there was now a small hole for him to reach through. Moving forward bought with it that familiar dizziness again, and that more than anything made Eon fairly sure that he was right, but he reached through anyway and touched the closest one.

The vision wasn't particularly important- a flash of a past or future with things built or rebuilt, and people walking in the streets talking in a language he didn't understand- but the contents of the vision weren't what he was interested in anyway.

He pulled away slowly, letting the dizziness from the vision fade away alongside it, and grimaced. "That's not good." He murmured.

'What's wrong?'

"Not right now." He half-snapped, looking around for Shadow on instinct at the same time as he started weaving his tails around in the air. Shadow wasn't there, which was bad because he needed his second in command right now to help him handle this, but also that was fine because she would be here soon- he could feel it, in the depths of his bones and in the fire that fuelled his Aura. She would've heard the alert Dragon sent out and made her way straight to him as soon as she could, so she would be here soon enough to help out- and in the meanwhile Eon could handle himself perfectly well, crafting an illusion out of thin air and layering it over the Time Gear pieces. "Close the box, make it as small as you can, keep the pieces in there and do not let go." He demanded as he did. "As strong as you can manage it, these things need to be protected with everything you have."

Illusions of invisibility and notice-me-not and nothing-to-see-here and there's-nothing-important-go-away and things-are-watching-me, over and over and over themselves until it was hard for him to look at them straight, let alone anyone else. Deoxys and Jirachi were already being affected as well, looking back and forth nervously and after a moment Eon put in an exclusion for Deoxys, because it wouldn't be a good idea to lock out the Pokemon who was holding up the integrity of the box in the first place.

'What's going on?' Jirachi asked again, his exhausted voice gaining a bit of strength as it gained nerves. 'Eon, what-'

"Not. Now." He hissed. "It's not safe here." He let his tails droop slightly in his own exhaustion, the feeling of layering so many illusions one after another straight after a fight like that pulling him down, but he mostly ignored it- it was familiar- in favour of another thought. "Unless you can read minds."

'Not really.'

'Agreement; Unit; Self lacks the capability to perform action.'

"Yeah, thought not." He sighed again. "Right, just... just keep that shield up, ok? Keep it running, don't let anything break it. I'll handle keeping it from being spotted but if that falls apart then you're going to need to protect it. Forgive me for saying it but between Jirachi and those things those are the more dangerous thing in the area. They need to stay safe."

'...I... see.'

He could tell from the tone of voice that Jirachi couldn't, not really, but at the same time he was trying his best to keep his questions to himself. On Eon's side, he wouldn't feel safe talking about the Time Gears until they were far, far away- on some ship of Dragon's, being dropped on some island in the most secure state they could manage, far away from anyone at all- and preferably until he was locked away under some illusions of his own.

As much as the PRT knew about Time Gears- and that was an annoyingly widespread amount of people- they didn't have the sort of experience with them to be truly wary. None of them did. But Eon had heard that story first hand, and there was no chance that he was going to play games with the entire planet.

Though if it came down to it and he had to kidnap Swarm, Danny, Amy, Vicky, and whoever else they could think of as friends, into a Hoopa portal and take them to his world, he would without regret. He was also fairly sure Shadow would help him if he needed it, up to and including knocking them out if they had to.

The wait didn't take long, Shadow suddenly appearing at his side with a blink of Agility, looking like she'd run the entire way over from the medical bay.

"What's up?"

He exhaled. "Jirachi fired a Doom Desire, Behemoth is destroyed. Only thing left are a bunch of fragments, in a similar condition to the ones that we had after Leviathan's... incident."

"Oh."

"You're on run, find Dragon, tell her what we need. We'll be bringing them to a craft asap once you've done that. For now we're staying here, I'm anchoring the illusions and as much as I could set them I'd feel better if there was more protection because of Jirachi's status. Deoxys can set their clones into a different grouping now, because we don't need to worry about defending them and the people they're rescuing from Behemoth, just from the rubble and things like that. Groups of two or three should be fine, maybe just make sure you can re-coordinate things if they come across a lot of people that need help all at once."

'Affirmative; Unit; Self will rearrange Unit; Self's duplicates into requested formatting. Unit; Self will ensure group is safe.'

The last part felt faintly reprimanding, but the leader ignored it. "Perhaps, but Jirachi is exhausted and you're going to need to be focused on the fragments, so I'd rather be safe than sorry. Shadow, get moving, after you've confirmed with Dragon I'll send Deoxys and Jirachi over to you and go pick up Swarm. After that we can all move onto search and rescue work up until we're all too tired to keep going, then we'll regroup with Strider and teleport back home."

Thank Arceus for the fact that Shadow was used to working with Eon even at his most snappy and distressed. She didn't say a word about the way he laid everything out, didn't question the orders, just nodded and bounded away again.

It would take her a while to find and get to Dragon, even using the bands to search her out, but that was fine. Eon could take a moment to recuperate, even if he'd be on mid-to-high alert keeping the Legendaries and the Time Gears safe.

He was fine with that.

It took maybe half an hour after the really big explosion for anything to really change.

Well, aside from the broadcast that came from the armbands about five or so minutes after it. Swarm wasn't really concerned with the length of time at the moment, given that she was working on pulling people out from under some rubble that another Cape was holding up- and not all of them were alive, or even in good shape- but a half an hour felt right.

The announcement that Behemoth was down had her worried and elated in nearly equal measures. Elated, because holy shit someone downed an Endbringer, and that someone was probably her team, which was amazing and thought to be impossible and it was hard to believe it. Worried, because holy shit her team had been nearby to that and downed an Endbringer. Somehow.

Every part of her had wanted to ditch out then, to use her bugs to find her team and head over there and not let any of them go for another week. Even Jirachi and Deoxys, because even if they weren't officially on Team Inari- which wouldn't be the state of affairs for long, Swarm could tell- they'd still been nearby when everything had gone down and Endbringer fights were traumatising for people who knew at least vaguely what they were going into and had been looking at news articles and shit about it for years. Being thrown directly into one, with barely any preparation aside from Eon's 'this is what the enemy is' speech that he'd undoubtedly given on the plane ride over, while new to the entire planet that they were now on?

Swarm was going to be surprised if the two Legendary Pokemon let each other out of sight for a very long time anytime soon.

Possibly Eon and Shadow would be similar towards them as well. Eon especially, since he'd been on the field as well and probably had been part of setting up that plan, which meant that when he came out of the 'I need to be the leader' mode that he had he'd be pretty worried about everyone, and probably end up trying to herd them all into the Den for him to keep an eye on for the rest of the evening.

It wasn't new, after all. She'd been in that position quite a few times now, usually when she was nearly shot out on patrol and he freaked. It was nice to have someone who cared, for sure, but it got annoying quickly when she wanted to go home in order to let her dad fuss over her.

Shaking her head as the last person crawled out from under the rubble, she reached out and helped them further away before examining the space once more. "It's good." She said to the Cape- she hadn't caught his name- as she helped the woman she was with to her feet and over to one of the flying Capes that was waiting to help with evacuation.

The rubble was lowered a moment later, and they exchanged a nod before walking away. Swarm kept looking around with her bugs, trying to see if there was anyone else in the area that needed help so that she could start walking that way, before a prickle of something at the back of her neck made her turn around.

"Eon." She greeted as she did, looking around-

-At the apparently empty street. She frowned; I swear I just saw him...

"Swarm." He returned, fading into view. "How'd you know I was there?"

"I thought I spotted you." She told him. "Did you forget to cloak to my bugs or something?"

Eon blinked, tilting his head. "Might've done." He shrugged. "I wouldn't be surprised... things were a little crazy a bit ago."

"Need a break?" She knelt down beside him and reached out, placing her hand on his head for a moment when he allowed it.

"I'm good for now. We have Berries and those biscuits, it's fine. Just came to fill you in on things."

On the things that were safe to say in public, she mentally corrected. "Lay it on me."

"Behemoth's down, we're all moving to search and rescue. Deoxys and Jirachi are backing up a bit, because Jirachi's exhausted and Deoxys' on protection duty. Shadow backed out of healing when she heard the word and came along, she'll be helping out too because it's not likely that her sort of healing is going to be of any help now things are over. I volunteered to find you and assure you that we're fine before things started for real."

"Good to know."

It was, too. It was good to know that her team was safe and well, even if it worried her a bit about Jirachi. "Is Jirachi going to be ok?"

"Should be fine, just too much energy used up in one go." Eon promised. "From what the two of them have said, he doesn't use that Move much."

"At all, I'd think, given how big it was."

"Pretty much." He nodded, sagging slightly. "Still, everyone's good now, we're going to keep going until things are over or we're all too exhausted to keep working safely, then we'll regroup at Strider and make our way back home."

"Sounds like a plan to me."

Eon nodded again, then started moving again, nudging her in the side with a tail as he walked by. He didn't bother to cloak this time, just moving through the streets and sniffing at the air.

Swarm turned her attention away from him, putting her full mind into working on finding people now that she knew the team was safe. The sooner that everyone else was safe, the sooner they would all head back to Brockton Bay and take a while to breathe, which was good.

She got the feeling it would be needed, given that Behemoth had gone down to one of her team mates. There'd probably be a lot of meetings about it all.

Sorry it's late again. Apparently my brain tried to move me to an every-two-weeks schedule without my notice, and then last week I was rebooting my computer and basically didn't have it all of Sunday, soo... sorry!

Also I'm still having some trouble writing more, which has been really annoying. Hopefully I'll be able to get back to things, but it is starting to look like I'm moving to every-two-weeks posting for a while, to try and get more writing done.