Faster.
My feet blurred, I'd call it sprinting but that seemed to understate things somehow I was borderline flying as my feet sliced under me half a dozen time a second, each movement clearing more then my height in distance.
The speed was insane, it shouldn't be possible to move this fast, nothing on two legs should be able to move like that.
But I was.
And it wasn't enough.
The fight moves fast, The Simurgh was reportedly 'the slow one' when not airborne. She had neither Leviathan's impossible speed or Behemoths raw breadth of stride, still she was still an Endbringer. Still massive compared to any normal human, impossibly strong, impossibly fast, her rapid back moving strides cleared the same distance I did per moment and then some. Some of those in the melee could keep stride, largely those with the vaunted 'Alexandria package' flight, strength, toughness but they were a minority.
The heroes compensated by having groups ambush as she moved, new brutes crashing in from another direction continuing to keep her pinned along the path they wanted her to travel.
We were so close now I could taste it. Half a block vanished heartbeats and I was now close enough to see the fine details of the battle. Ziz had taken considerably more punishment since I'd gotten my hands on her. One of her wings was clipped clear off in a messy stub, her ivory skin cracked, cut, and pierced, chunks of it peeled away in patches that would on a more mortal creature have been incredibly painful, if not particularly debilitating. Even her face had been marred, the left half of it half a melted mess.
I caught sight of something green among the harassing force. A man in a green coat or cape covered in silver. Eidolon?
Didn't matter, what mattered was The Simurgh was almost in my reach. I had to time it just right an-
A fucking faster cape just rushed past me!
My eyes went wide for a moment, and I glanced back.
Apparently my charge had signaled the others to do the same. Well that or Dragon had signaled them to and I'd ignored it, either way the whole crowd was moving now to engaged.
As annoying as it was to have my thunder stolen I still felt a grin tug across my face. These were much better odds. They would give me the opening to latch on again and deliver a blow of my own.
Then, right before I closed everything suddenly went wrong.
The Simurgh took a sudden hard left, powering right through three brutes at the cost the end of another wing, sacrificing the already damaged limb as it was grasped by a black figure to twist away, as one of the brutes tackled the other and she outright trampled the third into the ground.
I think that one was still moving at least, but the damage was done and she suddenly had an opening to pull free from her boxed in position.
Half the blasters hit her directly then to moderate effect, but they had to immediately switch tactics as more debris rose up, drawing attention.
She crashed into a building right as I closed in, and the slight slowing that was caused by her needing to rip open a path let me close into throwing distance.
Not that there was anything to throw. That vanishing field was a much a burden as a blessing. The interceptor team now working overtime in spite of their unnatural coordination to wipe out the sudden wealth of projectiles their enemy had to make use of.
I twisted in place ducking under a vault door as it flew over my head like a fifty ton baseball, barely avoiding being crushed like a deer hit by a car.
Then the screaming started.
My eyes flickered back and the surge of counter fire suddenly died at once.
The Simurgh had just found a source of projectiles much less easily shot down. Namely the dozens of people who had moments before been hiding within a shelter built expressly to protect them from such events.
I saw a middle aged man holding onto a five year old girl fly overhead, their clothing pulled tight towards the encroaching heroes as another man cried out as their lower body crashed against an outstretching bit of wall with a sickening crack.
And of course the moment that shock finished hitting the rest of the building exploded inward reforming the storm around her.
Suddenly some of the blasters were firing again, but others were not.
I think I saw someone try to tackle one of the human shields out of the air, I wasn't sure what they were trying to accomplish as they only got dragged along for the ride.
It was madness, so oddly clinically horrifying I hadn't expected it at all.
~Stop staring and kill the thing!~
And like that I snapped out of it, jumped five meters right into the air and snap kicked an Endbringer in the face.
The Simurgh's jaw all but exploded in a nova of Green flames as the fifteen foot tall telekinetic was bodily picked up and launched clear out of the back of the shelter covered in the burning hate of Malfeas' Wrath.
She didn't come back down.