The oncoming wave passed with the same unnatural smoothness as the previous one, the water spread out until the tsunami lost all killing force and became a gentle push of water. It rose maybe eighteen feet above ground as it reached the shore.
Nothing, in comparison to the first two disasters.
Taller than the third one.
Eidolon wasn't winning his fight against the ocean.
I looked around the dozens of capes, gathered on the rooftop, at the Wards, all of them waiting, and looked past them to the wreckage of so much of my city.
I wanted to scream at them to do something… but what?
A voice spoke in my earpiece — in everyone's, judging from the reactions — "Leviathan has broken contact. Brockton Bay has been assessed as a soft target due to the aquifer beneath us; accordingly, the consensus is to engage the Endbringer as soon as possible, without waiting for further reinforcements. Broadly, once a location has been identified, a small group of the swiftest and toughest will engage the beast and lure it toward an ambush position. Once there, our goals are twofold: damage Leviathan enough to force its withdrawal, while keeping it in place long enough to manage that. Strider will handle transportation for most. Stand by for more detailed briefings from your team leaders." Female, with a faint accent I didn't recognize.
Not Alexandria. Dragon?
I tapped my earpiece twice.
"Soft target?"
Browbeat answered. "If we give Leviathan enough time, a chunk of the state sinks and we get a new Great Lake. Or possibly the bay gets a lot larger, I'm not really sure which."
As if the waves weren't enough of a problem.
Several of the gathered heroes lifted off, and began to fan out over the city in what looked like a search pattern.
Aegis spoke through my earpiece. "Wards, we've got two longshots with us today. I do intend to rejoin you when we're readying for battle, but if I'm still in transit from where I'm doing S&R, Clockblocker has tactical command in my absence, followed by Gallant. Transport for our group will be handled by Dragon in the Fafnir. Our team's role, once Leviathan has been found and after the ambush has been sprung, will be to attempt to put Clockblocker or Flechette in range. We're not to take undue risks in the process, and ideally we'll all make it back together, but the brass has judged it worth finding out whether one or both of you can make a difference here. I don't need to remind any of you of how many lives are at stake, and I'm proud that each of you volunteered for this. This, right here, right now, is why we're needed."
I looked around for reactions. None of the Wards moved much, though I could see Gallant and Clockblocker muttering to each other — probably about the chain of command.
Tough crowd to inspire.
Then again, they all had just volunteered for what could be a suicide mission already. Maybe asking them to cheer, or even stand up straight, was pushing it.
I tapped my earpiece. "I know Clockblocker's power, but what does Flechette do?"
She answered. "Things I touch will go through other things, and leave a hole behind. Or fuse themselves to whatever they're touching, if that's where they are when the time runs out. Some other stuff — timing, trajectories, balance. I don't generally miss."
She shouldered her crossbow.
"Works on nearly everything we've tested it on so far. Forcefields, barriers, Tinkertech… if it hits something Clockblocker's frozen, there's a mutual cancel, and that's better than anyone else has managed. But I've never tried it on an Endbringer before, and they break a lot of rules."
I nodded. Two nigh-absolute abilities? I could see why the Protectorate thought it was worth giving them a shot. Flechette could stand off and bombard, but Clockblocker had to touch what he froze out of time, and getting in arm's reach of Leviathan…
Suicide. Or as near as makes no difference: he wasn't any tougher than I was.
And he was simply leaning against the wall, looking bored.
I could respect that.
If we had to wait, I could at least help with the search.
I turned my attention outward, surveying the city.
I saw a wreck.
And yet the damage could have been worse. I could see gentle rises which had channeled the flow, leaving some buildings wet but relatively untouched while those a few hundred feet away had borne the full brunt of the rushing waters. Far enough south, or west, and the hilly terrain had again left more intact than I'd feared.
The PRT building was in one of the areas which had taken the worst of the waves. Bad luck or Leviathan being clever?
Still, the city as a whole didn't — quite — look like the Boardwalk. And even the Boardwalk was still there, still serving as a breakwater for the rest of the city, even if it wasn't so much a row of buildings as a row of wreckage now.
Not much activity on the streets right now. Pretty much everyone had either gotten to their shelter, had decided to hunker down where they were, or…
Well.
Endbringer attacks never had light casualties. The attack on New York had been just before I was born, but I still knew classmates who'd lost family then, and more whose families had moved away from there, or away from other metropolises, to what was then a medium-size town… fueling its growth into something now large enough to rate its own Endbringer visit.
Irony?
Without traffic on the streets, things were quite still. It didn't look like there was enough water in the streets for him to be in it, and what water there was — the pools lingering in some depressions aside — draining away quite rapidly into… into the storm drains.
I tapped my earpiece twice.
"Do we have anyone checking the storm drains or sewers?"
I caught a muffled curse from Browbeat, followed by a long silence.
Then his voice in my ear again "So… Dragon was more polite about it, but yeah… they'd thought of that already."
I nodded.
Worth asking anyway.
I returned to scanning the city. Fliers circled above, quartering the city or spiraling outward. Legend, up just below the cloud cover, was simply hovering in place and rotating. Could he see things clearly enough from that height?
Movement on a rooftop, too large to be human… Hookwolf.
Nothing.
Nothing, nothing, and more nothing.
Except for another wave on the horizon.
Waiting meant losing.
Just like a fight with Lung. Was he looking for a rematch?
Would it matter? The last time they'd fought, Leviathan had still sunk Kyushu.
Fine, don't assume Lung would save the day. What about anti-Lung tactics? Sudden overwhelming force?
The plan, as given by Dragon and Aegis, already called for as massive a strike as could be managed.
Letting him get clear of the fight, and ambushing him when he thought he was safe?
That would involve writing off Brockton Bay, and then trying to fight the world's greatest hydrokinetic at the bottom of the ocean.
The first part of that idea was unacceptable, and the second part… would be a very bad plan.
It was frustrating. So many of my enemies had been as fragile as I was, with Lung himself as the great exception. I didn't have a strong enough power to fight straight up, and all the victories I'd had had come from embracing that truth. Because I couldn't win in a fair fight, I'd had to learn how to fight unfairly. Surprise, allies, traps… I had used them all. I'd gone a long way on cunning, care, and calculated ruthlessness.
I didn't see how any of those qualities would help me fight something better understood as a natural disaster. I couldn't hide from an earthquake, or trick a tsunami into fighting a volcano for me, and it galled. This was the biggest fight I'd ever been in, by any measure: participants, scale, casualties… importance. I needed this to be a victory.
For there to still be a Brockton Bay afterward.
And I couldn't think of any way to affect the outcome.
The wave came through — still nothing like a true tsunami, but over twenty feet now.
I couldn't tell whether Leviathan was getting stronger, or Eidolon was getting weaker.
Bad news, either way.
The part of me that was monitoring my swarms' view of the city noted several fliers converging over an area northwest of here.
Then the way the buildings slumped down, toppling into each other, as a chunk of land just… sank, water rising up where once roads and homes had been.
I felt my hands form fists.
My thoughts were interrupted by another transmission. "Leviathan has been found."
All across the roof, capes stood up, checked their weapons or costumes, and said hurried goodbyes.
"Wards, please board the Fafnir now." Dragon's voice, with that same odd almost-accent.
Gallant and Flechette were the first into the Fafnir, I followed with Vista, and Clockblocker brought up the rear.
Dragon wasn't with us, though that didn't seem to hinder her in piloting her craft.
Or keep her from noticing who had boarded it.
"Tailor, I'm afraid you're not a Ward." This time, she spoke through the vessel's speakers.
Clockblocker clapped me on the shoulder as he squeezed past. "Ride-along for a prospective member."
"I am sorry, but that's not within your authority. Even in situations as desperate as this, there are rules governing when non-villain minors…"
I flushed beneath my mask, tuning her words out. What good would growing up to be at a future Endbringer fight be? What good would it be to stay out of combat and manufacture tools for others? I didn't see Dragon sitting at home, making more PRT equipment or remote piloting vehicles like these instead of coming herself.
Besides.
This was my home.
The gathered capes had blinked away, Strider teleporting them out. The fliers were on the move independently, including Dragon in her armor. The Fafnir alone remained on the rooftop, and if it wasn't going to leave with me on it soon then I'd have to get off. Have to accept that staying out would be my major contribution to the fight. And that it would be that way only because I wasn't a villain, due to some inflexible, rule-bound…
"It's within my authority." Armsmaster's gravelly voice had never been so welcome. There were pauses when he spoke, holes in between words where he might have been breathing. If true, he was running flat-out. "We all die someday. How can one die better?"
That… was less than encouraging, but I thought I knew what he meant.
And agreed.
The Fafnir's doors closed and it lifted off, smooth and silent and virtually imperceptible.
I breathed out an immense sigh of relief at the realization that I would, after all, get a chance to get myself killed.
Then I tapped my earpiece once. "Whoever thought of asking Armsmaster… thanks."
The speakers replied in Dragon's voice. "You're welcome."
I blinked.
Huh.
Not as inflexible as I'd thought, then, if she'd been asking for permission on my behalf while telling me that there were other ways to make a difference. She must have texted Armsmaster while she was talking to me and lecturing Clockblocker, flying her power-armor, and remote-piloting the Fafnir. That bespoke some serious ability to multitask. Or maybe most of those activities were on automatic pilot: for all I knew, she had a macro that texted Armsmaster to tell him his Wards were up to something and needed supervision.
Mere minutes later, we were unloading onto a roof facing the growing lake; Aegis had actually beaten us there and was already looking over the terrain. Most of the capes were to our southeast, and were busy setting up for an ambush; the Fafnir lifted off and moved to join them.
I began gathering swarms again reflexively, but for the moment looked out on the water with my own eyes.
Fliers were beginning to make strafing runs on the lake, and I could see Leviathan breach out of the wreckage to rip one trailing green fire cleanly in half; two heroes immediately cannoned into him, moving him toward the shore and ambush.
Only one of them fought clear of his attempts to twist round and catch them. The other dropped beneath the waves in Leviathan's claws.
I wasn't surprised when Leviathan surfaced again empty-handed in an effort to catch Legend, who zig-zagged just ahead of the claws until Alexandria swapped out with him.
The one after her in playing bait, armored in what looked like earth and debris, was very tough.
Tough enough to last half a minute in his claws, while some of the greatest heroes the Earth had seen tried to force her release.
They scarred Leviathan and kept him moving toward the shore, but he didn't release her so much as wash her remains off.
The bait group were toughest and most mobile of us, and he was killing them almost as fast as they came.
We were probably all going to die.
I looked round the roof, seeing each of the Wards as if for the first time.
Flechette, stolidly loading and checking her crossbow, the tightness around her eyes clearly visible through her visor.
Aegis, standing at the edge of the roof, looking out at the slaughter, his shoulders hunched forward.
Gallant, standing at ease in his gunmetal powersuit. He could sense emotions as well as impart them with his blasts: he had to be feeling our worries as well.
He didn't show it.
Vista, bright green dress and visor doing nothing to lighten her grim expression.
Whatever fears Clockblocker had, the full-face mask hid them.
He stretched lazily, and then said "Hey. It could be worse."
The silence that followed was punctuated by the crash and hiss-crack of combat, as the heroes playing bait attempted to draw Leviathan ever nearer.
"Could be raining."
Flechette was the first to snort, and it spread through all of us on the roof, dying down after a time…
And then the first raindrop fell.
So it was that when Leviathan came ashore and battle was joined in the rain, we were laughing almost too hard to breathe.