Interlude a

Alexandria

Alexandria smashed into a building in downtown Brockton Bay, bleeding off momentum as the reinforced concrete and steel girders crumpled away from her like tissue paper. She tumbled all the way through the building, shooting out and into the street behind it with a thunderous crash. Pavement flew everywhere.

She rose, hacking up the bit of water that Leviathan had managed to force into her lungs, and took a moment to regain her focus.

Everything around her was dark, caught in the storm that always followed Leviathan onto land. Water fell from the sky, somehow hitting harder than it should have. Granted, she barely felt it, but she could tell from the way it splashed into the torrents that rose from the sewer system and flooded the streets around her. Cars were being swept up like stray branches on the edge of an overflowing stream. The water was already spotted with detritus, although thankfully few bodies.

For some reason, Leviathan had been targeting shelters. Not unheard of, for the Endbringers to force capes to sacrifice themselves unnecessarily, but the beast was practically ignoring them in favor of its search.

Chubster, Deceased. C-5.

She glanced at her armband. Barely twenty capes had perished so far, and the waves were smaller than the ones she was used to, Eidolon's ice barrier managing too hold them back remarkably well.

A nagging feeling in the pit of her stomach made the heroine curse for the thousandth time that precogs didn't work well on the Endbringers. She had a feeling that whatever Leviathan's goal was, it was bad.

A dull rumble sounded from across the city, and lightening briefly flashed between the clouds. Alexandria caught a glimpse of Leviathan, vivid in stark relief against a backdrop of ruin. Legend was hitting the Endbringer from countless angles, with the rest of the blaster contingent perhaps adding up to equaling him. Perhaps. Leviathan was ignoring them in favor of unearthing yet another shelter, his skin melting and sloughing off from his face as the blasters took the opportunity to hit him with everything they had.

An errant water whip caught a flying cape, and Alexandria's armband duly stated,

Don the Quick, Deceased. C-5.

Something was wrong with this picture. Something was out of place. But as intelligent as she was, Alexandria couldn't think of anything.

In the end, though, it didn't matter. Leviathan would either reach his goal or he wouldn't, and her best chance to effect the outcome was at the heart of the fighting.

So be it.

Lung

Lung breathed in slowly. Even now, the beast was most likely slaughtering the defending forces.

It was all so pointless.

He had learned the truth in Kyushu.

The Endbringers were not foes, to be fought and burned and beaten. One did not subdue the Ocean. One could not fight a volcano.

In a sense, the creatures were simply the expression of a principle. All things must end. All things must die.

He believed the English word was entropy. The reduction of all to chaos.

They had come to him, first asking, then pleading, as he waited in his cell. After being defeated by the Tinker commander of the Protectorate, he had thought of the day that Kyushu fell. The day lesser men called his greatest triumph.

It was not. The boot had no need to step on the errant ant, after the hive had already been destroyed.

No. He would wait here. Let the insects mill about in their confusion.

Even the Dragon knew when to bow.

Tattletale

She watched the fight with a sickening sense of certainty.

Leviathan was holding back.

It was easy to see, situated as she was near the triage center that had been set up almost immediately by some cape Strider had teleported in first. Dragon had been kind enough to let Lisa see the fight through her drone's eyes after Lisa's explanation of her power. It was paying dividends.

Water source is extra-dimensional, likely finite but too large to matter. Can manifest water through surface of body; blows do not interfere with dimensional transfer: transfer one way, transfer by choice, transfer controlled by Leviathan.

Well, that was obvious, but

Transfer controlled by Leviathan; transfer continues even in wounded areas; transfer not limited to Leviathan's surface layer. Leviathan's water echo is a decoy: can generate extra-dimensional water at greater range.

"Are you sure?" asked Dragon's voice, low and serious and probably artificial. Lisa had been mouthing whatever her power had thrown at her in real time.

"Don't trust me?" Lisa tried to grin her trademark grin and failed. This was bad.

Dragon sighed, which Lisa noted as an odd thing to make an artificial version of. Then she stopped-

"Tattletale, I want everything you can give me on Leviathan's objective."

Lisa nodded to herself, and focused on the screens in front of her, opening her power full stop.

Leviathan in Brockton Bay, objective is within city limits. Wave patterns compared to previous encounters indicate Leviathan is not here to sink the city. Objective is in Brockton Bay; objective is person? place? thing? person. Targeting of shelters. Not exactly sure what it is looking for. Person, cape? Cape. Leviathan is looking for a cape. Cape among the defenders? No. Cape native to Brockton Bay? Likely no. Cape recently arrived to Brockton Bay.

Well that begs a whole lot of questions. Leviathan was targeting a cape in Brockton Bay. But how? How would Leviathan, last seen near Madagascar, know about a specific cape in Brockton Bay? Lisa turned her power on the question.

The Simurgh told him.

Oh, shit.

Vista

Wards weren't really supposed to be fighting Endbringers, and her parents hadn't exactly signed the permission form, but Missy had gotten rather adept at faking their signatures over time.

And like hell she was going to let Gallant face Leviathan without her to pull him out of a tight space.

God, that was almost like something Clockblocker would say.

But even though she was far from the front lines, she was still contributing: moving heroes and villains around the battlefield as best she could, trying to hamper Leviathan's movements. Twisting space so that rain wouldn't fall on the triage center.

She felt the disturbance before she saw it.

It felt strange, kind of like a person to her power but also not, like that Ward Weld did when she met him last year. But instead of a rather good-looking, if metallic, face and chiseled abs, this person/not person space was the size of a building, and growing. She turned to look at it, squeezing the space between herself and it to get a better look through the darkness. It was centered above one of the Endbringer shelters that Leviathan had already destroyed. Had someone in there triggered? But with what kind of power? The space was growing rapidly, spilling out onto the streets and simultaneously climbing into the sky. Wind began to funnel into it, water carried along for the ride, and the whole thing began to spin.

In an instant Missy was inside the triage tent, and in another she was standing in the room with the thinkers. Several were Protectorate, looking over data and talking quickly, serious looks on their faces. She noted Tattletale surrounded by monitors in a corner, talking to a microphone. She was that villain that Armsmaster had saved from Lung, along with her team. She had escaped, but her teammates had been captured by Assault and Battery as they arrived on the scene. Except for the dog girl, who had tried to fight Lung. She had been beyond help by the time Panacea had arrived.

Missy felt a flash of nervousness at speaking to full Protectorate members, and a villain to boot, but dammit, Missy Biron was a woman of Action.

"You need to look outside!" she blurted out. They all turned to stare at her.

"Shit," said Tattletale, her face going pale.

Dragon's voice came in over the armband on Missy's left arm. "Unless my sensors have all decided to malfunction at once..."

"There's a new cape," said Missy. "And I think she can control the weather."