Skye flew her pattern over the city and out into the bay. She did not think that Armsmaster could do anything like this, but he was not alone as a tinker. Kid Win had helped as well as Dragon and Cutlass. Who really helped the most was Squealer of all people? A fighter was a vehicle after all and the four of them worked with Rapier and Skye to build it. A few things were tinkertech on the fighter, but it did not rely wholly on those components to function. Her fighter was nice to fly, but a pure fighter was one of the few things that can get a Jedi excited.
She observed the break barriers being constantly reinforced. It may not come to an attack from Leviathan it could just be a side effect of him attacking somewhere else, but this would be the first time they could prepare to meet an Endbringer with defenses set up. The Boardwalk lost what little beach it had as boulders were brought in. The peninsulas that formed the Bay were getting the same stone and concrete reinforcements.
She angled the craft back to the Bay and hit the after burner not feeling the kick so much after the last adjustment to the inertial dampener. Inside the city the sewage system was being cleaned right along with the rain system. Higher up in the several towns near Brockton Bay supplies were being stockpiled. Also, people were told if they could it would be a good time to take vacation. In some companies it was forced on them.
The questions Dinah was asked were always the same, but the percentage that the Boardwalk would close continued to rise. That question was applied to Boston and New York. It raised a hair for Boston and other cities that bordered the coast. Buildings and skyscrapers were identified as defensible and coded on how strong their foundation was. Without the gangs and many of the families being forced out on vacations it was known that something was going to happen, but the news agencies had remained silent.
PHO remained also blank as no one knew Dragon controlled it and this would delay any posts that talked about the strangeness in the after math of defeating all their gangs in a matter of a few months. Nor did any other board talk about how dozens of National Guard Units were doing training in the area. Or Fema moving equipment or supplies into the New England area. Skye twisted the craft around in a turn that would have knocked out a pilot without the dampeners before landing next to the scout fighter.
"How was the flight?" Armsmaster asked as she dropped out of the fighter.
"Good, no issues, or warning lights. Ayfour will run the diagnostics just to be sure."
"That is a relief. Lockheed Martin and General dynamics will be tooling up to mass produce. They really didn't like the twenty-factory set up your master demanded."
"My master does so only because of the threat you face. No longer can your world put all of their eggs in one basket."
"I know that and no complaints here."
"How did it go in finding the Dragonslayers?"
"Hast is a real demon. Once they took the bait at getting new dragons, he made short work of them. They tried to vanish and nothing we had could track him, but he guided us to their base before they could get there."
"Hast is special in that regard. Good thing he is not a fully functional Hunter Killer droid that he was based off of."
"Hunter killer? Your Galaxy sounds worse than our planet." Skye giggled. She knew it was not something to laugh at but she got a hint through the Force that he wanted to see more than anything. Their talks of kilometer long ships in space traveling the stars like you would get in a plane to go to Europe.
"Perhaps but enjoy your new toy."
"We will." Skye got into her fighter and Ayfour joined her soon enough she lifted off and moved back to the Praxeum. She had plans to move it higher up away from the coast, but that would prevent the ability to cover the city. She flew into the city along the beach and then farther inside. For the first time the Boardwalk had been closed. Still, many workers were loading trucks and boarding up windows.
It was not going to matter if Leviathan did come but perhaps it would attack North or South of the Bay. That is why they had closed down as many of the other businesses were. She landed the craft on the tennis court and her master was there meditating. She got out and without a word joined him. An hour nearly went by before he spoke.
"It appears that the Boardwalk will be completely destroyed."
"When?"
"Some time Sunday. Dinah's blood pressure and heart rate spiked, or I would have asked more. Her parents have taken her to Pease AFB."
"That is good."
"She will be well protected. Dozens of capes will be there soon enough plus a few who can help in such a fight have gone there. They will announce it later today, but I think most in the city know by now."
"Yes, I can feel it in the Force, and see it on the highway. Traffic is moving smoothly. Have you considered that we are its target?"
"The city that threw off the yoke around its neck is something the aliens do not want to see succeed. If we feel that we are the target, then lead it away we can. The higher land to the north of the city would limit its ability to use water and there will be several surprises in play there, but if they talk to each other, I doubt that false angel will remain silent."
"Then we are ready."
Leviathan
Sunday morning dawn the Endbringer alarms went off to nearly empty streets. Still hundreds of people that did not have a car or could not afford to leave rushed to the shelters. The shelters locked up tight before the first drops of rain came down. As the rain grew in strength the waves crashed against the shore that had been reinforced sometime during the last few days by Kaiser, Gully, and Shuffle using the steel from the removed ships that had made up the boat graveyard. This turned the beach into a twenty-foot tall, thirty foot deep, and fifty-foot-wide steel reinforced wall that covered the beach from the North end all the way to the southern end and upriver.
Nearly fifty fliers hovered in the air at the Rig. More were on the Rig with tinkertech weapons. Others were spread throughout the city as spotters. While a few of the teleporters were picking up stragglers and dropping them off on top of Captain's Hill. Many complained that since they knew and were prepared that Leviathan would not come, but that was silenced as soon as the first low tidal wave crashed against the supports of the Rig.
"Get ready!" Alexandria called out her voice booming across the Bay. The three flying craft next to her were a strange trio. One was one of Dragon's largest drones, another was and old fighter that had not been built on this world and another sleek and new and if you were near it, you could still smell the fresh paint. Skye was the one fighter meditating deeply in the Force feeling her master somewhere near the top of Captain's Hill. She could feel his Battle Meditation calming the heroes and Villains that had volunteered for this fight.
A second tidal wave comes in and booms against the supports of the Rig just as Skye twitches the controls of her fighter. A second later the Force gave her a spot to target, and her thumb depresses the stud, and a proton torpedo launches out followed by the second one. Each of them crashes into the water a moment before the water balloons out.
In space a proton torpedo distorts hull armor, and it disintegrates as it is partially put into hyperspace. In the air the effect is a bit similar, but it has an implosion effect with little shock wave, but in water the implosion is immediately followed by a rapid explosion of force. The two nearly simultaneous explosions shoot water in every direction. Even a mile away the splash and the tidal wave it created crashes against the Rig.
In the center of the two explosions Leviathan is rising up into the air as the shock wave crashed together perfectly sending him hundreds of feet in the air. Six tiny thumps are heard coming from Dragon's craft as six missiles rocket away from Armsmaster's fighter as the blaster cannon from Skye's fighter tracks the thirty foot form of Leviathan. The six tiny grenades exploded over the bay with tiny pops under Leviathan as the missiles from Armsmaster explode over his head and the cannon fire impacts the beast.
Six spheres rapidly expand under the form of Leviathan before he begins to drop. More missiles hit to the left and right of him and behind him as the blaster fire continues to halt his forward momentum. Then the rain stops. No longer moving in the air for several seconds. The water beneath Leviathan does nearly the same thing. The capes all cheer as the beast is frozen in time over the bay.
"Alright get ready." The line of blaster capes and high powered tinkertech operators take aim and then a thunderous sound is heard as they fire at the time bubbles for nearly an hour. Not all of them are spot on target, but at least half would hit eventually while many were aimed all around the beast to catch it once it does come out of the time bubble. Though it is unknown when such an event would occur.
The rain cleared after another hour had gone by. Dragon dropped the rest of her munitions on top of the frozen Endbringer, so even if he got out of it, he would get turned into glass or half a dozen other effects. Her large dragon circled the spot and came back to the Rig to land alongside the other two fighters. A smaller form exited the drone, and several people froze in place. She was female and where Armsmaster's armor was blue hers was silver and where his was silver hers was blue.
Her walk was graceful, and her armor flexed as if it was physically part of her. Only her jaw and lips were visible under her visor. The full lips parted in a smile as she walked straight up to Armsmaster and pulled him down for a kiss. Skye smiled at the two as she felt the Force swirl around them. Hast came out of a different hatch inside of the craft and was not even noticed by anyone else as he made his way over to Ayfour.
"Disgusting such a display." Ayfour warbled a bit as Hast's mechanical body shook.
"Bad enough between two biologicals, but this." Ayfour's tone was condescending and scolding.
"Fine I won't say anything else." Several capes approached the two as others cat called or whistled. Alexandria was the second person that Dragon engaged.
"How are you feeling, Dragon?" The question had dozens of different meanings, but Dragon knew what she was after.
"Free, finally free. I have gotten so much help, and everything went so fast. Hast is a very skillful droid. He not only retrieved all my stolen suits, but helped the Guild take out Saint and the rest of the Dragonslayers."
"So, your fear is gone?" Alexandria was learning more about Dragon then she had ever had it was as if she truly was there.
"And then some. The Jedi are going to save the world, worlds as we need to give Aleph and all the other Earths their technology."
"I see." She tensed and Dragon knew that she had thought the wrong thing, but this was not the place for such a discussion, but she had access to all the psychological knowledge the world over and even much of what Aleph had as well.
"Oh, don't think that. I have been around long enough to learn that things are not perfect and are not designed to be. I don't have any urge to do things other than what normally would happen."
"We'll discuss this later." Alexandria relaxed from the answer given but was not fully satisfied.
"We will." The celebration slowly builds on the Rig as capes come and go. Most are villains that leave, taken back as the day moves on and no other threat appears as the time bubbles are seen and scanned as stable. Most of the Protectorate remain as a few caped go out into the city to remove the more restrictive defenses. The shelters are opened, and the news calls back the residents as the rest of the country and the world celebrates.
Far above the Simurgh is looking far into the future following hundreds of different timelines and none of them are viable. She screams over and over again in the silence of vacuum knowing no action she can take will free Leviathan from his fate. A fate that she sees happening over and over again. She sets a new target, but again the hundreds of futures leads to failure. She was patient, but she would find a way. The blank spot in Brockton Bay had become two. She pokes several of her tainted and the futures change. If she had the ability to smile, she would.
Scion flew over the Rig and for the first time in a long time the humans of this world ignored his presence. He looked to the tool of the former Thinker and was puzzled. Many times, he had driven them back into their hiding spots, but not once did he think to destroy them or to stop them. His memories told him that they had a purpose in the cycle. This would not be the end of them, but he felt another presence in the city and another that was observing from far above. A presence that he should know as the other one in the sky was the one known as Simurgh. The other felt like the Thinker but was not.
He studied the frozen Endbringer knowing that if the cycle was still on track, then it would still be trapped over sixty cycles later. Even then the beast would not survive its fate. The three different time fields contained the combined powers of dozens of shards and the strange effects from something unknown it puzzled him to see this. Each of the time distortion bubbles multiplied the time that was slowed. The effect was only going to last for ten minutes, but a second field expanded the time to ten thousand minutes and the third to ten million minutes.
With the cycle broken he did not know how it mattered to him to know this. It really did not matter to him at all with anything that happened on this group planets. He needed the cycle to continue. He needed to feel purpose to understand why he felt sad. Maybe the one known as Kevin Norton would have an answer. He moved off as he used several shards to find the man. He does but he is not alone. Perhaps the time it takes to get to him will change that.
As Scion arrives, he floats down and for the first time ever his feet touch the ground. His first steps are stiff, unnatural, but are a hair better as he allows gravity to have more influence. He moves into the building as doors open for him and the humans inside freeze in panic, but do not move until he is past. He finds the room Kevin Norton is in a the human he is with freezes in place.
"Scion what are you doing here?"
"I am lost." The woman is jolted out of her fear as Kevin has none toward the most powerful parahuman in the world. She clears her throat which gains his attention and almost freezes up again. Then she gathers her courage to look the sad being in the eyes.
"Then you have come to the right place."
"You want to shrink his head too?" Kevin asked. He then laughed which puzzled Scion. The man always felt like he did or was angry at him. Yet, he felt different now.
"I need to understand humans."
"Then perhaps we can help with that?" The woman said as if it was a question. Kevin snorted as he looked to Scion.
"You need to understand us then learn our history. Study our art and culture and how we live. Learn how to be a human and not the absolute God figure that many see you as. However, you need to destroy the Endbringers."
"The Endbringers serve a purpose." The man and the woman were horrified by such a statement. She was the first to regain her tongue.
"What purpose can they possibly serve other than to cause death and suffering?"
"They serve the cycle. The cycle has been broken."
"If the cycle is broken then they serve no purpose."
"Perhaps." Scion pulled a very rare shard and put it into play as he read her mind and that of Kevin Norton. Learning everything about them. He moved his attention to all who were in the building to find them abnormal from what others thought. He then left them to their own thoughts as he moved between the physical to move faster. The recorded history of man was not hard to obtain from their computers, but more was hidden in their books, art, and lost tablets. He moved from mind to mind, to learn even more without a single one noticing his presence. This was going too slow, so he used several more shards to connect to them all at once.
This deepened his depression even more as no matter what the cycle had done to them so far, they had hope. He realized that he had no hope of restoring the cycle with the Thinker. He moved he collected he examined and then released. No future brought the Thinker back to him, so he found shards of hers that had not been found and absorbed them to then release them again still nothing changed nothing brought her back. Again, no hope remained, but he looked to what the humans did and discovered they believed that death was just another journey. That their spirits would move on.
Others thought differently, but many believed in an afterlife or a recycling of the life they had lived into other forms. This was not much different then the way the entities merged and formed and exchanged parts of themselves and became slightly different. His other parts moved and joined with the lifeless portion of the Thinker and he grew as he absorbed all of her. He knew more, but was bloated so he discarded many more shards not knowing what he was giving away. Though he could in time gather them back as though they were discarded they still remained connected.
Then he found the avatar of Eden. His sadness was still there, but he had changed he had evolved. He examined her where at any other time he would have destroyed everything he found, but he wanted to remember now instead of to forget. Then he saw her and how they used her to gain knowledge. They were as curious as any entity. They kept a part of her alive in death. He found shards that would work, and he discovered how they removed her from the living. With a thought he did the same to himself. He had hope now as his consciousness faded that he would meet her again.