"I have to…"

Home. I have to get home. Because the storm is getting worse.

"I have to go home."

Turning away from the Shrine, they're watching me. All of them. But that's not...not important. Because I have to-

"Alright."

Brandish starts, at that. Pale disgust, outrage maybe. "What!? She can't just-!"

"Carol, not now." I flinch, as Lady Photon reaches out to grab my arm again. "Listen, Taylor. When all of this is over, you're going to come to me. And we're going to have a long talk with the Protectorate about this situation."

What-?

"Do you hear me? Immediately after."

"Fine." I pull free. Ignore the churning in my stomach as the carpet squelches under my boot. "I'm leaving-" She's already halfway to the door. "-now." Leaving…

'So you don't want to know what that was all about?'

The Heart finds its way into a pocket of my coat, then the baton on the floor. Manpower is shouldering through the door-

-so I don't bother with it, skipping straight to the hallway-

-then the empty workshop, because that's where I left the crossbow. Not leaving that behind again. Not making the same mistakes. 'Keep track of my things' is right there on that list.

Hurry home.

The rain has gotten worse. A few seconds on the rooftop, trying to orient myself, is enough for it to cut right through my coat. But that isn't important, because...home. That way.

"Crow!" Victoria. She sweeps up beside me, eyes wide. "Did he seriously get away!?"

Yes, he got away. He ran again. "I need to go."

"Shit, right-"

"I need to get home."

She's nodding. "Your dad." I stumble back, tense, but Victoria just squeezes tighter before letting me go, darting away again. "Go. You can catch up once he's okay."

And then she's away, slicing through the rain.

I…

I'm wasting time here.

xxxxxxxxxx

The streets are packed, as I fly overhead. Police trying to direct hundreds, thousands of people. I catch sight of a few idiots trying to drive through the mess-

But details aren't important right now. I don't pay that much attention.

Five minutes, at a rush. It seems like an eternity. But then I'm home, then I hit the sidewalk, and...and…

The door is open. Broken in.

[No.]

Can't see inside, can't hear anything over the sirens. Powers. I have powers. So I step-

-onto the porch, crouch down beside the door, and enhance my vision. There's...there's a body on the floor, near the stairs, surrounded by a swarm of...bugs, I think, and someone at the top of the stairs, slumped against a wall. That body is moving.

[Fuck, oh god pLeASe nO.]

"Dad!?"

He startles. Looks up. And I hear, faint, hoarse, "Taylor!?"

It's him. He's okay. I swallow, and...and sweep the house one more time, before-

-appearing beside him.

[No no nO no no]

Blood. On his hands. On the leg he's got his shirt pressed against. He's pale, sweating. Alive, but-

"Dad…" Dad, he's alive, but he's hurt. Shit, shit, he's bleeding. I move-

-for the bathroom, for...for a towel, alcohol-

-to drop beside him. "Dad, what happened? They...what happened?"

He looks up, hisses through gritted teeth. "Henchmen. What else?" His head thumps against the wall, and he looks at me for a moment before pulling his hands away. There's blood, welling up through a...a hole. Bullet hole. Hench men with guns.

I press the towel over the wound. He bites down on a shout, and the drawn out sound of pain that it trails off into, it…

"They came to the door." He mutters once he's recovered, hands shaking as they join mine over the gunshot. "Thought I'd be stupid enough to answer it. In this town?" He grins. I laugh, weak, breathless, involuntary. "Then the sirens went off, and they decided t-to press the issue."

And they shot him…

And judging by the...the shotgun sitting on the floor beside us...Dad returned the favor. "You-?" Killed them? Obviously. One of them, at least.

His mouth pulls down in a grimace, and he nods. "Barely got to it in time." He nods toward his bedroom, and the open suitcase upended on the floor. "Caught the first one at the top of the stairs, he clipped me, then…" He shakes his head. "He sort of...exploded, I guess? Made those...those bugs."

More of the tinker's work. It had to be. He...he sent them here?

"Those went after the second one, and...well, he's been quiet for a little while now."

I'm pretty sure he's dead. I guess Dad did get both of them. Two birds with one stone.

"...Taylor?"

He's looking at me. Pale, sweating, pained...worried. I take a breath, or try to, but I can't quite hold onto it.

[my hands are so warm, why is blood so wArm?]

"I'm fine." It's a choked, obvious lie, but I tell him that anyway, because it's what he needs to hear. It's what I need to say. "I'm fine, but-" no, but that's the important part, that's why I had to get here, "-you're not, and there's an Endbringer."

Dad won't make it to a shelter on one leg. With a bullet wound.

Not on his own.

"Can you move?"

He swallows, and thumps his head back against the wall again. The muscles in his jaw tense, for a long second, before he nods. "Get a belt."

I go and get a belt. I help my Dad wrap it twice around his leg, and the towel, so that it's directly over the wound. And I help him buckle it in place, since the strength goes out of him as soon as it's pulled tight enough to do that.

I fucking hate it. Seeing him in pain like this is making me sick. And when I think about the guy downstairs…

[I think thIs is what's called rAge.]

"Just hold on." I pick up the crossbow, from where I'd dropped it. "There's bound to be some kind of help in the shelters." Something, anything, will be better than here.

Dad doesn't say anything, as he grabs my hand and forces his good leg under him. I pull, and he groans behind gritted teeth, but then he's upright, and leaning on me, and we're both-

-outside. And a moment later-

-on the roof across the street. I turn my head, just enough to look down another block-

-and then we're there.

I can't keep that pace up, but...I settle for stopping every other time. Four seconds, standing in the rain with my Dad struggling to stay upright, seems like an eternity. But when we do eventually reach the shelter, and the pressure in my head finally spikes into something painful, I decide that it was probably the right call. Because if we'd had to stop halfway-

"Take him!" I shout over the rain, the noise of the stragglers still making their way in. The police officer, already on approach from his spot near the entrance, picks up the pace. Takes my place, as I duck out from under Dad's arm.

"Where are you going!?"

[To do what I hAve to.]

"You're not going to fight that thing?!"

I stop, and take a deep breath. Look back, and see the naked fear on Dad's face.

"I'm not!"

[I telL the truth.]

And then, I leave.

xxxxxxxxxx

I swallow, staring off toward the bay. You can't see it from here, not really. Too many buildings, and the rain cuts visibility enough to be noticeable. It's...hard to believe that there's an Endbringer coming, right now. That it's going to be here. Even with the sirens wailing, with the streets empty-

No. I need to focus on things I can actually do something about. A baton and a few sedative darts? Rats, and bugs, and the ability to see in the dark? What good can that do against a monster that can sink an island? That can stand up against the best heroes and the worst villains and come back year after year for more? There's no point in me trying to fight that.

But a murderous psychopath that sent armed gunmen after my Dad?

That I can do something about.

'All evidence to the contrary.'

The Heart is light. It feels almost fragile, in my hand. But as I lift it up, as that voice echoes softly in my ears, it pulses in time with my Mark.

"I'm going to fix this." I turn away from the Bay, and start walking along the edge of the rooftop. "But I need you to help me find the Tinker."

'The more things change…' Another pulse. 'It's not hard to figure out, you know. He runs. He hides. He abandons ship and sends goons in to clean up after him. There's a word for people like that.' The inner workings of the Heart move faster, just for a moment. 'It's 'coward', if you were wondering.'

I'm not sure I buy that. With the work Amy's done to patch me up after a couple of our 'meetings'.

'Oh, he's good at catching people by surprise. Attacking from a position of power. But that's not the important part. You want to know where he is?'

It's a struggle not to snarl. "Yes!"

'Where does a coward go when an Endbringer comes to town?'

"...I just took my Dad to a shelter."

'He wasn't in that one, if it makes you feel better.'

It does. For all of a second. Because fuck. "Which one?"

'Well, there aren't more than a couple dozen in town...but I'm sure you could narrow it down a little further.'

The Runes? Would he even have one on him? The guy we followed to the lair yesterday had one, but I hadn't felt it today...hadn't been looking for them, either. I don't think it was still there, so that means either he's got it, or one of his men does. Either way-

I take a deep breath, and close my eyes, reaching out for that feeling. Runes, thrumming softly in my head. One, somewhere downtown, hasn't moved since I first 'found' it. The other, off toward the docks, is moving. But I think...no, it must be in the water. So that's unlikely.

The last isn't moving. But it's definitely not in the last workshop.

There's a distant noise, as I open my eyes. Almost like thunder.

'That would be Leviathan, making landfall.'

I tuck the Heart away, and step off the roof.

xxxxxxxxxx

They're packed in tight. It'd always been uncomfortable, during the drills. I guess it must be worse now, locked in for real. With an Endbringer bearing down.

I think of Dad, and almost immediately shake the image away. Can't focus on that right now.

Looking past the doors doesn't give me anything about the details of the space. But I can see the people, and I can see a few clear spots. Places big enough for me to teleport. I just need to get in, find the Tinker...and get him out before he can hurt anyone. With the number of people here, the confining spaces, I don't even want to think about what he could do.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

I'm inside.

A man in front of me screams, stumbling back a half step only to hit another body and stop. That draws attention, and then it's like a ripple running through the crowd, with me at the center. I have a little bit of breathing room...but no sign of the Tinker. Just the feeling of a Rune, deeper in. Deeper down.

I crouch down-

-put myself on the ceiling-

-then across the room, for a better sightline-

-before finally twisting in the air, to hit the stairs at as close to a run as I can manage. Since it involves shoving my way past the startled and, sometimes, panicked people milling around in the stairwell, it's not nearly as fast as I would like.

Only a floor down. I push, pull, force my way ahead. My height is a blessing, here, and my mask sends people reeling, clearing my way even more when it matters. As the seconds tick by, and the shouting rises up behind me, I hone in on the Rune, getting closer, closer-

[I can sEE, aheAd, the TaNgled wHispers clinGing abouT HiM]

He turns. I can see him. He sees me too.

I raise the crossbow, and a corridor opens up between us in the time it takes me to blink. People scream. He snarls. The man in black beside him pulls a gun from somewhere, and opens fire at the same time I do.

His shot hits something hard in my shoulder, jerking my arm back. The bolt I'd been aiming at his chest catches him in the neck. As he stumbles back, I swap the crossbow to my now weakened arm, whipping out my baton-

-to catch him in the back of the head with the strongest swing I can muster.

There's a crack. He falls. I whirl on the Tinker, hear a sharp crack, and when he drives into me with a spring-loaded tackle-

-I wind up on my back.

On the street.

In the rain.

He scrambles off of me, struggling to his feet, and despite the trouble I'm having trying to breathe right now...I hiss out a laugh.

"You stupid bitch!"

Fuck you too.

I roll, push myself up-

-supporting myself against a car, across the street. The Tinker's in front of me, now, spinning in place as he tries to keep me in sight. The winter coat he was wearing was starting to smoke, probably that jet-pack thing he'd been wearing yesterday, and his jeans are ripped where the mechanisms in his boots had obviously been hidden. But it looks like he's unarmed. If the bodyguard and...Lisa's insight mean anything at all, then I might just have the advantage this time.

Somehow, I manage to raise my voice enough to be heard. "If you want to give up, now's your chance!"

His response is to shout another curse, and trigger the jets beneath his coat.

Fine.

I lift the crossbow and-

-fire as I drop. My timing was off; the bolt misses by at least two feet. But then I spin, and catch him across the back of his legs with my baton. Catch a glimpse of him spinning in the air, before I'm forced to move again-

-to keep from hitting the ground. I end up facing down at an industrial AC unit, with just enough time to get my feet under me before my stomach flips and I drop into an awkward landing.

On a rooftop across the street, the Tinker finds his footing again, and takes off with another assisted leap.

I'm getting really sick of that.

But what else can I do, except follow him?

xxxxxxxxxx

I hit him in passing a couple more times. He catches me by surprise and nearly buries a folding knife in my neck. I teleport in to try and drag him down with me. He plants a boot in my stomach and fires off that piston-thing. I'm stalled, emptying my stomach in an alleyway (and thankfully not in my mask), but less than a minute later I've caught up with him and returned the favor with a surprise teleport into something hard.

He gets up, of course. And, after a few moments to recover, I follow him.

I try rats, summoning them while I'm clinging to an outstretched arm, falling through the air. Throwing them from above, when he manages to shake off the first group. They bite, and scratch, so he drops to street level and washes them away in the flood below. And instead of trying his hand at flying again, he breaks into a jet assisted sprint, bounding down the block and around the corner before I can react to the drowning rats.

A few of them cling, soaked and ragged, to the inside of my coat, the legs of my pants, and then I'm after him again.

It's harder, down here. With buildings to block my line of sight, I have to depend on the Rune he's got with him, anticipate which way he's going to go so I can get ahead. I nearly clothesline him, two blocks over, but he skids into an alleyway at the last second. Catch him with the rats, not long after, but not soon enough, because they vanish before they can do anything effective.

He's caught on, by my third attempt. Ready with that knife. Practically frothing at the mouth, throwing himself at me to put all his weight behind the point. It hits my perforated body armor, splits something in my chest with a wet snap. I feel a very real, very sharp pain, realize he has to have hit my heart-

-but then I hit the street behind him with a splash, rolling to a stop and nearly losing my weapons in the process. By the time I've recovered my footing, stopped squinting past the pain in the back of my head, he's gone again. Still running. Bastard.

I teleport another block down, toward the Rune.

I arrive in front of a group of Capes, costumes, masks I don't recognize. There's a moment of panic, surprise and confusion and fear on both sides, and I turn just in time to see something huge before-

I arrive-

-and scrabble at the gravel, the tar underneath. My head spins, throbbing, and my vision flashes, but I realize suddenly that I can't just stand here, because that was-

-Leviathan.

It looks warped. Uneven. Awful. I watch as it sweeps its tail and a handful of Capes I now only vaguely recognize are sliced apart.

Fuck.

I sniff, cough, as something wet and warm mingles with the water soaking through my mask. In the few seconds it takes me to sweep my fingers up and under the fabric, to realize that it's blood, the Endbringer has made its way down a side-street, Capes of all sorts moving to follow.

The Rune is still below.

I wipe away the blood, and focus past the pain, and put myself-

-right beside it.

The Tinker turns to look at me, over his shoulder, before heaving the man he'd been dragging up against a window that somehow has remained unscathed. A Cape, red and black and a dark, sharp mask...I have the time to recognize him from my research (Victor, Empire Eighty-Eight) before the knife cuts across his throat. Before he's pushed back even harder, and pulled to one side, blood smearing-

-smearing across the reflective glass.

"No-"

[CeASe]

"Fuck you!"

[rrEefFusssAlLl]

He falls into the glass, as Victor spasms and burns to ash from the inside. I hit the window a second later, the Mark on my hand burning, so focused on the space on the other side that it barely takes a thought to-

xxxxxxxxxx

"-ouldn't just leave me alo-"

My…

"-t no! No, you had to fucking-"

...head.

It's so bright. It hurts to look. I groan, and try to turn away, but it's a struggle to move. A struggle to pull my fingers tight around the...baton. That's my baton. I need that to-

"No!" Impact, pressure against my hand. Something that isn't pain, as the bones grind against each other. "No, you don't get to do this! Not anymore! I've finally fixed it! It's finally working!" The boot lifts, presses against my side, and-

Crack

-sends me tumbling, uncontrolled, across the asphalt. Real pain blossoms, for the first time in days, and suddenly I have trouble breathing. My ribs…

"You don't get to win this! No with my things! Not when everything you have you've taken from me!"

The Tinker. I blink away tears, squint at the blurry figure moving toward me.

"You're dead! You and that blonde bitch, and her family, and then I'm going to turn your father into parts-"

He's standing over me, drawing back for another kick-

-but I'm already above him. Falling on top of him. Hitting the ground again brings back the pain, drives out what little breath I'd managed to recover; I can't do anything but lay there, for a very long moment. Heat flares, bright and blue, against my coat. It smoulders, hisses, but it's still soaked through. It doesn't catch, as I recover, as I grab at whatever I can reach.

He rolls. I force myself to follow. I'm on top of him, we're face to face. He claws at the ground, reaching for...knife. Knife. I grab his sleeve, pull his arm back, and then I'm reaching for it too. He gets a handful of my coat, and pulls. I pull back, but I can't reach the knife. Can't let him get it. Can't breathe. Can't hold on forever.

"Just...fucking...die!"

I don't want to die.

[I haVe to stoP this…]

I draw back, up, away. It weakens my grip, and he reaches the knife.

But he doesn't have a chance to use it, before I drive my head down as hard as I can. The impact is dizzying, sickening, and I feel my nose crunch against the hard metal of my mask. But I hear the Tinker scream, and when I shove myself up and away again, there's a sickening squelch, wet resistance. Blood splatters, covering a lense, effectively blinding me in one eye.

Sharp pain, across my arm-

-drives me further away. But the Tinker doesn't follow. He's too busy fumbling the knife, clutching the side of his neck where the hooked beak of the mask had caught him. Even with the heavy bleeding, with the obvious pain, he's glaring at me.

I slump. Struggle to breathe. He pulls himself back against the shattered remains of a wall, slumping against the body, half-buried but still falling. Frozen in a moment of fear. Dying? Is that what dying feels like…?

Something snaps. The noise is almost deafening, in the near silence of the Void, and I refocus immediately. Stare at the pieces of the Charm that the Tinker is holding, almost unrecognizable beneath all the blood.

He laughs, breathless and hysterical, as the blood starts turning black, spreading up to the wound, then out from it, darkening the veins across his neck and face.

[The thing beHind him hissSess iN disDaiN, griPpinG hiM tight-]

He starts to slip away, bits and pieces at a time. Flakes of skin, and blood, and muscle, and bone...he's trying to get away again. He's succeeding.

I wheeze, hiss, barely get the words out. "No."

[My Mark burNs, the ScaLeS thAt cover mY eyEs cRaCKing, FalLing-]

And the Void ripples, the blue haze and stillness wiped away. Stark, cold...the wind catches my coat, hissing across dark stone.

The Tinker stares, from his place on the ground. Wide-eyed. Shocked. He's surprised.

So is the thing behind him.

"End this."

Sharp limps lash out, faster than I could hope to see; they bury themselves in the stone. The Tinker twitches, once, looking down at the chitinous spike in his chest. And then he just...stops. He falls limp. His breath hisses out. The dark stops spreading.

There's a whisper in the cold-dark behind me. Indistinct, but dangerous.

[HosT tErminAtioN.]

The writhing, impossible shape twisting behind the Tinker's corpse surges, recoils, but can't escape as more limbs reach around me.

[ReaLloCaTing.]

And I-

xxxxxxxxxx

It's the rain that wakes me up. The dull ache spreading through my whole body keeps me from passing out again.

I take a deep breath, my side pulling but not-

"Hgk." Fuck. I claw at my mask, fingers numb, stiff, but I do manage to pull it off, to get the wet, clinging cloth away from my mouth and nose. Breathe. The air feels cold against my bare skin, the water just making it worse. But I don't try to move. Just close my eyes against the rain and...take a minute. Take a break.

"I suppose it's tradition, to bask in the aftermath of victory."

Any attempt at relaxation I could have made dies a swift and painful death. Instead of lying under the rain and trying not to jostle the numerous injuries I'd managed to collect in the last...however long it had been, I find myself sitting up. Standing. Turning to eye the Outsider, who doesn't even have the good graces to look at me.

Of course I notice that I'm definitely on a rooftop, and not some ruined street. Of course I realize that this isn't (can't be) the Void.

But I can almost feel his smirk, feel him waiting for me to ask. So instead of doing that, I move to stand on the edge, beside him. Squint past the rain, toward...toward the Bay, I think. Try to figure out what he's looking at.

The silence doesn't last, of course.

"But then, tradition isn't for everyone, is it?"

Flashes of color, faint, very distant. Capes. Blasters. They're still fighting Leviathan, out there. "Traditions are important."

"Traditions are like many things, in that they start well. Acts of devotion, or fellowship. But of course, in time, the reasons are lost. They become nothing but a distant memory." He's smiling. "And in time, not even that."

I don't look. I don't. Instead, I distract myself with the distant struggle. Wonder how many people are dying, out there? How many people have already died? A lot. Too many.

"...how many is 'too many'?"

"You'll find as many answers to that question as people to ask it."

More silence. There's a flicker of gold, the rumble of thunder.

"And like anything...it's all about context. After all...the life of a loved one? A child, or a lover...a parent?" I stiffen, don't move as the Outsider turns to step around, behind me. "To even lose one is unthinkable. It's the kind of thing that will drive anyone to...extremes."

I think of the shotgun. And of the blood I'll probably have to clean out of my mask.

"Of course, if a hundred strangers have to die, to protect those precious few…?" He settles again, standing on my other side. Leans forward far enough that I can't even pretend not to see his smile. "That's just the way of things, isn't it?"

The gold flickers again, then rises up above the buildings. Like a firefly, arcing up, then shooting down so quickly it seems more like teleportation.

"After all…"

Another flash, somehow brighter, and a streak of gold cuts through the rain, disappearing beneath the skyline in moments. The flare of light that follows is impossible to mistake.

"...people will do anything for the sake of those they love."

More light. Moving, quickly...I track it over, and across, and then it's moving away. Toward the Bay.

The Outsider steps out of sight again. I hear footsteps, moving away. "Once, there was a City by the sea. It was peaceful, and prosperous. Until, one day, a stranger came among them. Until brother turned against brother; until the tides ran red on the shore. Until the stranger left them, the fires warming his back."

"There's no City there now. Only ash, and a memory. And, in time…"

"...not even that?"

The rain falls.