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The Docks

Brockton Bay

Slow days were the worst.

That might have been rich coming from a speedster, but Velocity was of the opinion that someone with a power like his own was just as prone to boredom as the average person. No, he dare say that someone who could be anywhere in town with the greatest of ease was at even greater danger of boredom, and the… tendencies that came with such a horrid state, than a normal person.

Even Brockton Bay, cape capital of the East Coast, had those.

'And isn't that a miracle?'

Sleepy days where nothing really happened and the only thing he had to do was sit around twiddling his thumbs, waiting for a call. Sure, it gave him time to read and practice his language studies, but even those couldn't keep him satisfied for more than a few hours.

He needed action.

Excitement.

Something to keep him from getting pissy about how little the PRT actually did.

What he didn't need were the docks on fire as Lung did his best impression of Godzilla, threatening to torch the place in one of his hissy fits.

"Should have kept my mouth shut."

Phasing out of his Breaker state, Robin pulled out a large cylindrical object from a bag that had been strapped to his back, twisting it with a click and tossing it as hard as he could at a nearby bonfire that just happened to have been a small building a few minutes prior.

The cylinder burst apart in a cloud of familiar white dust, way too much for something the size of an old phone, but he wasn't about to question how Tinkertech worked.

He just chucked it at their problems.

"Velocity to Console, I'm starting to run low on Extinguishers, how's the situation looking out there?"

There was a brief pause with static, accompanied by the sound of crackling flames in the distance before a younger voice chimed in.

"Velocity, this is Console. Please fall back behind the safe zone, Armsmaster and the others are trying to hold Lung, but he's managed to break through the blockade and is headed south. If you have any more extinguishers, save them. We can't let the fire spread to downtown."

So shit really hit the fan, huh?

Well, nothing he could do about it.

"Alright, I'm on my way."

Not that he could do much in this situation. While he could handle random thugs with guns just fine, there was very little he could do against a giant fire breathing dragon. His punches wouldn't bother him at all, and there was the risk of getting caught on fire. He was still somewhat flammable even in his breaker state.

Moving with rapidity, the world slowed down and Velocity took off.

There were a multitude of things he could do. One of the most important being to direct emergency services to critical locations. Creating fire breaks, blocking off the lines of advance of the fire, and evacuating civilians were difficult, confusing, and radio communications could only do so much.

Especially when signals could be lost, crossed, or just garbled from the sheer amount of use they were getting.

So that meant Velocity was more than worth his racing stripes.

After all, it was simple enough to just… run around. Each time he found a line of advance of the fire, or a building that he figured couldn't be saved, all he had to do was slap a transmitter down and the emergency services would come running.

Each transmitter was about the size of a can of spray paint, far bigger than it needed to be, with a simple, flashing, bright green LED at the top. The can itself was a sharp orange with yellow-green fluorescent stripes. In other words, garish, noticeable, and easy to find. And since they were so light, it was easy enough for him to carry a backpack of around forty of them without even noticing the weight.

Dropping out of his Breaker state for a final time, Velocity came to a halt just outside the southern blockade, calling out to his co-workers.

"Dauntless, Triumph, what's the plan?"

"We're holding here." Dauntless raised a hand, apparently listening to the earbud radio in his helmet. "Wounded incoming! Medics, get ready for injured civilians."

About two minutes later several of the other heroes arrived, along with two squads of PRT troopers, and about two hundred scared, confused civies. Maybe only one in ten completely uninjured, but the vast majority only being minimally so.

"Damn."

It was still gruesome to see a kid with half of his face melted off.

Moving in to help, the speedster didn't need his powers to begin sorting people for triage, moving supplies, or just helping to get people to the ambulances already starting to scream into position behind the checkpoint.

'Helping people is good, I suppose.'

In the quiet of his own thoughts, there was no panic, no worry. He was… floating. Detached. Hands working without need of instruction, muscle memory and training taking over where anger, shame, and disgust would have slowed him down.

Even then there was only so much they could do.

After all, the last time they tried to take Lung into custody, the damn lizard stalled them until he was the size of a house. The only thing that came out of that whole mess was a whole lot of scorched buildings and meetings they had to sit through with their superiors and the press.

"Do we know who set him off like that?" There was a pause in the flow of people, everyone else remaining were well enough to be driven to the downtown PRT building. And, well, he'd never seen Lung that big, after all….

"We don't know, there's all sorts of scattered reports but it seems someone snuck in trying to take him out. Seems like the only thing they managed to do was piss the guy off."

Poor Hannah looked… a bit crispy.

But then again, they would be lucky if the bastard didn't leave half the city scorched.

"Don't suppose you got any more of these?" Turning to their fearless leader, Velocity pointed at his bag, and the depressingly small number of extinguisher grenades they had left.

Not nearly enough if the big guy started aiming for wide spread collateral.

And considering he could see the hunched back burst open, only for immense wings longer than Lung's mutant dragon form was tall to unveil themselves, Robin figured he'd need a lot more.

Except…

"Why is it raining?"

It was Miss Militia who spoke, looking up and seeing that heavy storm clouds were gathering above them. Swirling dark clouds gathered overhead as the soft pittering of water droplets started in the distance.

"That's impossible." Velocity frowned. "It was completely clear less than five minutes ago."

The rain, however, begged to differ. Falling steadily over them, the smell of clear water mingled with the stench of smoke and flame, as the clouds soundlessly loomed overhead with neither thunder or lightning.

The elephant in the room seemed to notice it too, pausing in his rampage and turning to look at the sky above in confusion.

Then came the noise.

A deafening roar unlike anything Robin had ever heard, like a long drawn out waterfall, the sound of hundreds… no… thousands of liters of water rushing backwards as if gathering momentum in a bone chillingly familiar way, the sort he'd seen time and again over the past few years.

'It can't be him.'

It was too soon for Leviathan to be attacking!

But the building mass of water, taller than Lung himself, wasn't something any parahuman he knew could do and the monkey part of his brain was urging him to turn around and run as fast as he could before the tidal wave started cresting down and swallowed up the city.

Instead it just… stayed there.

Looming over the city, taller than anything and everything as the rain picked up steam and a steady cascade of water dropped from the clouds above.

Yet the wave never moved.

It just stood there… menacingly.

Then the Sirens finally screamed to life as panic and controlled chaos turned to a near rout.

"What in the world is happening?"

A few moments earlier

Breaking the surface of the water, Taylor relaxed the little influence she had over her power, letting the waves grab her. Clothes and hair soaked through immediately, a soft, briney spray washing across a face and leaving streaks on her glasses. Not that she was worried about that.

Losing them was impossible, after all.

And the cold was… good.

It felt like home.

Like her mother's hugs.

The Sea itself wrapped her up and held her, gently, knowing it would have to let her go, but wanting Taylor to linger as long as she could.

It was nice.

But nice was for when she could daydream and wasn't absolutely sure she wasn't hallucinating.

Unfortunately, the daydreams were broken by what looked like a dragon. But that was impossible - Lung didn't actually do anything. He just burned people who couldn't fight back and sometimes threw tantrums.

'I can't actually be seeing him, can I be?'

The thick clouds of smoke were an indication that she actually was seeing a rampaging alien dragon.

"Oh. Shit." While she was out practicing with her powers, arguing with herself, and considering going after an Endbringer, she hadn't even noticed that her city was burning down behind her! "Is that fire reaching the Union?"

First came a horrified sort of confusion.

"Wait, is that Lung?"

She couldn't imagine who else it could have been, seeing as there was some dark, hunched over monster thing stomping across the docks. But it was just… absurd!

Second came fear.

'Why was Lung there?'

The Dragon of Kyushu was an infamous figure in Brockton Bay. Everytime conversations about capes started, it would eventually turn to be about the dragon man, whether it be about his power or whether such-or-such cape stood a chance against him.

In their city, he was the glass ceiling, to butcher a metaphor.

So the sudden rush of shame, guilt, and a desire to dip back under the waves was natural. This was a man who killed without hesitation and ravaged everyone around him. She was just Taylor Hebert. And memories of the Locker rushed back.

If she was still afraid to face Sophia, what could she possibly do to that monster?

Third came introspection.

Lung just… usually didn't do much. For all that he was terrifying, the Heroes and the PRT tended to come down hard if he ever caused much in the way of problems. Mostly because they couldn't afford to look too weak on the man, lest they lose all credibility. Yet, at the same time, it was genuinely, incredibly rare to even see him, never mind see him angry. Oni Lee was the default option to deal with most of the ABB's problems. So what in the Hell had made him angry enough to start rampaging around and shitting up the place?

'Questions for later.'

She didn't care what happened or who pissed him off.

The fact of the matter was that the entire city was burning around him. The docks she'd just left an hour ago for her swim were set alight, and massive clouds of oily smoke rose from the smoldering ruins of collapsed or burned out warehouses.

And the fire was spreading quickly.

'Dad.' She stopped cold.

Taylor had no idea if he was at work, at home, anywhere else, or what! She'd left the house thinking she had time, but, well, she'd also lost track of time. There was no telling if he was back home, sick out of worry for her, or at work while the place burnt around him. Because the fire line had reached what looked like the Union's offices!

'Okay. Calm down. Focus.'

There was no hesitation - to hesitate would be to risk her powers not co-operating.

There was no fear - to fear was to be possessed of indecisions.

There was only the here and the now.

Taylor opened herself up, completely and utterly, and touched everything. Even if part of her knew that her powers wouldn't respond, even if they tried to outright make her watch her father burn to death, the teenager still understood they were her powers. So she touched them and grabbed them and took them up.

And what better way to stop a fire from spreading than by making it rain?

So she willed the water… up. And together. And, and, and words just didn't work!

English didn't have terms that described how she could feel the torrent of water as if it was part of herself. First gathering heat, turning to vapor, rising up, up, up and climbing as it flew! Then it would drift, the wind guiding it, but her will directed it.

'Artificially inducing rain? Interesting.'

Her powers decided to make their opinion known.

'Not now, I'm trying to focus.'

It wasn't very hard, in all honesty. It felt like closing her fist finger by finger. One step after the other, but so easy she might as well know how to do it instantly despite this being the first time she used her powers for it. Regardless of how little or how much practice she got, in the end… all water was hers to command.

'Apply too much pressure and you risk flooding the city.' The voice in her head provided… helpfully?

Like, duh, it was obvious that if she just made it pour down that the place would flood.

Or worse yet… sink.

But if she applied too little pressure, then the flames would keep on raging and spread. Even now this tightrope balancing act occupied her mind, rolling clouds circling ahead, darkening and then raining down the water she'd gathered over the burning buildings.

Good this was… good.

She hadn't gotten interrupted either.

'This hardly appears like an excess, if anything I would say you've displayed quite a bit of creativity and versatility. Had you started throwing waves at the city, I would have gotten worried.'

There were all sorts of words she wanted to say to the woman. She'd even open a dictionary later so she could say in no uncertain term what she thought of her condescending attitude. Doing that now would be ignoring the massive, dragon-shaped elephant in the room.

But before that.

'Relax and let it flow. You are not holding a knife, you are extending your will.'

Her powers pressed against her mind - not painfully, but clearly, and it felt almost as if there were two… prongs? Points of contact? Whatever they were, they slid into her self with incredible ease, one of them instantly taking up the trouble of fine attention. Suddenly every droplet was simply there, counted, numbered, labeled, sorted, every single point a perfect star of awareness in an endless sky. And they fell with rising strength, but only as they needed.

The clouds themselves could not command the wind, but they could shape it, direct it within themselves by particular formation and internal pressures. Such knowledge was beyond her, yet the second point understood these interactions with a grace and ease that suggested countless years of practice.

So the rain fell in sheets and in waves, targeted like a bombardment, striking the fires below and even knocking down parts of buildings to smother flames that water only enraged.

Taylor was silent, her words would keep. But right now could only put out the fire from here

But doing that was next to useless if she just let Lung stomp through the city!

He had to be stopped.

'But how?'

Her kneejerk reaction was to go there herself, focus returning to her body, so far down below the roiling heavens. Maybe if she conjured up enough water, she could drown him? Fighting Lung head on meant giving him time to ramp up even more, so trying to go soft on him only would cause more damage.

So she'd have to take care of him in one go.

Beneath her the waters responded to Taylor's intent, pooling together as they rose and shifted against the tide as if they had life of their own. The waters of the bay carried her high into the air, high enough to see the entirety of the docks and her target.

'So quick to pick a fight when there is another obvious answer.'

Taylor didn't appreciate the backseat driving.

"Yes, maybe I should go down there and just ask him to stop. Maybe I'll even debate him on how moral his actions are right now." Because obviously that's all her powers wanted her to do, endlessly agonize whether what she was doing was the objectively good like a-

'I was actually about to suggest we toss him out of town.'

Her powers responded, bemused.

'Toss him?'

'Yes, though his size is considerable, if you wish to avoid engaging the monster directly you can simply drag it away from the city. We have more than enough water to achieve that.'

That felt… wrong.

No, Taylor could tell the only reason she hesitated to agree was because she was trying to fight Lung, when her goal didn't require her to do it. Part of her still rebelled against the thought of letting the man off easy, but the longer she waited the more damage he caused.

In the end, she relented and the massive wave beneath her lashed out like a serpent arching through the air, the water current struck the dragon as it fired a plume of flames at it, powerful enough to vaporize some of it… but not nearly enough for the sheer volume that coiled around his body.

She tugged, and the dragon slid across the ground in a panic, claws digging deep grooves into the pavement, tearing out pieces of the buildings as he tried to hold on for dear life.

This felt… easy.

Manhandling something this large, someone this dangerous shouldn't be this easy. Or perhaps, for the first time, Taylor understood the scale of the power she was working with.

Compared to the ocean, even Lung was just a drop in the barrel, no?

As if responding to her realization, the grip which had been once hesitant and unsure seemed to tighten like a vice around the dragon. A furious roar choked into wheezing gasps as the water current wound itself tighter and tighter around Lung, effortlessly pulling him away from the ground, leaving him to hang limp above the docks.

Like one of those people he, himself, could crush in his claws, or burn alive, or threaten into selling themselves and their livelihoods just to pay protection money….

'Careful not to crush him. Put too much pressure and he might pop like a balloon.'

The visceral image made Taylor queasy, before slackening her grip and going back to simply pulling the dragon off the ground like a children's toy. Not that he was making it easy, but even a 40 feet dragon looked tiny next to a current that looked about as long as a bridge and twice as wide.

Turning around, the current of water followed the movement of her arm as she reared back like a seasoned pitchen, liquid growing taut and then snapping forward in an arc as Taylor threw an imaginary ball into the horizon.

The ball was metaphorical.

The dragon was not.

Flying through the air, it was hard to follow the dragon once he was far enough, though Taylor could tell he would be airborne for a good minute or two before hitting the surface of the sea, skipping on it and then continuing on for another kilometer or so.

'Lung's a big boy. He'll come back from that.'

The ocean itself told her that he was already starting to dragon-paddle towards the nearest bit of land, shrinking down and healing as he went. At his current pace it would take him two days before he came within sight of Brockton Bay.

Maybe she tossed him a bit too hard.

'Well done. As far as debuts go, you certainly know how to wow an audience.'

Taylor blinked, confused.

"Audience?"

'Yes, look back at the city. Our little stunt seems to have grabbed some attention.'

As it turned out, the voice in her head was telling the truth. There were indeed quite a few people gathering at the docks, familiar red and blue lights flashing in the distance accompanied by the bone chilling sound of blaring sirens in the distance.

Were those people teleporting in?

'Oh… crap.'

She might have overdone it.

Hebert Household

It had taken her a good five minutes to find a safe spot to jump out of the water. With the docks crawling with capes, emergency services, and police it was a miracle that she managed to leave without catching someone's eyes.

A suspicious teenager in a hoodie was just bound to get pulled aside, if only for their own protection. And, after cheating a bit by darting about underwater, she had found her dad, safe, if a bit wet, being hustled off by a small group of capes along with the rest of the Union staff that had been working late.

But, after getting home, there was only one thing she could say.

"Holy shit."

That just about described everything that happened over the past hour.

Blessedly, her powers had been silent since Lung had been defeated - Taylor lowering the immense wave, and her body, as more and more and more heroes had begun teleporting in. Even without the sirens it was obvious what she had caused. But, well, she didn't know what else to do.

So the hero-to-be willed the immense flood waters to drift out to sea, to blast out of storm drains, but not to wash back onto the streets, even as years and years of piled up garbage was ejected from the half blocked drains in a few seconds.

That would be more practice for later.

All of that was half an hour ago.

And now she was home, lights on, ignoring the sirens still blaring outside as she waited for her father to come back.

Trying to ignore all of the panic she'd seen, too.

'You did take on the appearance of Leviathan, at least the relevant first signs.'

"Yeah, well, my powers aren't exactly tailored for subtlety."

'And you plan to take responsibility for the injuries, fear, and property damage?'

"Look, I don't know what you want! I just want to help people."

'Of course, but do you even know how to help people?'

Taylor wanted to scream.

She wanted to tell the voice in her head to fuck off.

In the end, she said nothing, falling into a sullen, frustrated silence that even the awe and joy of playing with her powers failed to wash away. It was made all the worse by the fact that his power's own half aimed questions poked at thoughts and concerns she'd had herself.

Not about what she would do, of course, but about the PRT and the Protectorate.

'Heroes in general, I suppose.'

Obviously there were villains with powers, too, but that shouldn't have been an issue, not truly. Institutional power had an incredible pedigree and while guns weren't effective against Alexandria… even Eidolon needed to use a power that let him survive a hit.

So, yeah, there were outliers - the Siberian, the Sleeper, Greyboy all came to mind - most villains wouldn't survive getting shot at with a missile. So why didn't someone drop a bomb on the Slaughterhouse 9? Why didn't someone use a stun gun or tranquilizers on the Butcher, then keep her in a coma? Why didn't a cop just… shoot Kaiser in the face. Even Hookwolf wasn't immune to, say, a tank shell.

'Even Lung needs time to get big, right?'

All of that begged the question: why do the good guys play by rules that let the bad guys win?

From her readings, the teenager knew that, half the time at least, it was simple enough for villains to escape from a Birdcage transport. And that no one really did anything to stop them.

'And Lung doesn't even participate in Endbringer fights. After Kyushu he just hides and burns people. Why doesn't Legend snipe him? Why doesn't Alexandria crush his head before he gets too strong?'

"Tell me, Taylor, would you kill them if you had the opportunity?" Her powers asked, quiet, soft, gentle. "Would you kill them all? And would you ever stop? You don't need to answer, not now, perhaps not ever, should you choose. But that is what I wish for you to think about"

She… didn't want to kill.

She wanted them to STOP.

Wanted these monsters that had been making life miserable for her city, no, for her country to just get a taste of their own medicine. To wake up to some good news for once and not the disappointment that was living like this.

'Apathy is worse than death, child, but it is not death. No matter how tiny the degree, apathy is life, a clinging to it, and that apathy can be turned to hope. Or despair. You did well tonight. But the raw power we are blessed with caused more fear and panic and despair than that little beast could, at the height of his rage and power, and did so entirely by accident.'

There was a sense of withdrawal, of the two presences pulling back and leaving Taylor with only herself for company.

It was strange and unpleasant to suddenly feel so alone.

Eventually, tired of sitting by herself, the teenager dragged her feet into the kitchen and set to cooking.

Just a few eggs.

But as she watched the omelets began to solidify it distracted her as, in the distance, the sirens slowly disappeared into the night.

"Taylor!" A strangled cry drowned out the booming of the front door as it was nearly slammed open. "Taylor, where are you!?"

Crap, she should have called him.

"In the kitchen!"

There was a series of stomping sounds as her father damn near charged into the room, looking like he'd been tossed into the bay. He smelled of salt and smoke, but didn't seem worse for wear aside from the look of terror on his face that mingled with the relief of seeing her.

"Thank god. We have to leave, now."

Oh, he couldn't be talking about…

"Endbringer alarm. Everyone is getting to the shelters."

Yeah, that.

There went her night, it seemed.

"...Uh, let me put the food in a bag?"

At the very least, with the sirens off, there was time to finish cooking the bacon.