Chapter 10-8
Water surged through the air like giant, flying rivers, converging on what was left of Leviathan. The streams twirled around the monster, forming a massive, spinning cone of water that shredded everything in its path. Bits of debris, cars, and sometimes entire buildings were uprooted and sucked into a tornado of water. Occasionally, the water lost its grip on something, and a piece of debris was slung across the city, causing more casualties.
Out in the bay, a tidal wave that could only be described as biblical fell onto the city. The Rig was its first target: the shields lasting less than a second before the whole structure was smashed onto the shore like a plastic toy. The defending capes didn't even bother to try and stop it. The wave continued on, shredding the coastline and uprooting everything in its path before it merged with the Leviathan's tornado.
The armband spat out names, but I couldn't bring myself to care anymore. A few I recognized. Manpower had apparently died. A few from Empire 88. Kaiser's pet Valkyrie Fenja. Some out-of-towners I'd never heard off. By now, the capes were in full retreat. A few of the blasters took potshots at swirling mass of water, but they could hardly scratch it. Even Eidolon barely made a dent. And what if he did? There was plenty enough water for Leviathan to replace his losses.
In minutes, the column of water had grown over fifty meters wide and tall enough to disappear into the clouds. In the middle was the Endbringer, appearing as little more than a vague shadow, pulling itself to its feet. Then, the column started moving further into the Docks. Slowly, barely above walking speed. It was practically daring us to try and stop it. I looked around and saw Legend up in the air, gritting his teeth. I wondered what he was thinking. Was he going to try and regroup? Try and figure out a new strategy?
Or was he going to give up and cut his losses? Admit that there was no fighting this thing and that Brockton Bay wasn't worth the try?
Could I really blame him at this point?
Alexandria appeared, soaking wet. "Legend."
"Alexandria. Are you alright?"
"I've been punched halfway across a city before. I'll live. Worry about that instead." She pointed to Leviathan sitting in his impenetrable tower of water. "It's gone completely off-script. I have no models for this. We need more data."
Space warped and Vista appeared besides us. She looked…defeated, I think the word was. Her eyes were hollow and she had this blank expression on her face. When I looked at her, she couldn't meet my gaze. "I'm sorry." She whispered.
Oh god, the poor thing was blaming herself for what happened to our friends.
I wanted to grab her and tell her it wasn't her fault, that Leviathan did that and she had nothing to be sorry for, but Alexandria called my attention. "You, Banshee! Brute 5, Thinker 5: Audioclairvoyance and sonar, right?"
"Among other things, yes." I replied.
"It'll have to do." Without even asking if I wanted to volunteer, Alexandria grabbed me and we flew towards the Endbringer. "I'm sorry for the haste but we're running out of time."
"It's okay." Was all I could say.
The column grew closer by the second. "How close do you need to get?" The heroine asked. By now, the noise of the rushing water had grown so loud that I needed to use my powers just to talk. A piece of rubble flew towards us and grazed Alexandria, but she flew on, barely disturbed.
"Get me to about thirty feet from the edge. That ought to be enough."
The heroine nodded in response and flew as close as she could. I reached out with my power and listened. Leviathan was simply moving. As far as my power could tell, the Endbringer had been damaged, but was still moving around as easily as before. The water column was exactly what it looked like: a spinning, hollow column of water and everything that had been sucked into it.
The Endbringer stopped. It lowered its hands to the ground and called up a mass of water. The water started to shake, hammering and grinding through the asphalt. For a good minute, I wondered what it was doing. Then, I understood. It was drilling. Leviathan was drilling into the ground. I was about to relay that when the ground started shaking. Leviathan's power was causing an earthquake. No, more than that: buildings were sinking into the ground. Not collapsing, sinking. The aquifer was coming down, and the city with it.
"…shee…Banshee! What's happening?!"Alexandria shouted, pulling me out of my reverie.
"Leviathan's digging, ma'm! It's drilling a hole in the ground."
Alexandria almost growled. "Can you see what it's digging towards?"
"Not yet, but I…"
Before I realized what was going on, I was dropped on the ground and Alexandria shot into the air. I heard Legend call after her, but she didn't stop. In seconds, the heroine had disappeared into the clouds. Then, she flew into the center of the column, breaking the sound barrier and scattering water and rubble everywhere. I ran, hiding behind a shattered piece of concrete to shield myself from the falling wreckage.
When the rain of debris stopped, I looked up from my hiding place. The column had reformed almost completely. Leviathan was still drilling, and Alexandria… Alexandria was trapped in a bubble of water. She'd been snatched out of the air, and the monster hadn't even bothered to look up. I reached out with my power. The bubble was completely filled with water. Alexandria was inside, struggling.
Drowning.
She was trapped. One of the strongest heroes on Earth was trapped like a rat. She was drowning right in front of me and there was nothing I could do. My favorite hero growing up, and I was watching her die.
I was watching a member of the Triumvirate die.
Then, without warning, the bubble collapsed and Alexandria had disappeared. Had she been crushed? Did a teleporter get her?
Alexandria reappeared right in front of me, lost her footing, and stumbled into a wall, coughing up water as she went. A moment later, one of the assassins, Limbo if I remembered correctly, joined us.
"What…" Alexandria coughed. "What the hell was that?"
"Just a quick jaunt through the rift plane, m'lady." Limbo answered, tipping his hat. "Not the most pleasant of experiences, as I've been told, but quite survivable for someone able to survive hand-to-hand combat with our irritatingly resilient friend, unlike my less resilient, though equally irritating friend. Ancestors be my witness, it is probably the most productive thing I've managed to accomplish today." At least I wasn't the only one feeling useless.
Meanwhile, the tremors were getting worse. Leviathan was drilling deeper and deeper, and there was no way to stop it. I reached down with my power and tried to find its target. I felt something move. Something that wasn't rock or earth. Something fleshy. Something huge.
"Banshee?" Alexandria asked, in a tone that practically demanded explanation.
All I could say was one word: "Outbreak."
It was all she needed. The heroine grabbed the two of us and rocketed off into the sky. I looked at the shadow inside the water tornado. It was moving erratically, as if it was struggling with something. Then, the column of water came down all at once, like a sledgehammer wielded by a god. The earth cracked, the buildings fell, and an area at least a quarter of a mile wide collapsed into a massive sinkhole. Earthquakes followed, and all around the city, more sinkholes appeared. In the sides of the newly created crater, I saw an enormous mass of blood and meat that had to have been Outbreak. In the center stood Leviathan. The Enbringer looked ravaged: most of its outer skin had been flayed off, part of its neck and right shoulder were simply gone, and I could see a hole that went straight through its chest. Yet, the creature stood tall, using its water shadow to cover up the holes in its body. Was it even hurt? Could it even be hurt?
An inhuman scream tore through the air. The pile of meat came back to life, slowly ripping itself out of the cliff wall. Long, thin tendrils shot through the air, grabbing any organic matter they could find: trees, people, Hellhound's monster dogs, everything. Then the strands retracted, dragging their victims towards the crater, pulling them in and melting them into Outbreak's main body.
I could see the vaguely human shapes still writhing under Outbreak's skin. That image was going to haunt my dreams for years to come.
All the while, the monster grew in size, forming legs and weapons from the…the biomass it was harvesting. Once it grew to about twenty-five feet in size, Leviathan attacked, jumping onto the nightmarish mass of flesh. Outbreak rolled with the blow, grabbing hold of the Endbringer with a dozen different limbs and pinning it to the ground. Gaping maws formed on the creature's body, biting, ripping, and spitting god knows what at its opponent.
Their lives…are not yours to take!
Throughout the city, more monsters started appearing out of the sinkholes. Some attacking civilians, others focusing on capes and snatching flyers from the sky.
"Purity captured, BF-3. Dovetail captured, CD-7. Shielder captured, EB-4…"
The list went on.
Alexandria sat us down on a rooftop somewhere downtown. At least, I thought it was downtown. Given the state the city, my home, was in, it was hard to tell. The heroine looked at the two monsters tearing my city apart and frowned. "Limbo, right?" She asked the assassin.
"That would be me." The assassin replied, bowing politely.
She took a few steps towards him. Close enough to be intimidating, but not close enough to invade his personal space. "You know about this." Alexandria said. A statement, not a question.
To his credit, Limbo didn't flinch. "I know a great many things. Most of them irrelevant to the task at hand, unfortunately. I'm afraid you'll have to be specific."
"I don't know how to stop this." She said, slowly pacing back and forth. "Outbreak can't be nuked. Apparently, there's a chance that microscopic particles will be blasted into the atmosphere and come down with the rain. We'll have infestations all over New England and maybe even Europe, if the spores hitch a ride over the Gulf Stream. Extinction Level Event. Too risky. Additionally, containment is impossible. We might have been able to deal with the smaller creatures, but that monster over there is completely out of our league." Alexandria stopped and looked Limbo square in the eye. "I know you and Outbreak are linked somehow. I know you know where Outbreak came from, even if you aren't the one who brought it into our country. I want you to tell me everything."
"Everything?"
"Everything. History, origins, who made it, everything. Anything that can help us kill it before the entire human race goes extinct."
Limbo shifted oddly in place. "I'm…afraid I cannot do that. In part because I do not know the answers, but mainly because telling you will cause more problems than it'll solve. For the both of us, in case you're wondering."
Space warped. Legend, Armsmaster, and several others stepped through. I recognized Nyx in the mix too.
"Let me be the judge of that." Alexandria said, before grabbing Limbo by the shoulder. "I'm going to fly us high above the clouds. No one will be able to hear us. There, you'll…" Suddenly, the heroine froze. She dropped Limbo and started walking backwards, her movements mechanical and forced. Then, the woman returned to normal.
Before any of us could speak, Nyx pushed her way through the crowd and calmly said: "We're no stranger to intimidation tactics, Alexandria. I would prefer if you refrained from such things in the future." Alexandria simply frowned. She opened her mouth to speak, but Nyx beat her to it. "The answer to your question is this: Gun and blade. That is how we've bested the Infestation time and time again. Do enough damage to it and the creature will either run out of biomass to heal itself with or lose a vital organ and die."
"Gun and blade?"
"Gun and blade. Not with bombs, not with powers, and certainly not with children." Nyx tilted her head ever so slightly in Vista's direction, who seemed to flinch under the attention. I went to her and gently nudged her away from the others. Part of me wanted to ask if the girl was okay, but the answer was obvious.
She watched her friends die. She watched her city being torn apart. It was obvious she wanted to cry, but couldn't bring herself to. Vista wasn't okay, even if I knew she'd never openly admit it. I turned my back to the others and pulled her into a tight hug. Then, I canceled the sound around me. No one had to know she was openly sobbing in my arms.
Outbreak and Leviathan were still fighting, trading blows and tearing massive chunks out of each other. The two seemed evenly matched, with Leviathan being too tough to really hurt and Outbreak regenerating so fast that it had to be drawing mass from someplace other than the people of the city. On top of that, Outbreak wasn't fighting alone. A second creature scuttled to the edge of the crater. It was about the size of an elephant and covered in eyes, each glowing like the sun. There were cracks across its skin, with faint light emanating from within. It opened its maw and a bright, yellow laser shot out, burning Leviathan and melting away several layers of its skin. The beam continued until the creature started glowing and exploded in a brilliant flash of light.
The two monsters got up to their feet. Outbreak swung one of its hands, one that was shaped like an axe, landing the blow into the Endbringer's neck. The horror pulled, tearing through the flesh and ripping Leviathan's head off. It landed somewhere outside the crater. Leviathan seemed completely unaffected. It turned on its feet and twirled around, using its water shadow and its tail to send Outbreak flying.
Seeing this, with our leaders bickering in behind me and a sobbing, shell-shocked girl in my arms, I couldn't help but sigh. How the fuck are we supposed to win this?
Then, Armsmaster spoke up. "Gun and blade, right? Just stab them until they fall over?"
"Armsmaster…" Legend said.
"There's only one thing we can do, right now: hope Leviathan kills Outbreak and leaves, or Scion shows up and fixes this whole mess. In the mean time, I'm going to keep the smaller zombies from eating everyone in the city because that's a better use of my time than watching a pissing contest!" He turned to his armband and said: "Armband, find me the largest of zombies we can detect and contact anyone still fighting. We're going on a hunt."