There was water all around him. In his throat, in his lungs.
Browbeat was – he couldn't think straight – he'd seen the foot coming down and had just enough time to harden his body, beyond his normal boosts, and the roadway had failed first.
Maybe?
But everything was hazy, and – and he could feel water in his lungs, he couldn't breathe, his body was trying to take oxygen from the water but there wasn't enough to be had
There was water all over him and he was drowning
Without assistance the human body can only remain conscious for around two minutes without oxygen, and brain damage comes two minutes later. Death follows shortly afterwards.
He was drowning, he
The way he couldn't think was a symptom of-
He couldn't focus
He was getting oxygen from the water, but there wasn't enough to let him breathe properly
He needed more
He could
He could see in his mind's eye the changes he needed
He just had
to-
make-
them-
he was drowning-
The ground began to give way under Leviathan's claw, the aquifer they'd been told about eroding away and crumbling and ripping the ground to pieces. Water poured into the crater, forming a vicious undertow that dragged capes along with it, and Taylor's legs went out from under her before Laserdream grabbed her hand.
"Come on!" she shouted, lifting, and both Taylor and the unconscious Parian rose into the air along with him.
Then something went past them at incredible speed, throwing up a wake as it moved at least twice as fast as the water. It was like a blur, but a long blur, one that knifed through the moving water and waved from side to side as it did so, and Taylor caught sight of a sort of bluish-patterned scales but apart from that it was moving too fast for her to see the details.
It plunged into the widening lake, did a kind of rolling flip, and hit Leviathan hard enough to knock him into the air – stopping him from increasing the size of the lake. The impact produced a whack that pulsed out as a shockwave, enough to blow aside raindrops in a widening sphere, and Laserdream wobbled slightly as she lifted Taylor and Parian.
"The fuck?" she asked. "Where did that come from?"
Taylor had more-or-less the same question, now that the whatever-it-was had slowed down enough for her to see it. It was a giant snake or sea serpent thing, maybe twenty feet long, with fins spaced irregularly down both sides and a head armoured with-
-Taylor had to glance up at Leviathan as the Endbringer landed nearby, but she could swear that the armour on the head of this new sea serpent was the same colour as Leviathan's hide.
There apparently hadn't been time for everyone else to react, and Taylor belatedly realized that Laserdream was busy so it was her duty to report this.
"This is – Skitter!" she said, into her armband. "A sea serpent is fighting Leviathan!"
The serpent coiled for a moment as she said it, and Leviathan charged forwards. He swiped down, his water echo following him, and slammed the serpent into the water – but as he did the whole of the newcomer flexed with whipcord speed, tail wrapping around Leviathan's wrist, then a convulsive shudder rippled up the serpent from head to tail.
It whipcracked Leviathan into the ground outside the crater, then bulked up and got longer at the same time – Taylor could see it expanding – and the second whipcrack was harder and faster with both more acceleration and more distance to build up force.
"Say again, Skitter?" a voice asked.
Leviathan ripped off the tail of his opponent with his claws and water echo, then lunged for its head, but apparently the lost tail didn't bother the serpent either. It grew a new one before Leviathan reached it, then did a roll to protect its head and give Leviathan nothing but a still-lengthening lower body to hit, and this time the convulsive flex it did was from a mass of almost pure muscle that more than half-filled the crater Leviathan had been generating.
The Endbringer vanished in a mostly upwards direction.
"Fuck!" Taylor gasped.
"What just happened?" Laserdream asked.
Taylor tried doing a quick calculation about how long it had taken the bugs she'd had left on Leviathan to leave her range, then gave up because the time had been too short for her to measure.
The serpent looked around itself – visibly shrinking again – before changing shape into something completely different, this time an octopus with eyes in every direction which began lifting drowning or trapped capes out of the crater and setting them down anywhere there was space.
"...I really hope someone was recording that," Laserdream said. "Because I was watching it and I don't think I know what to think."
AN:
He already has no-mass-conservation bodily shapeshifting, so this seems like a viable second trigger.