Thanks to Commissar Carnifex and The Sleeping Knight for betaing.

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Sprout

She could feel everything.

Every tree bending in the breeze, every flower basking in the sun, every blade of grass poking through the asphalt. It was if as if she had been blind her whole life and had just been given sight. Feelings and experiences that she wasn't even sure there were words for flowed across her mind as she reached out to the plant life around her, tugging on it as easily as one might use a limb.

It was amazing.

But as joyful as the experience of being connected to all plant life on Earth, she didn't have the time to sit back and enjoy the experience.

She had an Endbringer to deal with.

She hadn't understood why the Green had referred to him as an Abomination, but now she could. There was something off and wrong with the Endbringer on a level she couldn't quite understand. She could feel the water in her plants twisting and turning as the best tried to assert his dominance and she could feel the twisted power at work, subsuming the very world and eroding the natural order. The waves of water that followed him were similarly twisted and consumed by his power, the blue glow of the Clear gone and faded.

The Endbringers weren't just killing humanity, they were killing the planet.

Leviathan blurred forward with a burst of speed, his malevolent eyes burning with the desire to see her and this city dead and at the bottom of the ocean. The Endbringer didn't get more than a few steps before she pulled on her power and the ground beneath him exploded. Vines that could have crushed a tank burst from the ground and asphalt and wrapped themselves around the monster's form.

"There will be no more deaths on this day," she said, her voice echoing through the torrent of rainwater as the Abomination failed in the air impotently. She twisted her now massive hand as the vines followed in kind, tightening their hold against the Endbringer's mockery of flesh. But instead of being crushed into powder like anything else would have been, the monster pulled back, using its long tail to tear away at the vines like a demented weed whacker.

What few vines remained intact proved ineffectual at holding him in place as a coat of water covered his already slippery skin, providing him with enough wiggle room to escape his ensnarement. Taylor tried to keep track of him, but trying to make out his speeding form through the thick torrent of rain proved to be all but impossible.

Taylor shuddered as something struck her form with a sharp crack, and when she looked down she found her right arm missing, cut off at the elbow. Her first reaction at seeing her severed limb was shock and then a bubbling panic that filled the pits of her stomach. But before she could even utter her first scream a gentle pressure came to her awareness in the back of her mind.

Calm yourself, child.

Yggdrasil? She thought back with no small amount of surprise. It was enough for her to keep her immediate instinct to scream in panic in check long enough to realize that her arm wasn't hurting like it should have been. She was hardly an expert in getting limbs torn off, but she imagined that it would hurt a lot more than this.

Yes. We lend you our strength and knowledge for a time child. Do not fear this wound, for you are one with the Green. So long as it lives, so do you.

Alright, that means that Leviathan can't kill me. Good, Taylor thought with a slight snort as she focused on her missing arm. She pushed and watched as the limb began to repair itself, vines and branches twisting around each other to form a facsimile of a human arm and hand. Within seconds the previous grievous damage that Leviathan had inflicted upon her was gone, erased as if it had never happened.

Cool.

She didn't even need to turn around to know where the rest of her arm was. She could feel its presence behind her, still pulsating with her power. She turned her gaze behind her to see Leviathan looming over the severed limb as if it was some kind of trophy. His tail flickered through the rain as his sharp claws tore up the street with all the concern a child would give a cobweb. Though she did have to wonder what the monster's plan was, it wasn't as if he could…

Beneath us, child!

Taylor turned the brunt of her attention to the network of roots crisscrossing through the dirt just in time to feel the wave of water coming up from underneath. The earth crumbled like wet paper as the asphalt around her started to crack from a combination of her sheer weight and the lack of support beneath her.

"Get back!" she shouted, her voice bellowing over the howling gale to the ground-based capes rushing to join the fight. She didn't get a chance to see if they had heeded her warning as the ground beneath her finally gave way and collapsed. If she hadn't been in her new gigantic form it would have been quite the fall, twenty feet or so. She would have surely died from it, if not from that then from the torrent of water flowing outwards from the hole like a twisted wellspring. As it was all she felt was a brief sensation of weightlessness before her feet hit the ground beneath the street, crushing rubble into a fine grain.

She was fine, but the bunker that she had just saved from drowning mere seconds ago was less so. The foundations underneath the structure eroded to almost nothing, and the shelter started to collapse in on itself with the crushing weight of the water surrounding it like a bubble.

No! Taylor screamed in her mind as she reached out to the plants inside. Building off what she had built to prevent their drowning she had her plants tunnel through the concrete, wrapping themselves around steel and forming walls to protect the panicking people inside. She could feel the bunker shifting as she pushed it up and out of the ground with all that she had.

As she did that, she turned a portion of her attention towards the severed limb, still underneath Leviathan's feet. He remained motionless, staring at her form as she struggled to save the trapped people. She had to wonder if this was all some sick game to him. There was no reason for him to try and kill those people other than sheer spite for her thwarting his attempted massacre. After a moment more he turned around, almost seemingly dismissing her as a threat as he turned to the wave of capes in the sky.

Taylor snarled at the sheer dismissive arrogance of the abomination. The severed limb beneath him exploded into action, vines and branches twisting up to wrap around his legs. She pushed as much effort into their growth as she could, watching as green started to cover his legs like a second skin, roots digging into his flesh only to find nothing to feed off of. There was nothing about Leviathan's mass that could be useful or beneficial to the environment. She wasn't even sure if it was capable of degrading. Its only use was to serve as the Endbringer's body and nothing else.

The Abominations have no place in this world, Yggdrasil's voice echoed through her head, a tint of anger coloring his words. Taylor grunted in agreement as she tried to force the roots go on in deeper, but it appeared that they had reached the end of what they could do. Every attempt to push a little further into the beast's mass only proved to be futile. It was simply too dense, and judging by the almost casual way Leviathan swept off the green like a swarm of flies he barely noticed it.

But it stalled his advance long enough for the first cape to reach him. There was an audible crack as Alexandria slammed into the monster's skull, knocking him to the ground. The Brute was joined by a swarm of Blasters, each one firing as fast as they could into the monster's torso. Plumes of dust and smoke rose up from the impact site, clouding their vision of the monster. But Taylor could still hear the song of the Green that covered Leviathan as he dove beneath the street. Even as Alexandria rose up from the blinding cloud of smoke Taylor realized what Leviathan was doing.

"He's undergroun—"

Even with full knowledge of were the Endbringer was, Taylor found herself startled by the sheer speed the monster possessed as it erupted in front of her like a demented jack in the box. There was no time for her to even react as claws the size of trucks slammed into her chest. Taylor was forced to lean back as the full weight of the beast was set upon her, but even as she moved to wrap it in a bear hug it had other ideas.

Using its crouched position on her torso as a staging point, Leviathan pushed off her chest and twisted in the air as its almost gangly looking limbs swept out towards the flying capes. They didn't even have time to understand what was happening as they were batted aside like gnats. Most splattered against his claws in explosions of gore while others like Alexandria were sent crashing into the ground. As Taylor righted herself Leviathan's deceptively thin tail slammed into her neck, slicing vines and bark like a woodsman's ax. Panic squeezed her heart like a vice as she reflexively reached up to protect her exposed throat.

Calm yourself, child, Yggdrasil's calm and cool voice prevented her from descending into a blind panic as she realized that she wasn't actually dying. Remember, this body is an extension of your will. No harm done to it by anything but the Rot will harm you.

Oh, right, Taylor recalled once she realized that she wasn't twitching on the ground. She could already feel the parts that made up her working to heal the damage, but the sheer natural reaction of finding the neck severed was a primal part of the human mind. Not something that she would be used to getting over soon. But that lingering dread of death still ate away at her mind as she took a moment to look over the landscape. Leviathan had already cut an impressive swathe of destruction through the city, and bodies were piling up. Blood mixed in with the freezing saltwater as it drained out of the easiest exits without Leviathan's will to say otherwise.

It was a level of carnage that Taylor had never witnessed before, and just thinking about all of the bodies and lives shattered in these last few minutes wanted to make her throw up. How could anyone deal with having to see this day in or day out?

Steel yourself, child. The time for your mourning may come later. The Abomination still fights. Do not allow the sacrifice of your brethren to be in vain, Yggdrasil said with the sternness of a drill instructor. With great difficulty, Taylor managed to push aside the sickening, churning feeling in her gut and turned her attention back towards the fight…

…only to realize that it was gone.

Where'd Leviathan go?

"Does anyone have eyes on Leviathan?" Legend shouted through his armband as the wind around him howled with a fury normally reserved for hurricanes. The rain fell from the sky with such thickness that even with his near perfect vision he could barely make out the street below him, much less the dozens of capes trying to spot the missing Endbringer.

Someone who had never fought the monsters before might have scoffed at the idea that something that big could just disappear. Those were the people who usually died in the first five minutes. Legend held no such belief, he knew all too well that even the lumbering Behemoth could hide from view for a few moments and then erupt from the ground like a volcano in the middle of a group of packed defenders.

The negative replies he got back as the armband's radio exploded with chatter from every point in the city was worrisome. Endbringers didn't just vanish unless they had a plan of some sort. They tended to go after places where they could inflict the most damage possible. They had already dodged a bullet with his attack on the shelter thanks to that newly triggered cape. If that cape lived through this he was going to make sure they got a commendation for their bravery. It was terrifying enough fighting an Endbringer as an experienced cape, he couldn't even begin to imagine what it was like for someone fresh off their trigger event.

Legend pursed his lips in thought as the last negative answer crackled across the radio, and it was in that moment that the Endbringer struck. Below him, a building's front exploded in a show of brick and wood as Leviathan erupted forth like an angry god. The capes on the street below didn't even realize what was happening to them as the monster trampled over them with its clawed feet and swept the rest away in a deluge.

Iron Monkey deceased, BC-4. Hookwolf deceased, BC-4. Pathfinder deceased, BC-4.

"Open fire!" Legend roared as he let loose the full extent of his power. A solid beam of pure white that could have leveled a building with the right direction slammed into the Endbringer's chest as every other Blaster in the area joined in the barrage. But even with enough firepower to shatter a tank battalion Leviathan was undaunted, charging down the street with the speed of a torpedo. Blood and entrails mixed in with the wall of water following the beast, painting the streets and buildings crimson red. It was an utterly sickening sight to bear witness to as the defenders on the ground tried to get out of the way, but they were akin to snails trying to outrace a landslide.

Leviathan was just too fast.

Even as Legend prepared to steel himself against the imminent loss the ground in front of Leviathan exploded as something shot out from the depths. For a brief moment, Legend could almost imagine Leviathan's malevolent eyes budging out of their sockets as a massive tree struck it in the chest. Bark snapped and groaned as it resisted the seemingly unrelenting momentum of the Endbringer. The retreating defenders held their breath as the monster struggled to move forward even as branches as thick a telephone poles wrapped around its torso.

"Hit him!" a voice bellowed out through the sleet like rain and the thunderous roar of the ocean. Turning towards the voice Legend found himself staring at the same green juggernaut that had thwarted the Endbringer earlier, an intense look of concentration on his face as his arms dug into the ground. Legend didn't even bother repeating the order as he opened fire on the restrained Leviathan. Within seconds more parahuman's joined in, flashing of sunlight melting flesh even as iron spikes were driven into the beast's hide. Even more green erupted from beneath the earth, twisting through the concrete and asphalt as if they had minds of their own, wrapping around Leviathan's clawed feet.

But even despite all of that, Leviathan was still stuck in a standstill as the tree groaned under the immense pressure being placed on it.

But the stalemate was abruptly ended as another tree shot out from the ground, this time directly beneath the beast. Legend could only watch as the Endbringer was raised up into the air by the massive plant, even as it struggled with all its might. The tree's trunk, which was thicker than most skyscrapers, shuddered and trembled as the monster tore at its prison with a primal fury. It almost looked as if it would stretch into the storm itself before wood finally gave way to water.

With a thunderous crack, the branches restraining Leviathan snapped and the Endbringer leaped off the towering tree in total freefall. But instead of panicking like any rational being might, Leviathan compressed its already lithe form as close together as it could, turning its entire body into a living torpedo. The air around the monster screamed as it hurled itself at near supersonic speeds towards the cape that had inconvenienced it so. Legend caught a brief glimpse of the giant plant man's red eyes widening in surprise before it was slammed into the ground by the multi-ton beast. The ground shattered beneath them like glass as the Endbringer tore into the cape's body, tearing chunks out with claws sharp enough to rend steel with ease.

"Open fire!" Legend said, his voice screaming over the radio as he brought his power to bear against the monster's exposed back. Every cape that could bring a long-range power to bear joined in, pummeling the Endbringer's backside. Legend pushed aside a pang of guilt as a blast missed the beast and struck the cape instead. He couldn't afford to let the life of one cape, no matter how freshly triggered, get in the way of stopping Leviathan. They would understand.

It was a lie he told himself often enough he almost believed it.

The cape struggled against the Endbringer's attack, plants rising up to lash out at the beast. Black ichor oozed out of numerous wounds even as one of its glowing eyes exploded, but it remained undaunted. The cape just couldn't seem to get enough leverage to throw the monster off. Legend winced as Leviathan raised one of its massive claws in what he assumed was an attempt to finish the cape off when a bone-chilling howl echoed through the streets. It drowned out the howling winds and roaring rain, and Legend felt the primordial fight and flight response buried in the back of his mind urge him to run away from the predator at the doorstep.

Leviathan turned towards the sound with an almost curious look in its soulless eyes before something slammed into its side.

The Endbringer was sent flying back into a building and Legend got a good look at the cape's rescuer. A pair of golden eyes the size of his head glared at the Endbringer as its lips drew back into a low growl revealing fangs that could have used trucks as chew toys. The street cracked under the weight of its clawed feet, as it cautiously approached its recovering prey. Muscles that were bigger than most people tensed underneath its skin as the torrenting rain weighted down on the creature's fur, eliciting that wet dog smell that everyone knew, only about a thousand times worse.

But despite that, it did little to take away from the sheer primal nature of the beast. It was like staring at something straight out of mythology, a monstrous wolf that could devour gods.

A single figure rode on the creature's back, holding onto a pair of chains that wrapped around the titanic wolf's neck. It looked like the wolf could have snapped the chains with a soft twitch of its neck, but one tug by the figure was all the prompting the creature needed to let out an ear-splitting challenge.

Legend felt his very bones quake as the wolf's maw opened wide enough to swallow a city bus with ease, white fangs glistening in the downpour. The howl it unleashed shattered glass and swept the unwary off their feet like ragdolls in a hurricane. A hot wind buffeted Leviathan as it picked itself up, glaring at the beast with baleful eyes. But whatever anger it could bringer to the fight paled in comparison to its opponent's.

The wolf howled as it charged forward, unrelenting in the face of the Continent Sinker.

A howl of primal, unquenchable fury.

The kind of anger that could make a god bleed.

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