Nightshade quickly made her way through the pouring rain to the shattered building across the street. Going shadow briefly, she phased through the wall and started searching the ground floor, boots splashing through the rising water as she went around or through debris and smashed furniture.
"Promethean!" she called, "are you in here?" More quietly to herself, she muttered, "Damn, where is he? He's still alive or his armband would have reported it… Must be unconscious. I'll have to search each floor…"
Determining the downed villain wasn't on the ground floor, she headed for the fire door to the stairs. She'd just opened it when the outer wall of the stairwell exploded in a spray of bricks and water, blasting her back across the room and through a cheap display case. She lay there, staring dumbly at the ceiling for several long moments, before groaning and painfully making her way to her feet. Unsteadily, she stumbled the few feet to an intact column and slumped against it, the thought that if she'd hit that instead of the case, she'd be very dead right now, briefly flashing through her mind.
Deciding the room's slow spin didn't seem like it was planning on going away anytime soon, she finally looked up to assess the situation and froze, her chest tightening as if a giant fist was clenched around it. The wall where the stairwell had been was gone, leaving only an opening to the flooded street, where Leviathan stood, staring in at her. Whimpering softly, she tried to shift to her shadow form, only to nearly retch as a spike of pain lanced through her throbbing head.
Tears pricking her eyes, she silently cursed the power that never seemed to help when she really needed it. It hadn't helped her from being mastered and being turned into a hateful, violent monster by a damned Endbringer only days after triggering. And now, when she was finally free and able to be herself again, she was going to be killed by another Endbringer. She'd never ever gotten the chance to be a hero! As Leviathan seemed to decide he'd let the moment stretch long enough, she could only shout inside her head, "It's not fair!"
Leviathan seemed to flicker forward, stopping almost as soon as he'd started his rush, as a woman in a green coat and hat, arms spread wide, slid to a stop between him and the broken building. "This one belongs to me," she said, and to Nightshade's shock, Leviathan cocked his head for a moment then vanished down the street in a blur.
"W-what the fuck?" breathed Nightshade.
"We're even now, Sophia," the woman said, turning her head for a moment to glance at the hero before running off into the rain.
"Madison…" whispered Nightshade, before slowly sliding down the column to sit numbly in the cold water covering the floor.