1.7
Taylor would never forget the heinous sight which presented itself in front of their eyes, it was a scene that could've sprung directly out of a Hieronymus Bosch painting.
The thirty feet frame of the Endbringer rushing towards them appeared indomitable, he was mounting the tide's crest like a horsemen of the apocalypse, and the five bilious green eyes in his lizard like skull glared at the defenders standing between him and the people of Boston with alien malignity.
If an abhorrent monstrosity like Leviathan could be said to have a facial expression at all, his seemed to be one of derisive challenge, calling on every single hero, on every parahuman in the city, to try and stand up to him and his might, only to be inevitably annihilated.
Taylor had just left middle school behind, had thought this to be a first important step towards adulthood, but now, she was suddenly one of those who had to defy the worst mass murdering fiend in human history.
What was happening to her was simply irreconcilable with the live she'd lead until half an hour ago, it was beyond her wildest imagination, and frightened her more than anything ever had.
At this instant, as the existence of countless human beings hung in the balance, and Taylor felt so very small, she admitted to herself that she was glad Tolot was with her, was taking the responsibility away from her, at least for now.
"Methinks you might be able to avail yourself of the opportunity to duel an Endbringer even sooner than expected." Myrridin's voice interrupted her moment of terror-induced insight .
The famed hero had closed the distance to them, and held out a sleek armband that was clearly some sort of tinkerfab.
"If you put this on, Dragon will constantly inform you of Leviathan's position - there are other uses, but I have no time to explain." he said hastily, obviously anxious to get back to his team.
Wordlessly, Tolot presented their upper right arm to Myrridin, and with a swift move, he put the band around their massive wrist.
„I took the liberty to already program it with your name, Icho Tolot. Good luck to you!" Myrridin gave them a quick bow, before he rocketed back into the sky in a very unwizardlike display of haste.
"This body should take up a position to intercept the enemy, in case he plans to strike Myrridin and his unit directly." Tolot declared clinically, as unafraid as if this was not a live and death situation, but simply a formula to be resolved.
Their hulking frame battered its way through the rising flood towards the by now nearly invisible shoreline, two of heir eyes constantly scanning the area around them, while the third kept its focus on Leviathan, who had closed the distance to less than a thousand feet by now.
They reached one of the seaside corners of the tower, and with a perfectly coordinated move, Tolot punched their upper fists through the buildings cladding, grabbing hold of the massive steel beam beneath, and anchoring them against the upcoming tidal wave.
Taylor, huddling in a tight cranny of her own making inside their shared mindscape, couldn't help but be impressed by their body's feat, it had looked and felt totally effortless, like a child poking his finger into play-doh.
Tolot lowered their form into the water streaming into the city, until only the top of their head and their central eye were poking out.
Leviathan was only a few hundred feet out now, and nearing the wall of overlapping energy shields that the heroes had erected, his speed still increasing.
Around the hellish creature, the ocean was pummeled with the effects of dozens of powers and dense salvos from tinker weapons, huge clouds of vapor shot up every time an especially energy rich strike hit, only to be ripped apart in seconds by the raging storm and the air turbulences caused by Leviathan's passage.
"Icho Tolot's body will increase its density now, reaching a 100% rate of transformation in all body parts but the brain. This happens in preparation for impact, don't be alarmed if you should experience a slowdown of thought processes, that is an effect to be expected when the molecular structure in the outer layers of the ordinary brain is changed for your optimal protection."
"Wait! You can't just switch me off like a light bulb!" Taylor protested heatedly. She wanted to stay alert and experience whatever happened, horrific as it might be.
"The incoming wave has a crest height of 34 feet, its total kinetic energy reaches a yield comparable to a tactical nuclear weapon, albeit a small one. Structural change of at least 35% of the ordinary brain is recommended."
Still agitated, but resigned to being ignored after that second explanation, Taylor waited for the announced transformation, but as the tidal wave rushed in, her mind kept working as before.
She had no time to ask Tolot why he didn't force the change on her, though.
With a tremendous roar which tore the air asunder, and reminded Taylor of the sound of a rocket launch she'd seen once, millions of metric tons of water hit the wall of glowing energy erected by the heroes.
Leviathan's overwhelming attack, which had risen to a height unusual even by the standards the hydrokinetic had set in former engagements, probably because the much lower wave incoming from the ocean had been compressed when it entered the channel of Boston's inner harbor, struck home all along the coastline, from the North End to the Financial District, on a length of more than a mile.
The wave climbed up even higher along the shimmering field, pressing against the barrier with the mass and speed of thousands of freight trains.
Thin fissures appeared in the surface of the shield, lengthening rapidly, fusing together and broadening in some areas, but seconds passed, and there was no catastrophic failure.
Boston's defense stood, a mighty barrier holding back the deluge.
Taylor could see the rise of the tidal wave slow down when it reached a height of about 40 feet, and then it stopped, the apex crossed, and most of its energy poured into the shield.
To hold this dam of pure energy against such a massive attack was an enormous feat, and Taylor felt sure that only some of the world's best shielding capes, like Narwhal and Lady Photon, with Eidolon to support them, could have achieved this.
She'd just decided to share this thought with Tolot, deeply impressed by the power capes working together could harness, when the second blow fell.
Leviathan, who'd disappeared from view when the wave failed to shatter the heroes' field, rocketed out of the crest directly below a part of the shield that appeared especially strained.
If he had been unbelievable fast when moving over the water's surface before, his reappearance set new records - it produced a sonic boom that rattled over the area, while Leviathan smashed into the wall of energy with a force that would've been lethal for everyone who wasn't as invulnerable as an Endbringer.
Exactly as Leviathan had surely intended, the focused hit to a weak point was too much for the shield, and it was ripped apart, at first only in the immediate area around the impact, but quickly followed by a cascading failure at its whole length.
The pent-up, towering tidal wave followed gravity and the momentum of still inflowing water, and crashed down on the shore.
Taylor's perception became sluggish, her thoughts muddled, and a thick, scaled lid snapped closed over the Halutian body's central eye.
Interlude - Sting
Lily leaned back into the uncomfortably hard passenger's seat of the Ford Taurus which the PRT public relations bureau used to haul her through the countryside, and tried to shake off the severe frustration she felt, while she slowly drank from a huge paper cup of coffee.
Her PRT minder, a sharply dressed, utterly humorless professional she had to call "Mrs. Mueller" even after the tenth trip they made together, had parked the car on the mostly deserted lot of this Starbucks in Newburgh (NY), and was still inside, doubtlessly retouching her makeup for their last performance of the day, at a summer camp in the Hudson Highlands.
Lily hated these PR tours with a passion, she'd start to get into a dark mood days before one of them was scheduled, and it took her great efforts to hide her distaste for the whole thing from the audiences.
She had nothing against younger kids, even liked the open and carefree enthusiasm with which most of them greeted her – or to be more precise, her cape persona.
And to create a good impression of the Wards early on, to get as many newly triggered young capes into the program as possible, made a certain sense too, and appealed to her sense of justice.
No, what she detested about the PR work was that she couldn't be herself with the children, but had to endlessly regurgitate the same mindless propaganda, event after event, in schools, clubs and youth camps alike.
There was no individuality allowed, she mused bitterly, only prefabricated sound bites that made her look like a cardboard cutout heroine.
Her discontent intensified when she saw Mrs. Mueller leaving the café - her small respite was over.
But before the agent could reach the car, Lily's PRT issued smartphone went off with a loud, piercing alarm.
It was an unmistakable sound, one she'd heard only once before, when it had been installed to her phone on her sixteenth birthday, about six weeks ago – the first responders warning of an incoming Endbringer attack.
Terror gripped her for a moment, paralyzed her while the phone's shrill whistling got more intense.
She'd known that this would happen, of course, had tried to mentally prepare herself for the moment she would be called upon to face one of the monsters for the first time, but it was much too soon.
One in four capes going up against an Endbringer died, oftentimes even more, and while the ordinary work of a frontline Ward like herself wasn't easy or safe, it was still far removed from what was looming over her now.
She shook herself, gritted her teeth, and stamped on the fear like she'd learned to do long ago.
There was no time to squander on a useless emotion like that, even seconds counted now.
She pulled out the phone and checked the data accompanying the alarm - it was effective for the entire east coast, Leviathan had apparently been spotted in the northern Atlantic, and was heading west, his final destination unknown.
When Mrs. Mueller opened the door, she was already on the line, talking to the New York Ward's leader, Jouster, at headquarters, organizing transportation for herself.
The play of questions and answers between them was crisp, and when she cut the connection, she knew what to do.
"There has been an Endbringer alarm," she informed the public relations agent, and wasn't very ashamed for the cynical amusement she felt deep down, when she saw the bureaucratic powerwoman instantly reduced to a distressed and helpless civilian, who went deathly pale under her thick makeup.
"Take me to the local police station, I need a safe place for a teleporter to arrive in," she ordered her previous minder curtly, and savored the instant change of roles this otherwise terrible emergency had caused.
Flechette promised herself to remember this moment for years to come - if she lived that long.
Five minutes later, she was pacing up and down the dingy break room in the back of the Newburgh police building, impatience tearing at her agitated mind.
A quiver holding the long iron bolts for her weapon was slung over her muscular back, while her trusty arbalest rested on her right shoulder, ready for action.
Flechette knew that she wasn't a first priority passenger for the few Protectorate teleporters who had a power versatile enough to grab her from here and transport her to Boston in an instant, but that didn't make the long wait any more bearable.
Maybe she should've insisted on driving back to New York, going against Joust's orders?
But no, what would that accomplish, besides making it harder for a teleporter to locate her in a moving car?
She struggled for more control over her spinning thoughts, and managed to sit down on one of the rickety chairs the cops had placed in the room, but she sprang up again only a minute later, when Dragon's live feed running on her phone informed her that everyone else from the New York Protectorate, including the Wards who were allowed to take part in Endbringer battles, had just arrived in place.
They may be dying right this second, for all she knew, and she was chained here, useless to her teammates and the population of Boston alike!
She suppressed a scream of rage, and increased the speed of her walking, tried to push her churning emotions away through sheer willpower.
Hanging in the air like this also caused the niggling doubt she'd had about how much her power was really worth in the eyes of the PRT's leadership to resurface with a vengeance.
The brass had pushed for her to attend Endbringer fights since they'd first learned the details of her ability to change objects of all kinds, preferably weapons, into a physics-breaking state that punched or cut through every known material.
Now that she'd been forgotten here in the backcountry, the whole brouhaha they'd made about her appeared like so much rubbish.
It didn't help her confidence that many of her ideas about the use of her power had been brushed aside as "too dangerous and gory for a Ward" in the case of the rapier she'd initially used, or "too costly" when she had applied for tinkermade powerarmor, which would've allowed he to become a lethal close quarters fighter.
She was staring at the screen of her phone, willing it to give her another morsel of information about her team, when a loud sound behind her, not unlike a backfiring car, made her spin on her heels.
"At last!" she greeted the teleporter who had appeared a dozen feet away.
He was a middle aged man with a physics themed costume who called himself "Curvature", a name that had doubtlessly been utilized to make many immature jokes at his expanse, none of them to do with the spacial phenomenon discovered by Einstein.
She'd met him once before, for the only reason that his parahuman ability allowed him to only locate and teleport people he'd seen face to face, and whom he could remember with a high degree of accuracy.
Curvature ignored the less than friendly reception stoically.
He simply walked over to her and grasped her left hand for the contact he needed to teleport her.
Then, he presented her with a tinkertech armband of some sort.
"This is the newest version of Dragon's combat communicator, it's an add on to your Protectorate radio system, mainly for talking with independents and villains. It's preset with your data."
She nodded wordlessly, and put the band on.
"Let's be gone." she demanded, her thoughts already on the battlefield.
"One more thing," he said flatly, brushing off her request for speed.
"Eidolon requires your presence at his command post, to finally check the hypothesis that your power will effect Leviathan in the same way it does everything else."
Flechette felt as if he'd slapped her in the face, and she stared at him with her mouth standing wide open.
"That's bullshit, my place is with my team!" she finally spat, enraged by this out of the blue decision from up high, and not caring at all that one of the Triumvirate wanted to see her.
She stepped back quickly, and tried to pull her hand away from Curvature's, but he held her tightly, and before she could succeed, he whisked her away.
They arrived on a roof that existed in a state of bedlam.
In less than a second, before she could even get her bearings, the downpour that pelted her whole body had already drenched her to the bone.
A blast of wind hit her so hard that she stumbled away from Curvature, who promptly vanished, the popping sound he usually produced nearly inaudible over the howling of the storm and the constant booms and explosions caused by the diverse crowd of capes who stood at the balustrade, facing outwards.
She leaned into the storm and moved forward, her hot anger somewhat cooled in the face of the terrible tempest Leviathan had conjured.
Eidolon was easy to spot, he floated in the air slightly behind and above a cluster of capes, one of them the distinct form of Narwhal with her mighty horn.
Flechette fought her way through the rain and wind towards them, and when she reached the group, she took a quick look over the rim of the roof.
From what she could see, she deduced that Eidolon and his people were maintaining the shining wall of energy that ran along the barely visible coastline below their position, and which was the only thing holding back the churning waters of the sea.
In the distance, the monstrous figure of Leviathan, so much more real than on even the best TV screen, was racing over the ocean, and as she watched, his afterimage smashed into a utility ship moored at the harbor authority's dock, causing some sort of flammable cargo to ignite in a spectacular explosion.
With a shiver at the casual destruction, Flechette turned to Eidolon and stood at attention, something most capes didn't bother with outside of official events, despite the fact that the Protectorate was a recognized branch of the PRT, which in turn was an armed government organization.
She used the extraordinary formality as a subtle demonstration of defiance, to make this meeting as much about his power over her as possible.
It was a way to show Eidolon and the others that she did not approve of his methods, and they couldn't even punish her for it.
"Flechette reporting as ordered!" she barked, loud enough to be heard over the din of the raging elements.
The triumvir turned to her, but didn't react for a long moment, as if he tried to cold read her just from looking at her mask, which wasn't impossible, given his abilities.
Or maybe he was just distracted by whatever he was doing with the shield out there... no use in over-thinking things.
Flechette had met Eidolon a few times before, mostly when he visited with Legend at the New York Protectorate HQ, but she had never been able to form an opinion on him.
On the one hand, he was part of the Triumvirate, a hero who was at every Endbringer battle, who was widely seen as the most powerful man on the planet, only exceeded by Scion and the Endbringers.
On the other hand, he had always seemed distant and cold to her, the polar opposite of Legend.
His newest brainchild, to separate her from her teammates just on his personal whim, made her feel that he was more enemy than ally, though.
"It is good to have you with us at last, Flechette." Eidolon said, just as the silence between them threatened to become awkward.
She didn't reply to his words, determined to let him do as much of the talking as possible, so that she didn't ruin her career by mouthing off in her furor.
"As you can imagine, you are here because I want you to hit Leviathan with your power, but," he made a portentous pause, and raised his hand to point at her in warning, like some oldfashioned teachers did with their students ",only when you are in the perfect position, close enough that he can't conceivably evade."
"Typical," she thought to herself "they demand something nearly impossible, but expect it to happen anyway - or else!"
"I would prefer it if you managed a headshot, but aiming for his torso should do if it guarantees a strike." he went on.
She nodded her understanding, her face politely bland, but inside, Flechette was boiling.
Eidolon wanted her to become his glorified sniper, the girl with the golden arrow, and for that, he had deprived her whole Wards team of her much needed firepower.
"Until Leviathan comes closer and your moment arrives, you should support Myrddin and his group." Eidolon said, and waved towards the wizard cape, who was coordinating the efforts of several blasters and other ranged attackers to strike at Leviathan.
She confirmed the order and stepped back from the balustrade, but instead of going over to Myrddin immediately, where she would be useless given the current situation, she wandered along the sides of the roof, looking down at the flooded ground and the surrounding buildings.
She was forming a picture of the location in her mind, doing exactly what her trainers in New York had hammered into her skull.
After nearly two years of duty as a Ward, she followed their good advise without question, it had saved her ass often enough to prove its merit.
Reaching the opposite side of the roof, she stared down at the city center of Boston, and send a quick prayer up to heaven for all the civilians who were hiding somewhere in this area, hopefully in the limited protection provided by the Endbringer shelters.
She had just decided to turn back and go over to Myrddin, when she detected movement in one of the flooded streets leading to their position.
Taking another look, she was shocked to see a huge monster cape ram his way through the swelling water, splashing it dozens of feet in every direction and leaving a massive wake behind him.
The newcomer was at least ten feet in height, and his three red eyes were set in an enormous, dome shaped head.
The whole body was covered in black, scaly skin, but the most striking thing about the unknown cape were his arms.
He had four of them!
Flechette had of course met Case53s before, had even fought some of them who had turned villain back home in New York... but this guy down there, plowing through the floods in their direction like an unstoppable dreadnaught of old, was something else.
He looked menacing in a way that reminded her of the Endbringer out there in the harbor, as if someone had deliberately designed his appearance to terrorize his enemies into submission.
As she tipped her PRT issued com, which had automatically linked itself to the Boston combat net when she was teleported in, she decided to report the new arrival to Myrddin instead of Eidolon, with whom she didn't want to talk at the moment, and who had seemed preoccupied anyway.
"Flechette to Myriddin," she spoke into the tiny microphone installed inside her mask
"I've spotted a monstrous cape, maybe Case53, coming in our direction from Boston proper. I can't ID him, but going by my observations, he's at least a Brute 2 or 3, probably higher. Orders?"
"Myrddin here, I'll come over and investigate, will bring a Boston cape too for identification," the leader of the Chicago Protectorate answered.
She continued to keep an eye on the approaching cape, who looked more scary by the second, from the bulging muscles of his four massive arms, to the sharp teeth in his mouth, which seemed to be nearly as long as her arbalest bolts.
Judging by the identical coloration of his head and body, he was fully naked, a fact that only raised her concerns, because it was a pointer for a maladjusted individual.
Myrddin arrived beside her, accompanied by one of the blasters he'd been working with.
The two adults stared down at the unknown cape, for long seconds, before the Boston cape shook his head.
"Never seen this guy before, and let me tell you, he would've real problems to hide himself. Look at those teeth!"
Myrddin chuckled mirthlessly.
"Thank you for taking a look at our guest, you should head back and put it to Leviathan, I'll deal with this."
The other man just nodded and turned away, while Myrddin studied the mystery cape.
"You will give me cover from up here, and I'll fly over and talk to him." he told her.
Flechette only nodded.
What happened in the next minute was one of the strangest meetings she'd ever witnessed.
She'd been listening to the conversation via Myrddin's comlink, her finger close to the trigger and the crosshairs of her weapon over the stranger's menacing central eye, but most of her tension fell away when the new cape, who called himself Icho Tolot, started to wax poetic about honor, and claimed that he could face Leviathan in single combat.
Just the usual crazy cape, it seemed, only fitted with an appearance that could alarm the most hardened hero.
Suddenly, people started to shout behind her, and an operator on the combat network gave a garbled warning that Leviathan was coming to shore.
With a last look down to Myrddin, she made sure that the situation was in hand, then she sprinted back over to the seaside rim of the roof as quick as the storm and rain allowed.
When she arrived, she spotted Leviathan rushing towards the coast, very close now, and her throat went dry with dread.
She checked her weapon one last time, more for her own comfort than because she was worried over its serviceability.
If she was very lucky, she could write history today, even if Eidolon's shield wall gave way.
The tidal wave hit, and everything happened in a rapid succession that gave her emotional whiplash, first hope that it would hold, then the fissures, and still it stood strong, only to fall to Leviathan's final and totally unbelievable supersonic strike.
The shield disintegrated, fizzled away as if it had never been, and Flechette tried to find her target, but the Endbringer had fallen back into the wave of his own making, and had disappeared.
A few feet to her right, Eidolon shot into the air and raced northwards, hands glowing in the green light characteristic for him.
Flechette could only stare at the catastrophe happening on the ground, the thundering mass of water that battered its way into the city and swept along everything that wasn't set in steel and concrete.
News stands, cars, sailing boats, fish trawlers, trash, drowned sailors from ships sunken in the harbor, everything was pressed into the gaps between the buildings.
But mostly of course, it was water that rushed in, so much of it that the three lowest floors of the building they were standing on were fully submerged.
"Cheery Man down, CD3." a digital voice coming from her wrist said in a flat tone, and followed up with a long litany of names, most of whom she'd never heard before.
"Tungsten deceased, CD5; Hammerhead down, CD3; Icho Tolot deceased, CD3..."
Huh? The monster cape had drowned down there?
Flechette was more surprised than sad, she hadn't known the Tolot guy, after all, but she'd thought that he looked tough enough to survive the wave.
Hadn't he claimed that he could fight it out with Leviathan hand to hand?
The sorry megalomaniac!
She was ripped from her cheerless thoughts by a chorus of screams.
"Leviathan sighted, CD3" Dragon's armband declared laconically, while Flechette was already sprinting over to the northward edge of their roof, preparing herself once again to fire her bolt, and find out if it was golden, or filled with lead, after all.
The first capes around her began to fire at Leviathan, who had appeared on the frothing water only 200 feet away from the base of their tower.
He looked slightly worse for wear, his right shoulder, probably the one that hit the shield wall, was covered in black ichor, and the rightmost of his eyes was crushed, but these wounds didn't slow him down at all.
The Endbringer was toying with them, smashing the buildings around him with his afterimage, while he raced over the water like a demented skater with a rocket drive on his back.
Flechette turned her sights on the Endbringer, and powered the bolt loaded into her weapon.
She brought the arbalest up and waited for her chance.
Estimating the distance accurately was hard, the monster was changing his position too fast to get a bead on him.
Even by using the second aspect of her power, which gave her a nearly unbeatable sense for direction and timing, it appeared impossible to hit Leviathan in the main mass of his body, not to speak of the headshot Eidolon had demanded.
Flechette saw Alexandria and Legend shooting through the air in her direction, coming in from the north, and she hoped that the two triumvirs would nail the Endbringer down with their powers, which might give her a window of opportunity.
"Icho Tolot alive, CD 3." the voice of Dragon's device announced.
While she was still processing the confusing message, a black flash erupted from the fourth floor of the building closest to Leviathan, and smashed into the Endbringer's head like the fist of God.
Leviathans' enormous frame was thrown back into the churning waves, and landed with a splash that catapulted tons of water high into the air.
It looked as if something entirely new had just entered the fight, Flechette thought, and the awestruck silence of the capes around her proved her correct.