"Dispatch sent you. Just you," I say flatly.
"Yup," the newbie replies, the entirely-too-happy-smile that's got to be plastered across his face hidden by a smooth, glowing green mask, featureless save for a pair of eyeholes currently directed at the city hall. "What's the problem?"
"It's a hostage situation," I say, resisting the urge to start cursing up a storm. Instead I settle for pinching the bridge of my nose, focusing on the pressure in an attempt to curb the inevitable migraine. "Multiple normal humans watching every entrance, all armed with automatic weapons and body armor stolen straight out of our armory." Heads are gonna roll for that particular fuck-up. Normally we can rely on out-gunning the 'gangers. "That, and there's some crazy guy with future tech. No joke, he took out a pistol and blew up a cruiser. Bang. Like that." I feel my jaw clench as I remember the sound the freaky gun made, halfway between a squelch and a crack of thunder, as I remember seeing Alexis and Jared die to shit straight out of a Saturday morning cartoon.
Except this time, the villain of the week is going to be leaving in a body bag.
"This town shall be re-named Celebutopia, and we will be declared a sovereign nation, free from the tyranny of the US government!" a mechanized voice shouts out, staticky and monotone, and I grit my teeth. The crazy bastard set up inside city hall hours ago, and procedure for dealing with fucking supervillains is to wait for backup, and lots of it. Never mind that good people could be getting their heads cut open in there while we sit on our asses. Never mind that if we were allowed to shoot the freaks on sight shit like this wouldn't happen. Nope, let the man-children in tights walk onto the scene and try to do our job for us, and when shit goes south because a civilian is trying to handle police procedures we take the blame for not being accommodating enough.
God I hate capes.
"So, what can you do?" I ask, forcing myself to be polite. Pissing off the guy with an invisible gun isn't going to help anyone, least of all the hostages.
"Anything," he says simply, waving his hand at the building. "I just fused the firing pins of their weapons to the mechanism, so those shouldn't be a problem." Shit, really? If he's not lying, then-
Another wave. "The men with guns are asleep," the cape says. "A few of them are going to wake up with bruises, but I don't think that's going to be a problem. I also told the hostages to stay put and wait for rescue. Don't want any accidents," he adds, nodding once at me. "What else do you need?"
The radio in my cruiser squawks. "This is sniper one, hostiles are down, repeat, hostiles are down. No shots fired here. Over."
"Sniper two, no shots fired. Over."
I look at the radio for a second, then to the glowing green man.
"You're fucking serious," I whisper, an empty feeling in my stomach. Just like that, a situation where an elite SWAT team would be lucky to lose only one in ten hostages, this guy just waved his hands and poof.
No more situation.
"I'm just trying to help," the cape says. "You said the other guy had technology?"
"Yeah," I say, still shell-shocked. "If you could help us get it off him, that'd be good. Procedure is to have another science-guy deal with it, but if you could-"
"I can," he says, and again there's that joy in his voice. "I'll help you separate it from the more mundane stuff they might've brought along and get it to people who can deal with it more safely than I can. And we're calling them Tinkers, by the way." It's like there really isn't anything he'd rather be doing. I shake my head and snag the radio before pausing.
"What's your name?" I ask. "They just told me to look for the guy in the green cape, which describes, like, a third of the superheroes running around." Said guy laughs twice, throwing his head back and letting the sound echo out across the fields, and I see a few other cops look towards him, a mixture of disbelief and awe on their faces.
"Probably wanted to let me introduce myself," I hear him mutter before he sticks his hand out towards me. "My name is-"
"Eidolon!" Alexandria shouts. "Wave!"
"On it!" I shout, cursing at the beast's water echo again as it throws off my shot just the tiniest bit, making my packet of compressed plasma do little more than create even more vapor, adding to the fog drifting around the battlefield. A year ago I wouldn't've missed that. A year ago I'd have known the ins and outs of this energy-throwing power inside of two minutes and figured out a way to turn it into a Shaker effect as well. I can still see the possibilities, the potential lines this power could take, but I'm not going to figure them out fast enough to matter.
Instead I throw it aside, mourning the loss of a weapon that could hurt Leviathan, even if only on a surface level. I reach for an actual Shaker power, something with range that can affect water. Any number of potential abilities come to mind, but I rein in my thoughts and wait for the feeling. Hanging onto hopes and trying to anticipate what power I'll get only makes figuring out the fine details harder, and it costs precious seconds once the power does settle in. Better to wait for more information, keep my expectations low, and make due with what comes.
Sure enough, I feel it, a tingling awareness of conflicting forces, of chaos magnified to cacophonous levels. With it comes awareness of motion, buildings standing out as places of relative quiet and the writhing tides as a furious orchestra. It's beautiful, but I don't have the time to appreciate the supernaturally-abstract image it paints.
Besides, it doesn't match up to looking at snow in ultraviolet.
I push out, nudging each bit of motion in a slightly different direction, subtly changing each vector, tricking the eddies and tides within the wave into fighting one another. It's not fast though, and I can feel how small the effect really is, a metaphorical bucket of water against an inferno. In Busan, I was able to tear the water away from Leviathan, to leave the monster high and dry among the other capes and let them hammer him unhindered. Now I have to settle for mitigating the effects of his existence and hope for the best.
I should be the best.
Instead I'm forced to wait as knowledge comes to me agonizingly slowly, the subtle improvements to my use of the force-manipulation power letting me slow the wave down a little more every moment and make the oncoming tragedy just a little more tolerable.
I'm fighting to influence the degree of our loss, not for a chance at victory.
It feels wrong.
"You alright?" I ask, looking carefully away from David as I go in for another bite of salad.
"I'm good, Ced," he says tersely, spoon clinking angrily against his bowl of mac'n'cheese. I nod noncommittally and spear a few more leaves.
The days just after a seizure are always rough. Doesn't matter if it's with a patient who's more or less living a normal life and just needs a check-up every once in a while or someone with a constant caretaker. It's always just after the shakes hit that people feel the most vulnerable, the most not-normal, whatever the hell that means to them. Reactions can be anything from manic episodes of hyperproductivity to make up for the lost time to depressive fugues that call for a twenty-four hour suicide watch. David tends to simmer in anger, a quiet heat that he tries very, very hard to keep contained. For the most part, he's successful.
We finish dinner and I let him clear the dishes away. Agency, any agency, helps him calm down, even if it's something as small as putting a kitchen in order. He comes back with a plate of cookies less than fifteen minutes later. The two of us work through the baked goods slowly, quietly chewing on the oatmeal raisin treats, avoiding eye contact and not saying a word.
When I took over from Shelly as David's primary caretaker, I asked him how we should handle the aftermaths. Whether he wanted to dance around the subject or for me to be blunt. It was a long afternoon, and we worked our way through more beers than I can remember. It more or less boiled down to two things, though.
One, I don't do anything for him that he can't do for himself. That means no taking out the trash, no cooking, no bathroom intrusions unless he's literally having a seizure. That means that I have to carefully balance how much space I take up in the house, make sure that my mess and his mess doesn't overlap, expand my palate to adapt to his tastes, and find other, subtler ways to ensure his safety.
Two is that we don't talk about the seizures when there isn't a pressing need to. He's self-aware enough to know that he's not good company after a one, but he's also prone to chain seizures. That means I have to be nearby and ready for the worst right when he's trying to pull himself together, trying to make himself presentable and recover whatever dignity he manages to scrape together between episodes. I'd like to think we've both grown a little more used to this odd sort of intimacy, but I'm also not kidding myself.
My very presence makes him want to vomit.
"Heading out," I say, standing up and walking to the entrance. David's danger period has passed, and I have somewhere to be.
"Plans for the night?" David asks, rolling beside me down the short hallway to the door. I shrug.
"I'm going to see a movie," I answer, pulling on my jacket. "The temp worker should be here in just a few minutes." I don't tell him about Alex, or about how I hope the night will go. David's made no indication that he's interested in dating yet, but he doesn't need another constant reminder of how different our lives are.
"Could you pick up some eggs while you're out?" David asks. I nod calmly despite the brief flutter of hope in my heart. Our normal procedure for picking up groceries is a list on the fridge which I get without comment on Saturdays when he's out at the hospital. Asking is admitting that he needs help and a step in the right direction, even if it's a small one.
"I can do that," I say, just as even and calm as I was at the table. The doorbell rings and I let David open it.
A dark skinned woman stands at the door, dressed in slacks and a button up with a backpack slung over one shoulder. Behind and to the left of her is a younger girl, a fedora perched jauntily on top of her head and an oddly detached look in her eyes.
"Hello, Cedric," the dark skinned woman says, nodding once. "I'm here to take over for the night." I wince internally at the phrasing.
"Your name?" I ask, stepping to side and making room for the two of them to come into the apartment. David rolls back, a slightly hostile expression on his face.
"Call me Doctor Mother," she says.
"Retreat!" Legend shouts, a stream of searing white light springing from his hand.
And just like that, the line shatters. Odokuro pulps the head of one last clone then spins on her heel and sprints away with the great bounding leaps of people with super strength and no additional Mover power. Narwhal floats back on a spinning force field, leaving torn and broken bodies hanging off of gem-like constructs. Fluke starts steadily teleporting back, intercepting power-generated projectiles, hurled debris, and water alike.
"What do you mean, retreat?" I hiss back through aerokinesis as I wrench at a patch of empty air and pull a mass of hissing fangs made of poison and glass into being. I hurl it at the ground, where it promptly starts extending out tendrils of writhing blades at the clones, melting them from the inside out where it manages to come in contact with them and expanding exponentially where the tendrils are severed. "We can keep going!" A Master power I haven't seen before, straightforward and with a high upper limit. More than sufficient to slaughter Erinye's minions, but nowhere near strong enough to fight Leviathan. Not intense enough to wipe out Erinye in one go either.
If I just had more time.
"I've run the numbers," Alexandria whispers, impossible to hear without a power over the crunch of bone and crash of waves. "With the parahumans available and the growth rate of Erinye, the odds of containing this successfully are too low to justify risking any more capes. We're cutting our losses and quarantining the area until the Thinktank can come up with a better solution."
"The situation isn't going to get better!" I reply, crashing into melee beside my minion and punching through twisted rib cages. "You can't honestly think that this monster won't find a way out of this? Out of here? That whatever solution we apply to solving this won't also leave the city a smoking crater!?"
"Rime clone coming in," my bracelet chimes.
"The decision is made," Alexandria says firmly, flying up and out of the melee. "We lost."
My minion lashes out, scything through the ranks of the clones before it encounters a line of Brutes. I grit my teeth and let it go, searching for something to hurt them, to hurt something. I get it, a tingle beneath my skin that frantically scrapes up and out.
I let it.
My perception alters as I dissolve into a whirling body of countless force fields. It comes with flight, so I let the aerokinesis go, along with the Brute rating. Normally, I hang onto powers that give me flight, that make me nearly invulnerable. It's too risky to gamble on a replacement.
This time I'm too angry to care.
I throw myself into the group of Brutes that were able to endure the glass hydra and crash through one, leaving behind nothing more than bloody mist. Another tries to grapple me and falls to pieces, the bits that remain quickly sinking under the water. I feel a cape raise their arm at me courtesy of some form of danger sense and fly erratically through the rest of the Brutes, preventing them from getting a clear shot as I reach for another power, something with range and accuracy.
This. This I can do. I can break, destroy, and kill anyone at this level with impunity. The number of parahumans on the planet that pose a meaningful threat to me can be counted on one hand, and even then perhaps three actually have a reliable method of hurting me. Against other capes I am matchless.
Unfortunately, that doesn't matter most of the time.
I carve my way to the Rime clone. She's shorter than the original, with thicker limbs and a blockier jaw. She waves her arms and a trio of small rocks appear, then fly towards me. My third power manifests and the shards of rock disappear in a burst of grey sparks. The clone frowns, revealing a flat block of enamel in her mouth instead of individual teeth, and waves her arms again. This time the projectiles crash into the water, erupting into a series of stone spikes, expanding rapidly towards me in a line of stabbing points.
I fly through them, turning the rock to dust and the rain into water vapor, then bisect the clone with an outstretched arm. With that major threat taken care of, I fly up and cast my gaze around, searching for Alexandria.
It doesn't take long. She's brawling beside Chevalier, intercepting the more dangerous ranged attacks while he cuts through scores of clones with every swing of his cannonblade. A brief fly-around later and the immediate area is clear of enemies, at least for the moment.
"I'll play rearguard," I say, dropping out of the Breaker form and forcing myself to speak to Alexandria politely as the two of us float above the water. Chevalier turns away, tactfully not acknowledging the palpable tension in the air. "Anyone with high mobility and durability is welcome to join me, but there does need to be a holding action. Otherwise we'll just be cut down from behind."
Alexandria looks at me for a moment and I know she's analyzing my body language to figure out my true motives. I don't bother to hide them. I want a longer fight, one where I have a chance to test out some of the more destructive powers without the fear of accidentally killing someone. One where I have to reach for a win, delve deep within myself, and finally figure out just what is holding me back.
"Engage freely," she says sternly, floating up and away. "I'll relay the message." She's mad. I know enough about her to know that. I nod anyway and re-enter the blade state, discarding the projectile-nullifying power and reaching for an area power, something to bring ruin with.
If I can find my second wind, it will all be worth it.
"Are you alright?" I ask David.
The man looks up, his hood down and mask off. "Yeah, why?" he asks, genuine surprise in his voice. I sigh internally. Managing parahumans is difficult at the best of times. Managing powerful ones, even ones that you're generally on good terms with, is even harder. Throw in a martyr complex for good measure and you have a recipe for a generally good person who is a pain to work with.
"I don't know, you just seem kind of... off, today," I explain, suppressing a twitch in my hand. Ever since I got my powers I've developed ticks. Nothing maleficent, but an urge to be active, to fill my free time with work no matter how much I know that it will be counter-productive. I float a few inches off the ground and jerk my head at the open sky above us. "Fly to clear our heads before the press conference?"
"Absolutely," he says, smiling wide and glowing as a power manifests. I look at the sky and flex my ring finger, engaging the anti-gravity and artificial-gravity engines, folding reality in such a way that creates the illusion of movement, insofar as all of reality is an illusion. I make a few more subtle motions, increasing and decreasing speed to match David's as he grows used to his power. As we accelerate I give him a quick scan. The version of flight he has this time works by manipulating small forces, less flight and more telekinetically buoying himself. Less control and more sensation than what I have. Designs spring to mind, wands that can exert tremendous force over a distance of half a mile, that can toss around cars like tennis balls.
I sigh and brush the idea aside. A thought for later. Right now, David needs help.
"We're moving fast enough that no one can hear us without powers, and I'm scanning for parahuman eavesdropping," I say, using the Omnicom to send the sound directly to David's ear. "My anti-Stranger tech is up and running, and if anyone can fool that we're boned anyway. What's worrying you?" Overkill, all of it, but if it's what it takes to get David to open up it's worth it.
Despite all the privacy, it still takes a minute for David to get comfortable. I'm almost certain he's reaching for sensory and precognition powers, verifying my assessment while also peering into the future to look at how the conversation could go. When he first told me he did this, it pissed me off to no end. Friends don't mind-read other friends, and future-sight does count as mind-reading. After talking to more than three serious Thinkers, including Rebbecca, I've learned that using one's powers for things like this is too common to hold a grudge for.
And given the kit I'm working with, I should probably reassess what I use on other people outside of combat more often.
"I could be doing more," David says, breaking me out of my thoughts. I snort.
"How?" I ask. "You don't sleep almost at all, can teleport at will, and whenever you run out of problems to solve you pick up a Thinker power to find more." Logistically, what he does is impossible even for major governments. He's like a branch of the US military, another Red Cross, and Argos scaled up to the size of a country all in one. I'm probably the closest thing he has to a peer, and I couldn't do half of what he does without six months of prep time and more coffee than anyone should be able to safely drink.
"Not like that," he says quietly, and this time I hear something odd in his voice. "I think I'm screwing up."
I ponder the thought. David takes it as an invitation to continue.
"That fight last week? The one against the cartel that was operating just inside the Texan border? I could've ended it faster. Reached for some sort of mass-Master power, made them all perfectly docile for a few hours, then let the police sort it out. I didn't though. Instead I got lethargic gaze. It worked, but it wasn't as fast." He pauses, and for a moment all I can hear is the whistling wind. "I didn't get what I wanted. I got a substitute that was good enough. What if next time it isn't? What if someone gets hurt?"
I mull it over for a minute.
Then I float over next to David and punch him in the arm. Hard.
"Ow! The hell was that for?" he asks indignantly. I grin behind my helmet, shaking my head.
"For being an idiot," I answer. "Oh, look at me! I'm Eidolon, the most powerful cape on the planet! I didn't win as hard as possible, woe is me," I say in a high-pitched, whiny voice. "That's what you sound like," I say, dropping back to normal, straight-faced as I can behind my helmet. "Poor baby Eidolon complaining about not being more overpowered." I shake my head theatrically. "Looks like we'll have to rely on someone else to save the human race. I think I'd look good in green, what about you?" I ask, turning back to Eidolon. He's staring at me, unusually still, and I don't need enhanced vision to picture the gobsmacked look on his face. I stare him dead in the eye. "Failing that, I'm sure we can find another beacon of hope. I hear there's a girl in New York running around beating up criminals while dressed up as a mouse and making puns. I'm sure she's got her head far enough out of her ass to manage it."
For a second we keep flying, maybe the most powerful Tinker in the world flying next to a man who could turn him to ash with a thought.
Then David laughs loud enough that the Omnicom automatically lowers the volume, speed dropping as he loses focus on his power. I crack a smile and laugh with him, easing my finger off of the warp flight. I'm ninety-nine percent sure I'll never need it, but better safe than sorry.
God knows I've had to run away from sticky situations before.
"You suck, you know that?" he says, shaking his head. "But the good kind of suck."
"I'm only the good kind of anything," I joke. "Ready to face the cameras?" I ask, tabbing through my HUD to slow my flight to subsonic speeds. No sense in destroying reporter ears, no matter how funny it might be.
"More ready than before," he says, resolve once more firm as we close in on the interview site. David doesn't like going on camera, but he's better at it than he thinks. Honesty goes a long way, even if it occasionally leads to accidentally sparking a religious revival when he mentions going to church regularly.
The stage is an open-air, elevated platform, set at head-height for most of the attendees. The crowd of reporters is large, but not the writhing mass that it was a year ago. Rebecca claims that she hasn't made a significant dent in normalizing powers, but given that I'm no longer setting fashion trends I'd have to say she's underestimating herself.
"Hello!" I call out, switching the Omnicom to public address mode. Everyone for hundreds of feet in every direction will hear me at a conversational volume, perfectly clearly and without getting interrupted by everyone else. One of the many reasons I'm our primary public agent. "Hero and Eidolon here, ready to talk!"
Me. Alone against the horde.
And I'm losing.
Everyone else has fled the field, even Legend and Alexandria. I can cut loose, throw around projectiles made of neutron stars, wreak destruction that even Rebecca couldn't weather, use powers that would cause any sane individual to flee my presence in terror.
And it's not enough.
I pull at the hearts of a nearby clump of clones with an unlimited telekinesis that I didn't know I could reach and watch them fall, then dissolve into flower petals and flash across the battlefield away from a construct bull the size of a bus. I tank a lamp post to the back of my head, unmoved despite the incredible force, and turn the twisted cape's brain to mush with a wave of my hand. She falls, warped features spasming as what remains of her central nervous system misfires.
Erinye is hidden, constantly moving, constantly fleeing, and somehow the rate at which she produces clones has increased. Earlier in the battle they fled from me, stayed in isolated cells, and tried to die as slowly as possible. Now they charge heedless of casualties, and no matter how many I kill there's always an untapped stream of monsters waiting around the corner.
This isn't working. I need to change priorities.
Another warp of petals and I'm standing on top of a building, dropping the telekinesis for another power, something exotic that might work on Leviathan's deeper layers. He's almost 'defeated' anyway, defeated as he's going to get, but this way maybe I can feel like I'm making progress. Space around me unfolds, sharpens, and clarifies, bringing with it an awareness I've come to associate with esoteric energy emissions. I try hurling it at a patch of water. It distorts, sections dissolving into fractals, growing for almost a full second before collapsing back into a puddle. The wall behind it that was caught in the blast simply becomes dust.
It will do.
As I warp across the city looking for the tell-tale signs of Leviathan's slaughter, I think back to a time where I could choose, where I didn't have to settle for whatever my agent thought was enough. If I wanted to annihilate, I could create black holes. If I wanted to fly, it wouldn't be anything less than supersonic. If I wanted to endure, inviolability would be the floor of potential powers I would receive.
Now I have to think, to manipulate, to cheat my way to my old baseline level of offense. Destruction comes slower and less intensely, forcing me into longer engagements. Movement is either far more limited or a matter of applying Shaker effects effectively, not of simply willing myself into the air. My ability to survive is conditional, demanding that I battle from oblique angles lest I become vulnerable. None of that even touches the fact that the powers themselves are less potent than they were before, worse across the board.
I gnash my teeth as Leviathan comes into view. Weaker when I need to be stronger, slower when I need to be faster, and more vulnerable when I need to stand tall. What sort of hero becomes increasingly incapable as the pressure mounts? As the conflict-
I pause, hand lifted towards the Endbringer.
Conflict.
I warp across the ruined city, only a few blocks away from Leviathan. The agents feed on conflict. The drive is less pronounced in Cauldron capes and subtle if there at all, but powers want to be used.
Leviathan turns towards me, eyes glowing and tail thrashing, heavily damaged and no less dangerous for it. I fire the fractal power once at him, then push it away, the awareness going with it. The Endbringer, now just a grey-green outline through all the rain, snakes under it and sprints forward, thirty-five feet and several tons of killing machine charging right at me. I push away the solidness that let me endure previous barrages from the monster.
If my agent wants a fight, I'll give it one.
I stare at the approaching monster, costume growing heavy with rain as I stand there, vulnerable, barely able to see through the downpour. I feel an itching at my eyes and push it away.
No.
The outline grows bigger, clearer, closer, the glowing green eyes steadily becoming more defined through the veil of rain. A pull at the back of my brain. I push it away, along with the blossom Mover power.
No.
I can make out limbs now. Leviathan isn't slowing down. I resist the urge to run, waiting, heart now in my throat, and grit my teeth, the pounding of the rain drowning out the sound of his steps. Not yet (reject the power at my fingers) not yet (reject the power between my shoulder blades) not yet (reject the one prickling over my skin) not yet (reject the tickle in my throat) he's right there-
I grab the flare in the ball of my foot and step sideways, slipping through the world in a perfectly indescribable way as I curse myself.
"Coward," I mutter, staring at where I came from, pulling in more powers now that it doesn't matter. The air in front of my face warps, and through the distortion I can see the monster twisting his head from side to side, searching for his now-absent prey. "You just had to run." The words taste like ash in my mouth even as I twist more, reaching for tiny particles in the air and loosing them in long arcs, pulling in another power that wraps around my bones, feeling it slowly spread outwards from them. "You had an idea and you chickened out." Leviathan dodges the blasts easily, slipping around a corner and out of my sight. I prepare to step again, but pause.
What's the point?
Leviathan's won.
This city is gone, shattered by hours of continuous combat. I wasn't able to fight the Endbringers on my own when I was at the peak of my abilities, never mind now. Leviathan has killed dozens of capes, crippled hundreds more, and wiped a city off the map in every way that matters.
This fight is over.
I feel a weight settle on my shoulders, cold in a way that has nothing to do with the rain, and when I step through space, it's only to the next rooftop. I step again. Another rooftop. I keep stepping, moving towards the edge of the city.
Stupid, to risk myself, risk the one weapon that might work against Scion, and for what? One shitty New England town. The only thing here with significant value was Doctor Mother's experiment with cape feudalism, and that collapsed the instant the Endbringer arrived.
It's an empty city, worthless as soon as the first wave landed.
I stop on the corner of a building and look out at devastation. I let the twisting power go and look, vision shifting in a way that makes everything appear only a few feet away, omnidirectional for at least a hundred feet. Shattered windows and flooded rooms, scattered detritus and floating debris, the remains of everyday life, indistinguishable from any other city attacked by Leviathan. A scene I've seen countless times, frequently better and frequently worse. More textured than Behemoth, who only leaves behind ash and melted structures. More brutal than Simurgh, who's true wounds only appear months down the line.
When he first appeared in Oslo, they called him Jormungand. He was the World Serpent, the one that would herald the beginning of Ragnarok. In a way, he did. The Second showed the world that things would never get easier, that Behemoth was not some one-off event. Some take Leviathan to be proof that there is something out there, a being malicious and cruel, that wants nothing more than the death of the whole human race. They call that being God.
I stand there in the rain for a moment, muttering a prayer.
Then I look up, into the rain.
I don't believe them. Not even a little. I can understand why one could come to that conclusion, though. Where Behemoth left craters, people could rebuild. It would be hard, grueling work, but it could be done. New York is a testament to that, living proof that humans can overcome any adversity. All we need is something to build on.
On the other hand, if we don't hit Leviathan hard enough and fast enough we don't even get that.
"ARRRRRGH!"
The building below me shatters and I step away from it before I get caught in the rubble. The secondary use of the heavy body. Gravity manipulation. Slow to build up, expended all at once, and strong enough that I could use it to sink a city given enough time.
Useless.
I let it go and continue to step around the city, discarding powers as soon as they come. Here I am, the single most dangerous parahuman on the planet, and what can I do? Run. Stay alive. Stem the bleeding. Hope that when the apocalypse does come, I'm remotely dangerous enough.
I catch sight of a clone running through the streets and throw something new enough that I don't understand it at all, and watch as a gust of wind throws it into the side of a building hard enough to pulp it. Once, that could've been a storm of force fields. A lance of plasma. A sphere of unmaking fit to vanish uranium.
Now I push things to death.
I sigh.
We lost.
I lost.
But Erinye is still here.
I look towards the edge of the city, towards escape. Towards surrender. Then I look towards the city center, where I know the S-Class threat is.
Erinye is still here, and I might not be out of tricks yet.
I teleport, settling into a grid pattern, searching. One threat. No potential collateral damage. Nothing to save, no time pressure, no expectations. I search through powers, search for something big, strange, deep in a way that I normally can't afford to wait for. My senses alter themselves half a dozen, a dozen, an uncountable number of times, ranging from familiar enough that I feel like I've had them all my life to so violently alien that I don't have the words to describe it to anyone without a doctorate in mathematics or theology.
I throw them away.
Every.
Last.
One.
I feel something hard and hot build up inside of me, something entirely unconnected to my power. Familiar, like an old wound, still aching. A combination of frustration, anger, and helplessness that puts me back in the chair. I get powers fit to lash out, to rage, to wreak havoc.
They go too.
Still unarmed save for the teleportation, I see Erinye in the distance. I keep rejecting the powers as I move closer, taking longer and longer steps, my understanding of the nature of the movement growing. When will this leave me? When will short range teleportation become another tool I don't have access to?
Clones notice me. I keep teleporting, throwing myself in odd directions, sudden shifts in momentum, weaving between lunging monsters and vicious projectiles. A precog of some sort hurls a shard of glass into the space I teleport to, which bounces off my chest piece. I resist the urge to seize a Brute power, a danger sense, something to save me from another attack. It would be familiar, comfortable, expected, and none of those things are working.
I need to stop being safe and start being dangerous.
Soon enough I'm only a few metaphorical steps away from Erinye. Her clones are still trying to trap me, to catch me, but their increasingly frantic efforts are no more successful than their first. The teleporting power is holding strong, and no matter how her misshapen body awkwardly gallops I remain in range.
Waiting.
"Why are you still here?" Erinye shouts, barely audible over the rain. She's clutching a sodden coat of some sort around herself, and she sounds miserable. "What could you possibly want from me? The city's gone, Leviathan's gone, Krouse is gone, everything is fucked!" The efforts of the clones redouble. I feel another knife impact me, this time somewhere in my side. The cloth-armor stops the blow though, and I remain silent.
"Just leave me alone," she says, barely audible.
Natural triggers tend to be balanced, to be reasonable, to be fair. A terrifying offense or an impenetrable defense, versatile or powerful, personal or external. Second triggers, the few that there are, can break the rules. The S-Class threats, the ones where something went horribly wrong with their agents, they can as well. Cauldron capes, both the Case 53's and those unafflicted, veer farther into the mismatch territory.
Normally, powers make a sort of sense. Perfect accuracy, without the power to capitalize on it. Absurd speed, without the ability to affect the world on the same level. Infinite possibility for an extraordinarily limited time. Like the agents don't want things to be too easy.
But not me.
I get to break the rules.
I focus.
Negation.
Focus.
Negation.
Focus.
Negation.
I feel a power come to me, oozing into my fingers, abstract and wrong in a way that I feel in my hindbrain, like glass on chalkboard or the sight of a maggot-infested corpse.
Perfect.
I step forward into a mass of clones, taking another power. The world decelerates, incoming attacks slowing to a crawl. I step forward through them all, angling my body just so to avoid blades, to avoid fireballs, to avoid lances of metal. I can feel the teleportation power drifting away. I dodge, slipping under a knife aimed at my eye that's moving towards me through the air like it's trapped in molasses. One more step and I'm beside Erinye. I reach out and touch her.
Then I let the ooze loose.
For a moment, there's only silence, rain slipping through the air at glacial speeds.
Then Erinye screams.
I step away as her entire body convulses, malformed jaws distending and half-formed paws lashing out at anything and everything, and I'm suddenly filled with a sense of nausea. Meat rots before my eyes, turning black and green, withering, receding but it's all I can do not to throw up, the feeling of being far too full suffusing me. The torso on top of the mass of horror is gasping, decaying, clutching at her chest as flesh sloughs off of her to disintegrate into nothingness as more and more of her slivers away even as I feel like bursting, like spilling myself out into the world. What little doesn't dissolve collapses in on itself, revealing costumed bodies. Finally the feeling of filling stops, even if that doesn't relieve the pressure. I recognize Rime, a time-themed local hero, a villain wearing a mask made of glass shards and barbed wire and nothing else, dozens of capes, suddenly free, a small consolation to the pain I feel.
With one last scream, the last piece of Erinye disappears in a clap of thunder and an explosion of not-pressure I feel in my bones, in my head, and between my eyes, taking the pain with it. I grimace, one hand going to my head-
I don't feel my powers.
For a cold second I don't have any abilities. No step. No perception. No ooze.
What have I done?
Then they come back and I almost laugh in relief even as the battle starts anew below me. I embrace the first three powers that come like old friends, like family. Knowledge flows into me, an onslaught of data, of understanding, and I smile, raising my hands.
"Sleep," I whisper.
Then I clap.
All but a handful of the clones fall down catatonic.
I feel eyes swivel to find me, allied and enemy alike. I float up slightly, smooth as pouring milk, a firmness in my limbs that makes me feel like I could tear apart steel beams. I inhale, nostalgia sweeping through me as I think back through the years to a time when I didn't have to ration my abilities.
This power.
This power I know.
"I'm back," I whisper.
Then I charge into the fight.
