Alteration 3.4
There wasn't much to do in the dark but meditate and make sure I didn't have too much brain damage, really. One by one, I mentally probed the pathways for my other psychic powers, then carefully tested the mastered ones. The migraine persisted, and my reserves of power were low, but I couldn't find any worrying gaps in my memory and I'd have to hope the damage would heal with time.
The chest's dulled movements stopped again. The lid opened with that damnable item-get chime, and I decided that as soon as I had manual dexterity again, I was disassembling the speakers. Unfortunately, it was only the start of the noise, as Leet started talking while my armband chirped back to life.
"Shit, dude, I-"
'-report to marked location for search and rescue-'
"-you just sounded crazy-"
"-advised, Leviathan has entered the storm sewer-"
I grit my teeth as the sounds pounded through my aching head, but got the gist of it. With one shaking, burned hand, I covered the wristband to muffle it; then, against my better judgement, I looked up at the mouth of the box and imagined myself there.
To my relief, the teleportation pathways held. It hurt, but they held, the metaphorical cracks sealed, the new pathway distinct from the lesser, mastered one. Energy rushed through my nerves then blossomed out to my extremities, and I appeared mid-step on the edge of the chest, hopping down to the ground next to Leet.
"- and I'm really -fuck! Don't do that!"
"Please stop yelling," I asked my teammate plaintively, leaning back over the chest and using telekinesis to fetch myself a new mask. Dark aviator goggles on a flyboy helmet would have to do; my glasses were gone and I needed something for light sensitivity anyway. "Just tell me what happened."
"Shit got fucked," he said, voice shaking with barely-contained anxiety. He was shaking like a lid on a boiling pot; now that I could open my eyes wider than a squint I could tell his body language was tense. "They were talking about strategy for a bit, it sounded like things were going well, then the whole fucking city drops a few inches and the armband starts chanting names like a fucking-"
I grit my teeth at a fresh pulse of pain, made a motion for him to lower the volume, and he cut himself off. "Sorry," he said lamely, failing to pick up the thread of the rant.
I sighed. "Been a long fucking hour, huh?"
I couldn't really make out more than the vaguest blur of his face between my half-blind astigmatism and our respective tinted visors, but I got the impression he was giving me an unimpressed look.
"Yeah, kinda obvious, I guess," I muttered, scratching at my beard. I'd woken up so disconnected from the scene that I'd actually felt calm, but now…
"Where is he now?" I asked. "Did Scion come end it, or…"
"Last I heard he was in the storm sewers, dude. Something about a sinkhole and heavy casualties."
Shit. What had happened in the story? Was that before or after Armsmaster? Did that happen in canon? It was so hard to remember details in the middle of it.
No, it didn't matter what happened in some motherfucking book I read online. Leviathan was here, now, and I needed to be reacting to what it was doing, not what another version of it had done.
So, what could I do?
I looked up to the sky, and noticed the storm clouds were writhing unnaturally. Roiling into each other in cloud formations so large I could see them even without my glasses. My head pounded, my hands were shaking and unsteady, I was basically blind, shivering from being soaked to the bone in freezing water, lightheaded and mildly dissociating from a smidge of brain damage. I felt so, so small…
We're all so small, in the end.
But it wasn't the end yet. People were still in danger. And I could still help.
"Where are we needed?"
"What?" asked Leet.
Oh, I was the one that said that.
"Where do they need us? Who needs rescuing?"
"You seriously want to go out there?"
"Not in the slightest," I replied. "Where do they need us, Leet. I can't do much, but I can at least stabilize people."
Leet stared at me for a second. "You don't owe them anything, Meta, you get that right? They're not gonna miss you on the fucking roll call, dude. You just had a goddamn seizure ten minutes ago, and now you're all like, 'let's go be heroes!' and I'm trying to understand why?"
A hero would probably have some inspired retort. Some witty, hopeful reply that highlighted their personal philosophy and what pushed them to be saviors. Something about how nothing would stop them from saving someone, put in a less cheesy way. Hell, I'd give it a shot myself, if my head wasn't pounding and what little mental bandwidth I had wasn't focused on the ongoing disaster.
Instead I just shrugged and said, "Buddy, why the fuck not?"
Leet stared at me. I stared back.
"... you're a lunatic," he said.
Then he offered me a hand to stand up. "Let's go."
I smiled weakly and took it.
Fast Traveling…
Part of me was glad that the world looked like a soggy watercolor without my glasses around. It made it easier to get impressions of the scene, without fixating too much on the details.
That didn't remove the image before me. The waterlogged streets, the occasional bit of sea life flopping on the ground, the overturned and smashed cars, the great claw marks in concrete and brick. Perhaps most surreal of all was the way the whole city seemed to be leaning inward.
The sinkhole itself was like a hornet's nest on attack, flying figures blurring in and out of a great dark mouth in the middle of the financial district, ferrying whoever they could out of the waters no doubt already flooding the basin.
I beelined to the area where they were laying out the injured, not wanting to waste a second more. How many had died in the minutes I'd taken getting here? I said something about being able to stabilize the dying to a cape in garish pink and yellow who tried to stop me, then simply willed myself past her when she tried to ask me for more details. It took her a few seconds to realize what had happened, but I'd already sent a pulse of healing energy into the first person I touched.
Nothing. They'd been dead too long, and my power found nothing to attempt to save. The wasted psychic energy just died out like a candle flame starved of oxygen.
Six seconds per cast, thirty seconds after death to guarantee survival, sixty seconds until there was no chance. Realistically, CPR had a longer window of success, but CPR couldn't be tried on a new person every six seconds, and my hands were too fucked up to do it properly anyway.
"Hey, I said you can't-"
I put my hand on the next person's chest and fired a pulse of energy. It held, and a moment later the man started coughing up water.
"Put him on his side," I advised the woman in pink and yellow, quickly trying to do exactly that with shaky fingers. "I need to keep going, so follow and help."
To her credit, she grabbed the coughing man from my grip and got him in a decent enough recovery position. I scrambled to grab the next person as the timer came due, and felt the power slip, stutter, but thankfully hold firm in the target.
We settled into that rhythm for two minutes straight, some of them beyond saving, more than a few getting lucky enough to survive on a second attempt after the first failed to hold. The rescuers had started catching on, and a few of them started the macabre task of trying to sort by priority.
Then the wristbands across the area chirped in unison, and an announcement rang out. "Leviathan spotted, DC-8."
There was silence on the streets, the collected defenders trying to process the idea of going back to war after this, or perhaps just waiting for the kill feed to begin once more.
Whatever they were waiting for, before it could be voiced, the armbands spoke again. "Be advised, experimental weaponry has been authorized for battlefield testing, and may be indiscriminate. Do not engage Leviathan unless told to do so."
I felt a cold dread settle into my stomach, but reached for the next potential person to save. The list of experimental, potentially indiscriminate weaponry they could deploy against Leviathan was, to my knowledge, a pretty short and largely flawed one. Nanothorns were promising but ultimately a dead end, Kid Win's Alternator Cannon wasn't strong enough, and - and like an idiot, I'd forgotten to offer to identify the Bakuda ordnance the PRT had in stock before the fight! Fuck!
That damn teleporter jury-rig had backfired in more ways than the obvious, and if I ever met Leet's shard, I was going to strangle the fucker.
I laid my hand on the next victim, only it brushed empty air. I glanced around, confused, and a hand clapped down on my shoulder.
"You've saved a lot of lives today," a man said behind me. "We've gotten everyone we can for now. Take some time to rest, then if you feel up to more, I'll fly you to the medical tents myself."
I turned to look at the speaker. Blurry vision or no, I recognized the costume; I'd put a hand on his shoulder not even an hour ago. Legend's body language shifted, and I realized I was frowning slightly.
What was I supposed to say, here? 'Thanks, but I could really go for a Door right about now'? 'Hey, could you introduce me to Eidolon, I promise not to give him suicidal depression'? Fuck, my head hurt too much to play games.
"Can we t-"
The armbands around our wrist said a name, and I found myself struck dumb. Legend was gone in a flash, and I could feel the house of cards I'd been carefully balancing in my head for weeks start crumbling down.
Resolving Combat…
Major Goal completed: Survive Leviathan. 3500xp.
Minor achievements: Actively participated in S-class event(Victory); Got an invention into mass production; Saved the lives of parahuman combatants x14. 3000+1000+5600=8600.
Level Up! Power selected: ERROR: Teleportation 2 already trained.
The world was tilted sideways.
"On my mark!" I called out.
The random Brute who'd come over to move the stuff, carried by a flyer, bent his knees and dug his fingers into the material. And I did mean into, since they seemed to liquefy at the tips and bore into the concrete. Leet was next to him, using a gravity gun to reduce the weight on a different section.
I crouched a little, getting into position, and called out, "Now!"
Leet and the Brute lifted at the same time and I dove into the opening to the best of my ability, desperately pulling out the woman by the arms, making sure to keep the baby in her grip over the water as I struggled to lift her up.
The whole thing collapsed barely a second after she was out, and she thanked us all a dozen times before the flier moved her over to a different section and the brute ran off to another, nearby part.
"You good?" Leet asked me.
I gave him a shaky thumbs up, feeling like my arm could barely lift its bones.
Accepting my answer for what it was, he walked a little closer, stopped on shaking legs, and fell backwards on his ass, making a small splash.
My head hadn't stopped spinning in what felt like hours. Despite the exhaustion that dragged me down, filling my veins with lead, there was a floaty feeling in me, a detached sort of relaxation like I was watching my life happen to someone else.
I knew, on some level, that today had been a victory. They were already calling it one of the lowest casualty rates on record. Top five for Leviathan and top ten for Endbringers in general, I'd heard from someone's guess. I'd done enough, objectively. But I wasn't really sure we'd done much to actually stop the Endbringer from completing its objectives, and that made any statistics feel hollow.
Slowly, I turned to Leet, seeing him stare off blankly into the distance.
"... you good?" I asked, voice scratchy.
He gave me a warm smile that didn't reach his eyes.
"Fuck no."