In the observations deck, the alarms could still be heard, but faintly this time and it was easily covered by the hubbub of the assembled heroes and villains that were crammed into the Protectorate's Brockton Bay headquarters. The room was large and domed, shot through with huge metal pillars that stretched up, supporting the rest of the tower, but this level was mostly glass facing out in every direction, with marks on the carpet where chairs and tables had stood until just a few minutes ago. The place was filled with capes and masks, even in these circumstances they divided themselves into cliques and in-groups. He swept a couple dozen of his rats into the room, climbing the pillars for a vantage point while the vast majority waited nearby on standby.

Mouse Protector bounded his way, not in a joyous way just that it was the most efficient mode of travel for her with her enhanced energy and agility. "Good to see you again," she said, offering him a handshake. She was about as old as Danny, and today she looked like it.

"Thanks," he said. "I just want to get to work. God I hope they don't do any speeches. Time is of the essence here." His brain was buzzing with speculation and schemes, wondering how he could use his rats to help against Leviathan. Their incisors were a bit harder than iron, but he was pretty sure that Leviathan was a lot harder than that. Otherwise someone would have killed him long ago, right?

"No doubt," she said, giving him a wink. He saw the famous mischief in her eyes.

He tried to keep his breathing under control. Okay, rats are really strong swimmers, while their stamina holds out. So, it's not necessarily like they'll all die immediately. He was glad for the mask that kept anyone from seeing the nervousness on him. Maybe he could try something similar to his fights against Lung, using the environment to his advantage by tipping power lines onto the monster? Nah, there's gotta be a good reason that won't work, he thought to himself. He could only really guess at this, since he'd never actually sat down to watch an Endbringer attack on the news since the first attack by Behemoth.

Armsmaster stood on a low dais, and raised his hands for quiet. He was in a rubber one-piece that looked like a wetsuit covered in electrodes, the sort of thing one probably wore underneath powered armor, and a mask that was just a fabric hood modeled to look like his usual helmet. "First, I'd like to thank all-"

"No speeches!" Mouse Protector bellowed out, cupping her hands as a megaphone.

"Right," Armsmaster said ruefully, running a hand through his hair. "Okay, for those that haven't done this before, we're passing out communicators. Press the top button to send a message to our central dispatcher, press the bottom button if you need help and can't speak. Press both at once for an emergency broadcast to all communicators, but only do that if it's really urgent. We need to keep those channels clear, so don't abuse the override. Now, I'm going to go armor up. Where's Wharf Rat?"

"Here," Danny said, raising a hand.

"Okay, you're on dispatch. Take the elevator, two flights up, someone will meet you there."

"Me?" he was shocked. More than shocked, terrified. He was out of his depth by a large margin. This was his first defense against an Endbringer. There were people here who had fought these things dozens of times.

"Dinah Alcott insisted. Go!" Armsmaster barked, and Danny's indecision evaporated. If Dinah Alcott said he needed to do this, he trusted the girl.

Wharf Rat turned and bolted for the elevator, and there was a PRT representative holding the doors for him. The rep wore a suit and tie and a wide-eyed look of restrained terror, and pushed the button to get them up to the desired level. "Get all the technical staff to the Protectorate floor," Wharf Rat told the PRT rep as he walked past. "Engineers, IT guys, wiretappers, signals analysts, everyone." He hit the floor and headed straight to the console, a broad desk with three screens and a modular keyboard in front of it. This was the PRT's console, much like the ones used by the Protectorate from their Hub or the Wards from their area. This one was a backup, a standby so that the PRT could administer in times of need, or for anyone that didn't have security clearance to be on the Protectorate floor. He typed fast, activating the console and started tying its network into the comm bands that were being passed around downstairs. Elevators dinged and opened, and then there were dozens of technicians standing by, staring at him. They were inches from panic. Time to project confidence. And to be glad that the mask hid his face, all he had to disguise was his voice. "Okay, this is my workstation," he said, slapping the top of the console.

"Yeah," one tech said, gesturing. "But this is just for a few people in the field, you can't handle all the comms for an Endbringer attack through here."

"No you can't," Danny agreed. "Do we have the bandwidth?"

"Bandwidth for days," the man said.

The Wharf Rat nodded. "All right. Bring me laptops, desktops, anything with a monitor and a keyboard, or a monitor or a keyboard. Everything, right now. Hook it into this console, all of it. I want God's own network and I want it in five minutes."

"How many?" one of them asked.

"This many," the Wharf Rat said, and spread his arms as his minions poured out of the walls, the corners, the floor, the vents, the doors to the bathrooms, even dropping from the ceiling tiles. The technicians jumped and ran, moving with a purpose. He sat down at the main console and started scrolling around, exploring the software of the comm bands.

Hello Wharf Rat, said a green text that intruded itself over what he was doing.

"Dragon I presume?" he said aloud towards the console's microphone.

The same. Normally I handle dispatch and communications, but Dinah Alcott was very insistent. And the powers that be listen very closely when she is this insistent. So I will be attending with one of my new suits instead of handling the console. This is a first, are you going to be all right?

"Should be fine if they can get the hardware together," he said, panning the camera around. "Where are you now?" He had not been so aware that Dinah Alcott had so much say in Protectorate affairs. Or even that she spoke to them very much. But, he was aware that for all he knew and all he could hear, there was plenty going on that nobody told him about. It's not like anyone owed him an explanation of what was happening with the girl he'd rescued.

My suit is on its way on autopilot, I'll have to hand off this console to you before it gets to you. Just another couple of minutes.

"Has everyone already activated their comm band?" Wharf Rat asked.

Yes they have.

The first laptop was plugged into the router, and a connection went live. Five rats leaped to the station, while the technicians brought in the rest of the equipment. And just like the spare laptop at his office at the beginning, the rats laid their paws across the home row of the keyboard and the trackpad, typing as fast as he could with his hands, and reading even faster.

"I'm ready for the handoff," he said.

If you say so, she said. A dozen rats perched on his shoulders and the desk, staring at the massive screens filled with scrolling information. Codes for specific comm bands, information pickups, overhead maps, and much much more. He immersed himself in the information, and then began moving. The first thing he noticed was that everyone was just standing around. He had to get them organized quick, or all they'd be good for was a clumsy bench-clearing where they threw all their people at the monster and just hoped for the best.

"Rime, this is Wharf Rat. You're my only flying freezer, get out into the open and start making some icebergs out there in the ocean. Clockblocker, this is Wharf Rat. We're gonna be working real closely together today. Stay alert. Skipjack, you're my best teleporter who can carry another. You're going to be married to Clockblocker today, you guys are one unit, never apart, got it?"

"Got it," the two heroes said back. Four more computers were added to the network, he took those over as well without looking. His rats began cuing their responses in, signalling people to move one way or the other, and with each console added his response times improved.

"Clockblocker, can you freeze the ocean by any chance?"

"No, just the part that touches my hands. It's an extremely fine layer and it tends to trap my hand immediately."

"That's what I thought. So, you'll be freezing some icebergs instead. You and Skip go to the window, look out there. Rime's making some floes for you, you freeze them in place and they'll break up the tidal waves. Got it? Vista, this is Wharf Rat, are you armored?" Here was hoping. He had recommended Vista for one of the first suits of powered armor to roll off of Armsmaster's workshop, but he could never be sure which of his suggestions was going to be heard and considered and which would be disregarded out of hand. Vista in armor was important, he could not risk her if she was wearing less protection than amateur skateboarders.

"Yes sir."

He kept the relief from flooding his voice. "Good girl. Get yourself down to the beach. The first thing we're going to see is a tidal wave. You're going to shrink it. We're going to pull everyone back so there's nobody interfering with your power, you'll be at full strength. Go. Eidolon, this is Wharf Rat, I'm running dispatch and comms. Do you read?"

"Go for Eidolon," said the most powerful hero in the Protectorate, probably the most powerful cape shy of the Endbringers and Scion himself.

"Our mission today is to buy time and minimize destruction. Do I understand correctly that your powers can be anything you want, but they take a few minutes to change up?"

"Yes, Wharf Rat."

"Good then. I need you as a specific countermeasure. Hydrokinesis, as big as you can get it. Match Leviathan's water powers, any way you can. Keep me posted, when you're ready. Bitch, this is Wharf Rat. Your power works on any dog, right?"

"Yeah."

"Okay, I need you to not engage Leviathan. If he gets into the city, stay near him, stay ahead of him, and transform any dogs nearby."

"I won't be able to control them, I need to train them or the change makes them crazy, aggressive."

"That's fine," he said.

"No it's not, they'll get hurt."

"If you help them, they might get hurt, and they might hurt him. If you don't help them, they'll drown and die crushed in their houses. Right?"

"Right. Okay, I'll do it."

"Thank you, Bitch. Wharf Rat to Tattletale."

"Tattle here."

"Yeah, why are you down there? Get up to dispatch. Take the elevators, two levels up." Twenty consoles were connected now, more on the way.

"Wharf Rat, this is Dragon, thirty seconds out." There was a voice now, not just the text. And it was a softer, less mechanized voice than what had boomed out of the speakers of her prison-transfer unit that had dropped him off at the asylum. Still had an accent, that he was finally able to place as being Canadian.

"Thanks Dragon, welcome to Brockton Bay. Stay high, I'm piggybacking your cameras to bolster the satellite information. All hands, tidal wave is incoming. Tidal wave groups, stand by. Impact in one minute. Rime, Prefab, start pulling back to safe distance. Clockblocker, Skipjack, get those icebergs, get them now. Vista, wait until they're clear and then get ready to push your power as hard as you've ever pushed it. Everyone not assigned to the tidal wave, get out of the tower and take up ready positions. Force field projectors, be ready to push back against the water." While he had been speaking to the various heroes verbally and scrolling around manually, each of his rats was doing their parts, planting indicators to reposition the various heroes, moving the force-field wielders into a position where they could push back against tsunami, circling fliers up high and instructing them to report any sightings.

Tattletale was walking in behind him when the tidal wave rushed the shore. Twenty or more icebergs floated on the surface in the path of the onrushing wall of water, eighty feet tall at least, millions of tons of water that threatened to scour the city off the bedrock. And then the wave shrunk, half its size, a quarter. A ten-foot wall of water hit the icebergs and dissolved into a churning eddy of froth and spray, the ice refused to budge an inch and it smashed the momentum of the water. And then Vista relaxed, and the waterline swelled up by twenty feet, lapping past Prefab's breakwater and spilling over to the foundations of the buildings nearest the water, like the whole ocean expanded at once. The water was flowing back though, receding from the city.

"One down," Tattletale said, pausing at his shoulder. "What do you need me for?"

"Anything I don't see on my own," he said. "Call 'em out when you see 'em." He didn't look her way, but one of his rats turned and gave her a somber nod of camaraderie. She smirked and returned the gesture.

"We were fighting just yesterday," she pointed out.

"Today people have better things to do than make us fight each other," he replied.

"Then show me as much as you can," she said. "My power works better the more information I have." He diverted screens her way, making sure that she saw a display of the center of the action, whatever was most pertinent. If she played straight with him, he definitely wanted her to have all the tools available. He respected her power immensely, and he hoped he could trust her to the same degree because he really didn't have a choice.

"Leviathan!" screamed a dozen voices as the giant monster leaped out of the risen water. It was thirty feet tall, top-heavy and covered in scales of deep, dark green. It leaned forward from the waist to balance out the length of its tail, and a watery after-image followed after it as it crashed down on the street, rain sluicing off of its body. Asymmetrical eyes glowed from its narrow face.

"I need one good delay. Exalt, pin him down," Wharf Rat said. He was shocked at how level and steady his voice was.

"I only get one shot at this, then I have to recharge for a day," the hero replied.

"I only want one shot from you," Wharf Rat answered, already calling up Skipjack and Clockblocker. "All right guys, Exalt's gonna pin him, that's your shot. Freeze him down, but be really really careful. Nothing happens to either of you, got it? Cache, I need you three blocks east and four blocks north, there's some rusted ships there, scoop them up. Myrddin, get him there and back with all speed. I've got a marker on your wristband to guide you."

"What's going on there?" Tattletale asked, nodding at one window on the monitor.

"Evacuations. Capes with powers that aren't relevant or helpful for this scenario are taking to a safe distance," he said.

"Half my team," she mused aloud. There was a lot of potential for casualties in an event like this, and the key to minimizing them was minimizing opportunities. And both Grue and Regent were being evacuated to a safe distance. If they were up against Behemoth he might bring Grue in, his ability to dampen energy would be valuable. But against Leviathan he was just a meat shield, so Wharf Rat was steering him away. And by contracting the defensive lines, there were fewer distractions for the capes that could really help, less need for evacuations of the wounded, less need for spare hands. That made up for whatever advantage he could have gotten by sending them in. Maybe they could stall the monster for a half a minute or a couple minutes each before they died. And if he sent people to die, there would be less to fight against the next attack. He really hoped he was doing this the right way, because nobody had bothered to explain anything to him at all.

Wharf Rat was still working the communications. "Dragon, stand by ten degrees west, and wait for the opportunity. Skipjack, Clockblocker, wait for my signal... now! Okay, all primary forces pull back, assess for damage control. Dragon, containment foam on him before he rouses, as much as you can, empty the bottle. Leave the head clear though. Cache, drop all that rusted metal on top of him. Mix it in with the containment foam, we're adding mass and structure. Good deal. Everyone take ten seconds, back off. Clockblocker, freeze those ships, I want him to stay pinned as long as possible. Exalt, if you've got any juice left try to clear these clouds, the rain is one of his weapons."

"Myrddin here, I'll work on the weather."

"Do that, it'll be easier right now while he's not opposing you. Rime, get out in the ocean and give us more icebergs, if there's another tidal wave I want more than one line to stop it. Prefab, that wall you were building needs to be extended, thanks. Exalt, fall back to evacuation point, you've done your part."

"Got it."

"Wharf Rat, this is Alexandria," came an incoming transmission. "Do you have anything for us to do, or does the home team have this covered?" The tone was sarcastic and condescending. Danny felt that was a bit uncalled-for, since he was coordinating what might be the most successful Endbringer counterattack on record.

"Roger, Alexandria. Stand by ready to attack. When it unfreezes we're going to see if we can do some damage for a bit before Clockblocker re-freezes it."

"Roger, Wharf Rat," she replied.

"Armsmaster reporting ready." The signal pinged from his workshop level up in the tower.

"Good to know, friend. You've got that nano-Halberd, right?"

"Yes I do."

"Roger that then. Head down to the site and stand by to cut his head off."

"Movement!" someone shouted, as Leviathan's head jerked to the side, still reacting to the blast of wind that had flattened him immediately before Clockblocker stopped him. Legend began pouring the lasers on, carving a deep trench into Leviathan's head while Alexandria flew in close to punch it right in the face while it was held immobile.

"Armsmaster, how long?"

"Two minutes."

"Too long, get the next one," Wharf Rat said. "Dispatch, you and Clockblocker, stop him."

Dispatch and Clockblocker stepped in close, just outside the range of the thrashing, heaving head of the Endbringer and the water-echo that surrounded it, and in a blink Clockblocker had frozen the creature again. Dispatch's time powers let him get close, and Clockblocker's time powers bought them all a bit more time. Anywhere from thirty seconds to ten minutes.

"Eidolon here, my powers are charged up. What do you need?"

"I need all this rain and water gone. We've never been able to pin Leviathan down out of his element, and this is our shot. With no water he loses his after-image, his speed, almost half of his weapons."

"Roger. That just seems... a bit anticlimactic. Normally I go head to head with this guy."

"Right, but this is something that literally only you can do." The green-cloaked figure stood on the corner of the Protectorate tower, clinging to the edge of a pylon. He didn't have a flight power as usual, everything he had was going into controlling as much water as possible. Hazy duplicates of him appeared in the air around him, floating out into the sky above the city and even through the building he stood next to. Then they each turned, and flew in a separate direction, taking positions evenly-spaced around the city, hovering in place. And each of them that hovered began calling up orbs of crackling blue energy that flew out, one by one, until each of the dozens of duplicates was wielding dozens of balls of energy that spaced themselves out and stopped in the air, blanketing the city until nearly every block had an orb. And then the orbs pulsed, and the water transformed into a fine, sugarlike powder. The sandy substance slid away, manipulated telekinetically on a massive scale, streaming away and flowing down into the ocean.

Tattletale was staring at the camera feed, zooming in, replaying, panning to different angles, splicing in footage from the archives of previous Leviathan attacks. "This is weird. I .. I don't think that Leviathan is a cape. Like, not a human with powers. I don't think it was ever human, at all. I don't think it was anything, before it was Leviathan. I think it was created. Built? Designed? It mimics a living creature, but it's not. There s no weak spot, there's no organs or structure to it. The blood it spills out is just a distraction. It gets harder the deeper in you go, like the layers of an onion, each layer progressively harder, denser. No vulnerable places, no life functions to terminate. It's not an animal, it's not even a machine."

"So we just have to destroy its entire body?" Wharf Rat asked her.

"No, not... exactly. The body is just there to soak up damage. There's a core, in the deepest part of its body. The junction of the chest and neck, that's where the core is, if you can destroy that then Leviathan dies. But the layers closest to that... they're going to be insanely hard, dense. It's so hard it defies conventional physics, you won't get through it with raw force. You need an attack that defies physics as well."

"Well that's interesting, we've got someone that fits the bill," Wharf Rat said, as one of his many consoles picked out one name and directed that cape to report to the site of Leviathan's head. Now he had a plan for how to beat the Endbringer. And he did not have time to really think about what that meant.

"Wharf Rat, this is Armsmaster, standing by and ready."

"Roger that Armsmaster. When it becomes vulnerable, chop the head off. I need a clear shot down the length of its neck."

"Clear," the senior hero replied.

"Othala, Armsmaster would appreciate a boost of speed when it comes time, it'll make his job easier. All units, Scion has been sighted in West Africa, we're not looking at relief anytime soon. Pace yourselves."

Dragon circled above. The mechanical suit was not one of her most combat-heavy units, it was just the most heavily-armed one that could arrive at the city in time to help out. But even still, she felt oddly underutilized. Wharf Rat did not seem to need her primary weapons suite or close-combat capabilities. She had made sure that information was available to him, but he seemed to think her most useful asset was her aerial maneuverability and her ability to upload extensive visual and sensor data on the fight. She even, tentatively, added an entry to her file so that Wharf Rat would know that the suit was an unmanned drone, so he would know that there was no actual loss of life if she had to sacrifice the suit. Immediately she saw the notification that he had read that entry, but he made no move to adjust his tactics.

She also felt underutilized not only as a mechanical weapon, but also as an artificial intelligence. The reason that she normally handled dispatch and coordination for Endbringer attacks had a lot to do with how fast she could process information and her vast intelligence. As it was, she had little to do but fly a holding pattern, wait for instructions and think about everything she was seeing. She noticed, first idly then with interest, that Wharf Rat was operating the communications at least as efficiently as she normally did, and he was still working the kinks out and learning his way around and adding hardware. She was shackled by her creator to only ever be in one place at one time, and while she could work around that to a degree by creating dumb programs to buttress her attentions, she was deliberately hampered from multitasking to the degree that Wharf Rat was doing. She was hit with a pang of jealousy at that.

And Dragon was not the only one who noticed these developments. In the PRT files on Dragon, it was mentioned that her loyalty and obedience were absolute. Her dedication to following the orders of the PRT was unquestioned. She was the ideal choice to build and administer their inescapable super-prison, to coordinate movements and communications for the Protectorate, and to orchestrate Endbringer defenses. Years had been spent raising her to prominence in all things, keeping her just out of sight of the public so that there would be no calls for a public face for her, but still making her central to every stage of Protectorate business. And the people who noticed these things were not pleased that she was being unilaterally and brusquely shelved by what was likely the most troublesome and least loyal member that the Protectorate had. Wharf Rat's rise in status was dangerous enough, moreso if it came at the expense of Dragon. Hurried conferences were held.

Tattletale looked around the room. "Rats with computers. Computer mice. It's cute."

"I have an almost-infinite ability to multitask with them," Wharf Rat said. "It made sense to use that ability here. It frees Dragon up for fighting, whereas my rats don't have a lot of combat utility against something like an Endbringer."

"I wouldn't sell them short," the girl said. "You took down Lung with them, and he fought Leviathan to a standstill before. It's pretty clear that infinite multitasking, and the ability to spread your perceptions over a broad area, and to affect physical objects there, is actually a really strong power all by itself. Look, don't think about the rats, just think of someone that could exert telekinetic force any way he wanted to with a radius as big as yours, able to affect anything in any way with a half-pound of force, wherever it does the most good or harm. That almost sounds like an Endbringer to me."

"Good pep talk," he said. "But seriously, when this is done why don't you join the Wards? We can work together, I can organize information like nobody else and you can fill in the gaps."

"Tempting offer," she said. "Except that I like making my own schedule, and not having assholes like Piggy telling me what to do with every minute of my day. And you can't pay me enough, and someone would try to tell me what I can say and when I can't curse, and fuck that."

A blinking timer on his monitor was flashing 00:00.0, and Wharf Rat hit the microphone. "Clockblocker, what's the longest your power has ever held anything?"

"Ten minutes and three seconds," the teenaged Ward said. "Why?"

"Wharf Rat to Armsmaster, Legend, Alexandria! He's playing possum, Leviathan is awake and active!"

The three heroes cursed as they lunged forward, and the ground caved in underneath Leviathan, dropping him out from under the containment foam carapace. With a few feet of movement, the monsters was able to twist around and get its feet under it, while water from the broken sewer lines flooded around it, forming a layer on its body that moved like a watery after-image as it lunged forward.

"Humble! Sundancer! Rune!" he called out, and the backup plan his rats had put into effect kicked in. The monster stumbled as the ground gripped at it, a limited gravity effect that pinned it in place. Then the ground under Leviathan's feet lurched upwards, knocking it off-balance while lifting it into the air, and a massive ball of superheated flame flew over the rooftop, slamming fully into the Endbringer and burning away half of its body. The power of the sun itself launched into Leviathan's way, too fast to dodge with its feet pinned, and the rock itself shattered as the heat expanded its core too fast. The massive chunks of concrete dropped to the ground along with the burned remains of the monster, covered in gleaming sticky ichor and white-silver webbing that looked like alien moss on the skeleton of the gangly creature. The outer layers burned away, it looked less like a creature and more like a weird alien construct. It hit hard, its water evaporated away by Sundancer's projection, and Humble hit it again, pinning it down to the ground for a second. Its limbs were willow-thin, its tail was barely a whip anymore, and its torso and head were burned to half their thickness, like a stick figure. And it took only a second for the creature to pull its feet free of Humble's gravity effect and lunge to the side, working to attack the heroes.

But it had slowed enough that a speed-boosted Armsmaster could lunge in with his Halberd, wreathed in gray fuzzy fog, and carve through the creature's knee, severing the leg and dropping it to land on its two hands and one foot, the tail lashing before it was also severed.

"Clockblocker, Skipjack, you two watch carefully for the opportunity, we need him frozen again," Wharf Rat said.

"His powers aren't diminished at all, and he can work water while he fights as well as you can with your rats," Tattletale said. As if to illustrate her point, all the hydrants on the street blew out, and the ground ruptured as water burst through the water mains. Storm drains back up, flooding the streets, and as soon as the water was three feet deep the narrowed slip of Leviathan dropped flat to the ground and shot away, swimming with a side-to-side movement of its remaining body while the water pushed him forward even faster. The water began transforming into fine white sugary powder, faintly blue when the light hit a certain angle, but enough of it stayed liquid that the Endbringer could swim itself away.

"Dammit, this fight's getting into the city," Wharf Rat said. "That's exactly what I didn't want."

Five rats operated a trackpad while typing commands to indicate one communicator, and that wristband buzzed a second before it lit up with two arrows, one labeled "truck" the other "L". And the Wharf Rat's voice blurted out from the wristband, "Trickster! Now!"

Trickster inverted the two, teleporting the truck to Leviathan's location and vice verse, bringing the Endbringer back into reach. Legend's lasers punched into its back but did no appreciable damage. "Not on it, in front of it, burn the water to steam and pin it in," Wharf Rat called out. Legend shifted tactics, and Leviathan's attempts to swim were interrupted by a lack of water in front of it, slowing its progress. The steam evaporated the liquid and the remaining water was more powder than fluid, and Leviathan had a hard time swimming in what was essentially mud.

Dragon noted that Wharf Rat rarely moved to attack Leviathan directly; whereas normally they hit it with as many attacks as possible and only one in a hundred was effective, Wharf Rat was only launching a handful of attacks but making sure that each one counted. It was probably something he learned from fighting supervillains using only rodents. Everything he knew about fighting seemed to be about using numbers of weaker assets in creative and unpredictable ways to take down a larger, stronger, faster opponent by any means he had available. So, perhaps he was almost uniquely suited to this position. She found herself discomfited by this thought.

Then Browbeat and Campanile worked together, hurling the truck up into the air, and Trickster reversed them, the Endbringer suddenly finding itself up in the air, arcing upwards to smack into a wall. It grabbed hold with its spidery fingers and last remaining leg, but found itself wedged by a sudden burst of gravity that held it to the wall. And then Clockblocker leaned out a window, touched Leviathan on the chest and froze him in place.

"His powers aren't diminished by damage," Tattletale said again, her voice musing as she worked through the facts. "Stripping off those outer layers doesn't actually injure him at all, that form we see is just for show, just to give us something to see and fight. The real Leviathan is the core, that's where the powers come from, that's where the danger is."

"Miss Militia, this is Wharf Rat," he said, while he considered what she'd said. "I need you and your bazooka to blow up that building he's hanging onto, I don't want him to fake us out again. Skipjack and Clockblocker are already gone, fire at will. Flechette, take a post at the newsstand across the street, as soon as he starts falling I need you to fire a bolt right into the core of him, the deepest part of his body at the junction of his chest and neck. Trickster, stand by to teleport her away when that happens."

Tattletale rubbed at her head, already aware of the oncoming headache. "He gets denser and harder as you approach his core, and it defies physics. Like a neutron star or black hole. He shifts from conventional physics to high-energy physics as you penetrate deeper. And that's the source of his powers. The power source is immune to normal physics. Oh damn," she said, snapping around to stare at Wharf Rat. "His powers are still active while he's frozen in time. He's still controlling water, right now. He's still playing possum."

"Eidolon, this is Wharf Rat. Is there any chance that Leviathan is still manipulating water? Do you perceive any moving water at all?"

"Negative. No river, sewer, storm drain, not the ocean or the rain or the water in the pipes."

"What about the aquifer under downtown?" Wharf Rat asked.

Another ghostly Eidolon shot out of the hero, and flew through the air towards downtown, on a downward angle that plunged into the ground. "Eidolon to Wharf Rat, there's movement! A whirlpool, lots of movement. He's hollowing out the ground, trying to create a sinkhole. I'm working against him, but this is... this is a losing battle. I'm matching power to power against the largest-scale kinetic manipulator short of Scion himself."

"Movement!" someone called out as Leviathan dropped from out of the air. Miss Militia had blown up half the building he had been fastened to, and frozen in time as he was he had been suspended in the air until he unfroze, and dropped. The severed leg and tail were regrowing themselves, almost visibly. Flechette had a bolt fired before the monster even hit the ground, and the bolt entered his shoulder and stopped in place, piercing deeply. The creature warped in the air, spinning around to land on its spindly legs and one hand, lunging for Flechette but she and the pavement she was standing on were teleported away and replaced by Armsmaster and his Halberd. He swung the blade and it severed Leviathan's hand, the back swing biting deep and shaving layers off of the monster's head.

"Flechette, again," Wharf Rat called, but she was already ahead of him. Another bolt pierced, this one just inches to the side of the first, still probing for the vulnerable center of the monster. It spun away from Armsmaster and raced for the rooftop she stood on, even as Sundancer's glowing ball of plasma and fusion power swept in front, cutting it off. But the Endbringer leaped forward, into and through the miniature sun, and came out the other side as a polished silver stick figure, running on needle-like points that were all that was left of its feet. Molten metal dripped off its frame as it sprinted through and then started climbing the side of the building, moving fast.

"Tidal wave!" came an alert, and Wharf Rat directed Clockblocker and Skipjack to start locking down Rime's icebergs, and checked to make sure that Vista was ready again.

"Be alert, now that he knows that we're not falling for his tricks, he's going to start doubling down," Wharf Rat advised. "That probably goes double for tidal waves, the ocean is his biggest weapon right now."

"I'm not sure I can keep shrinking them as hard as I did that last one," Vista responded. "That took a lot out of me, and it'll take a while to rest up."

"Do what you can without straining," Wharf Rat said. "If you can cut them in half, you'll do us a huge favor."

"You make that look easy," Tattletale said, slumping back in her chair. "By the way, I think I'm all used up. If I try helping anymore, the headache will knock me out faster than I can get you any answers. Guess I should get evacuated now."

"Or keep me company," Wharf Rat said. "Just sit back, turn off, and help me watch for anything I don't see on my own. Just because I see through hundreds of eyes doesn't mean I couldn't use another perspective, for its own sake."

She let her eyes sag shut, and massaged her temples. "You make that look easy too. How do you do that? Is that a Thinker power?"

"Do what?" Wharf Rat said while he navigated the process of teleporting Sundancer and Flechette and Traveler and Armsmaster out of danger, keeping Leviathan scrambling after targets that he couldn't reach. One of Parian's giant stuffed animals jumped it from the side, and when the Endbringer slashed it open with its whittled-sharp hands, the interior of the plush creature exploded out with loops of thread and twine, some thick and sturdy and some of it almost invisibly fine. The Endbringer was still just as strong and just as fast as when it had first arrived, but the damage had cut it down to a fraction of its weight and mass, and the threads lifted him up clear of the ground and denied him purchase and leverage. He started cutting the threads to free himself, but Alexandria grabbed one arm and slowed his progress, grappling him to immobilize.

"Talk to people. You say the right things, you help them and help yourself. You're here, ready to interrogate me while my power's blown out so you can get more information out of me than I get out of you, and you do it in such a way that I actually don't mind hanging out here with you."

Wharf Rat managed the consoles with the rats alone and turned towards her, cocking his head to the side. "You think I'm going to interrogate you? I didn't think I'd done anything to give you that impression."

"You're doing it now," she pointed out.

"I'll try not to," the hero said, turning in his seat back to the console. "Hey, can someone get this girl an icepack or something? And the strongest painkillers we've got that won't hurt her." One of the techs shrugged and went off to look for icepack and aspirin. "So, anyway, the best way I can think of to not interrogate you is to answer your question. I talk to people, all the time." He thought about the union, all the networking and the interviews and the negotiations and persuasion. "It's my job, my hobby, my life. I've gotten better at it recently, a lot more honestly. Part of that is that my rats can hear heartbeats and can smell emotions, so I know a lot about people that they don't know that I know. That makes it easier. And even when I'm not using them, just what I've learned about people from the rats has made it easier to understand them. And honestly, the big issue is just about caring enough to try. Lots of capes don't get out of their own heads and into anyone else's, it's kind of an occupational hazard. I'm the exception, and I guess I'm just lucky."

"Not using my power, just my own brain," Tattletale groaned, "I'd guess that your trigger event was about helping other people, and not about trauma to yourself."

"It was some of both," he said casually. In his peripheral vision he saw her accept an icepack and a bottle of aspirin and a glass of water. "Hang on a second. Eidolon, where are we at with that aquifer?"

"Holding my own, mostly. I'm not making progress, but I've got him almost at a standstill. If this goes on too long I will lose, but I can lose slowly. Nobody else has ever lost slowly against these guys."

"I'm evacuating the shelters in that area just in case, but I hope we don't need that," Wharf Rat said back to the world's strongest hero. "Let me know if you start slipping or if he does, okay?"

"Like that," Tattletale said. "Eidolon's a butthead. He's arrogant and pushy. You've got him cleaning up the collateral damage and feeling good about it. He's always in these fights setting the sky on fire or throwing black holes or growing to giant sizes to attack the Endbringers as only he can, and you're having him play second-fiddle to a local Wards team. And he's not complaining, is he? You've got city team leaders ferrying people around, you've got villains handling the primary defense, and morale is high. Look at them."

"They're winning, and that has a huge impact," Wharf Rat said. "The best PR in the world is a good track record for getting results, as I've had to tell our own PR guy." Clockblocker froze the threads that held up the Endbringer, locking him on place without rendering him invulnerable. "Whoa, I didn't tell him to do that," Danny said, leaning forward. "I told him to freeze Leviathan, but he got the threads instead, and it worked. Holy cow it worked. Flechette, you've got at least thirty seconds of grace here. Perforate that core!"

"You're about to kill an Endbringer without Scion's help," Tattletale said. "That's the kind of results that look good on your track record. Wait, you Protectorates have a PR guy?"

"Yeah. It was his idea for me to use mice. Little cute white mice. Said my image was too gritty and threatening," Wharf Rat said. "Flechette, set down the crossbow. Alexandria, go find me an I-beam, something big. Parian, more threads, layer them on. Clockblocker, freeze each layer as they go on. They won't all fail at the same time, and you can refreeze any that time out. Parian, don't cover the core area, stay away from his neck and torso, just get the head and limbs."

Alexandria came flying in carrying a giant slab of construction steel hefted over her shoulder, with Flechette clinging to the beam with both hands and her legs wrapped around it. Alexandria flew up in front of Leviathan, and braced the steel beam against his chest, ready to push. Flechette indicated a couple inches upwards and to the right, and then she laid her hands on the steel when it hit the proper position. Alexandria pushed, and the beam slid in right on target.

The silvery figure of Leviathan's inner layers stopped in place, and then began swelling, bloating. "Ohshit," Wharf Rat said, as his sensors registered the temperature of the swelling body. "It's a nuke! Run!" he bellowed on all channels. He could only sit helplessly, scrambling to send instructions in the second or two before the hyperdense layers of the Endbringer's inner layers collapsed on themselves, broke down in a storm of internuclear forces that boiled to superheated plasma. The inner pressure struggled against the superstrong materials that surrounded them, converting them to pressurized plasma. Hard radiation began bleeding through, gamma rays and cosmic radiation bursting out through the skin of its body as the layers of its body melted, softened, stretched, and finally ruptured.

In the seconds that the creature's self-destruction took, Flechette managed to climb up the I-beam and duck behind Alexandria, grabbing the heroine's cape and wrapping it half-around herself. At the time that the explosion went off, the cape was exempt from physics, and its quarter-inch of fabric was the equivalent of an infinitely-thick layer of lead shielding. But the cape was not full-body protection, and Flechette dropped to the ground unconscious. Skipjack teleported back with Clockblocker, this time without Parian, and Clockblocker froze Flechette in place. Alexandria hung in the air, squirming a finger in her ear like she was trying to get rid of a ringing sound.

"The whole damn Boardwalk is gone," Tattletale said, checking the wide-angle cameras.

Wharf Rat was scrambling for other sensors and other readouts. "Eidolon, anything you can bring up to scrub radiation out would be good right about now, I've got lethal levels over a wide area. Panacea, I need you at the blast site, we've got someone badly wounded or dying, frozen in time for a short period of time. PRT personnel, anyone that can find me radiation countermeasures or radiation-poisoning cures, get those out of storage and stand by to pass them out. Vista, recall from the beach and start condensing the affected area so we can scrub the radiation out faster. Rime, I've got fires near the blast, I need you to put those out. Humble, that may be radioactive ash, I need it out of the air."

"And still no sign of Scion," Tattletale said bitterly. "Thanks a lot, you glorious golden god."

Wharf Rat stared at her, then looked back at his console and pushed a code and the open channel key. "Eidolon, this is Wharf Rat. I want to first of all thank you for everything, and also I have to ask you a hypothetical question for future reference: do you think it would be possible for you to give yourself the power to communicate with Scion?"

"I... I have no idea. I suppose I could try, the next time."

"Keep in mind that next time may well be eight months down the line, if there's only two Endbringer their schedule should slow down."

"I... that's right. It's just Behemoth and the Simurgh now, three attacks every two years instead of three per year," he said, his voice seemingly swamped with relief and awe.

Tattletale groaned, and started pushing herself to her feet. She moved like she was sixty and not sixteen. "Well, the attack is over, and that means the truce is over. I'll be on my way, and tomorrow we can all go back to fighting each other."

"Why, do you think we're done?" Danny asked. "I mean, I grant we're past the hard part, but people are still in shelters, there's still danger out there, the Triumvirate are still in the city. I think you can hang out for a couple more hours. Do you want to split the rest of this burger?"

Tattletale slumped back into her seat. "Yeah, you're right. I don't need to go walking through a nuclear winter on an empty stomach."

"Wharf Rat, this is Alexandria," barked one communicator. "I never got a casualty listing."

"Until Flechette comes out of stasis so Panacea can work on her, I don't have a listing," Wharf Rat said.

"Beg pardon?"

"I mean we have presently no deaths, one major injury, and a smattering of minor injuries."

Alexandria's voice came through slowly. "Do you mean to tell me that we just killed Leviathan, an Endbringer, in Brockton Bay, with one hero in serious condition, no deaths, no civilian deaths, and acceptable degrees of property damage?"

"Yes ma'am," Danny Hebert confirmed. "You wanna get the first round of beers tonight?"

They waited several seconds, but Alexandria did not reply. "Okay, so that's that," Danny said. He checked the windows in front of him. "Hmm, radiation's getting cleared up. Hopefully this won't be a radioactive wasteland by nightfall. Okay, Flechette's life signs are back, she's out of stasis. She's in bad shape, but Panacea's right here, helping her out. It's in her hands now, and there's nobody better for this." Wharf Rat started recalling heroes from the evacuation point. It turned out that Grue could nullify swaths of radiation almost as well as Eidolon, and the work sped up. The other heroes were wandering around, talking in low voices, shocked and almost dismayed.

"Armsmaster, this is Wharf Rat," he said into the comms.

"Go for Armsmaster," the man said back.

"Earlier you were going to make a speech, but we didn't have time. I think we've got time now. Do you want an open channel?"

"Give me a minute to compose my thoughts, and I'll be back with you."

"Roger. Parian, this is Wharf Rat. Your vitals are off, are you all right?"

"I'm okay, I'm just.. rattled. Processing. I always said that if I got powers I'd help fight the Endbringers. And this... this was so much."

"My first time too," he admitted. "But you were great today. You came through right when it counted, and today you did just as much to fight and kill Leviathan as Alexandria herself. Your name is going to go down in history books, Parian. You are always going to have that."

"Th- thank you. I think I need to be alone for a bit."

"Sure thing. And thank you again. Armsmaster, you ready?"

"Put me through," came the hero's voice. Wharf Rat hit the button for all-call, and let the Armsmaster's voice carry through to every one of the wrist communicators. The voice was solid and unshaken, "Today, you did the impossible. We did the impossible. We did what even Scion never did. The world has one less Endbringer, one less threat. The monster that killed Kyuju, Newfoundland, is dead. And now that we know how, we can turn our eyes to Behemoth, to the Simurgh. We can find a world that is safer, better, than it was. All of you, here together. Some of you are known as rogues. Some of you are officially villains. But today you did more good than most people can ever do in a lifetime. If you will let me, I'll call all of you heroes. It is going to take days, weeks, for the world to realize what this means. But all of us here, I can say the words I've always wanted to say after every Endbringer attack: we won."

"Not bad," Tattletale said. "Should've called out the big heroes today, Flechette and Clockblocker and Parian."

"It's easy to say that," Wharf Rat said. "But honestly Eidolon played a huge role when he took the water away. And Vista for the same reasons. Skipjack manage to get Clockblocker everywhere he needed to be, without him the boy would still be on the beach. Most of the overview intel I got was from Dragon and Legend. Humble made the difference between winning and losing at least four times. And every part of the strategy that gave us the win, the kill, came from you."

"Strategists don't take credit," Tattletale said. "Or else you and Dinah would get the lion's share."

"Kind of you to say," Wharf Rat said. "Check it out, Flechette's vitals are stabilizing, strengthening, it looks like Panacea's got this under control. Wharf Rat to Clockblocker, you're still there with Flechette, right?"

"Roger."

"How's it looking, I don't have eyes on that corner."

"The bleeding's stopped, the bruising is receding, and she's on the mend. Panacea's got her hands full, can't answer her comms, but she says that the brain damage has been mitigated, the heart and lungs are repaired, and she's working on liver and kidneys next. This could take a while, there are massive crush injuries from close-range hyperbaric blast, as well as huge doses of lethal radiation. I'm on site to pause things anytime Panacea needs a break. We could be here for a couple hours before this is done, but she's gonna make it."

"Thanks Clockblocker. Say, I can see that Parian's wristband is close by, she seems to be hanging around. Do me a favor and gently prod her towards joining the Protectorate. Would ya?"

"Yeah, sure thing Rat."

The door whisked open and Director Piggot stepped off the elevator with two men at her sides. "Wharf Rat? Please turn off that console and come with us. There's questions that need to be answered."

Tattletale looked around, her pain leaving her almost groggy. "What fresh hell?"

Danny Hebert stood up with a sigh. He had seen this coming, heard the planning, but it was too well-executed for him to stop it without screwing up the fight against the Endbringer. "A nuclear explosion just erupted in an American city. Someone has to answer for this." He stepped forward and the guards flanked him. They did the courtesy of at least not handcuffing him.

Author's Note: This is the point where Wharf Rat continuity starts to really diverge from Worm continuity, obviously. I do hope that by now anyone who has read as far as this trusts me enough with where this is going. As this story has been written (the first draft is currently on about chapter twenty-two) one of the most fascinating things for me has been how this story alternately parallels the original; and how it diverts from it dramatically.