Leviathan slowed as he came ashore — not that slow was the word, precisely — but he went from keeping pace with the speedster running on water just ahead of his claws to losing ground.
Another one of the Alexandria package capes took up the role of bait: fast enough to get inside Leviathan's guard with a dive from high above; powerful enough to hammer the Endbringer up a dozen feet into the air with a fishhook maneuver that paid no regard to inertia, and strong enough to lift Leviathan momentarily and shove him toward the waiting ambush.
Not fast enough to get clear without being caught.
Not tough enough to survive it long either.
Strong enough, and dedicated enough, to spend those last seconds dragging the Endbringer behind him through the air toward the ambush.
He managed another half-block before those backward-jointed claws touched the ground again. His strength — enough to move the Endbringer's mass in free fall — was not equal to Leviathan's, and Leviathan simply planted his feet and twisted him in half, discarding the pieces over the small park that they'd landed near.
I wished I'd known the dead hero's name.
He'd died well, but hadn't — quite — gotten the Endbringer into the ambush. Alexandria came in and hammered him into the ground, accepting the grapple for a chance to move him another half-block and hold him in place for a few precious seconds.
I didn't hear the word given — we weren't tied directly into their network — but I saw the results.
Forcefields went up on all sides, a confused and overlapping melange of powers except where one of the strongest was at work. I recognized Bastion, almost singlehanded anchoring the north end of the box; Narwhal's more organic shapes rose up to close the way he'd come to the west.
Moments after, everyone cut loose, with Alexandria still in the Endbringer's grasp. I knew she was tough — she'd been going toe-to-toe with Endbringers longer than I'd been alive, and hadn't even been scratched yet — but holding Leviathan in place while the other capes unleashed seemed to me like it would be risky.
The storm of lights made it difficult to see, all the more so because Leviathan's water shadow absorbed some blasts, replenishing itself as it was boiled away into steam which in turn obscured, diffracted, and distorted. Not all of the beams operated like actual light, with many being so-called 'hard light' and others being still more obscure and unintelligible to physicists and laymen alike, but enough did to make things still more strangely colorful.
The result was coruscatingly beautiful: a madman's cubist attempt at 'Death by Rainbows'.
Some capes were going for the biggest blast they could manage; others were trying the other extreme: Dragon appeared to be targeting a full set of relatively small beams from her armor and Fafnir on a single point, and Legend's contribution was a hair-thin beam so bright it left its own distinct afterimage against the blurrier purple blotch on the inside of my eyelids from the other blasts.
I closed my eyes, and then put my arm over them, and then when that didn't appreciably reduce the glare I turned away. I could still see through my bugs, and I noticed none of the Wards were having any issues.
The visors they all had must be Tinkertech: my own quite decent glare-reducing sunglass lenses weren't nearly up to dealing with this light show. A tangible manifestation of some PRT procurement bureaucrat's hard work — I felt some momentary sympathy for them having had to face Quinn Calle on my behalf.
Flechette raised her arbalest, and launched a quarrel downrange — the distance looked too great to me, but she was the expert here. It flew straight and looked like it had hit, but while I could rotate bugs to keep from being blinded by the intensity of the light, I still couldn't really see too much of the Endbringer: too much steam and light and chaos.
Abruptly, most of the display cut off. Leviathan was bleeding more than I'd yet seen, skin scoured away in some places or with irregular holes in others, piercing deeper in his body than I could see — some glowing with heat — but he was still there. No quarrel visible from any angle, and very much alive.
And active.
The southern end of the box was held by an assortment of overlapping forcefields: weaker powers individually, gathered and arranged in an effort to make up for it. Some advantages, in theory: if Narwhal or Bastion fell, or even lost concentration, a whole section would fall at once. If one of the crowd gathered to the south fell, another could step forward.
Ablative defenses.
Some drawbacks, too: Leviathan had slammed into that overlapping mess of forcefields, and — at the expense of a dozen of those smaller fields — they had stopped him cold.
But only his body.
His water shadow kept going, and flowed through the gaps he'd created like the the story of the Little Dutch Boy in reverse. The water crashed through the defending capes on that side like a smaller tsunami; I don't think any died, but I could see force-field generators overturned and capes knocked over, and the fields they'd sustained flickered out.
Chance? Or had he planned that?
Either way, it also brought him close enough to the barriers that the ranged assault on him diminished, as people started picking their shots more carefully.
Flechette reloaded, fired. The bolt flew straight, reaching one of Leviathan's backward-bending knees, and vanished… but that leg folded a moment later, and I could see the quarrel vanish into the ground beyond Leviathan. It had gone through air, Endbringer, and two of the several forcefields deployed in that area like nothing, and for all I knew it might be going still.
And in that moment, the defenders sortied, charging Leviathan to buy precious moments while the barrier capes reorganized and reset themselves.
Chevalier was first through the sally port in the forcefields, a man in sword and armor matched up against one of the dragons of this age. His sword grew as he charged, until it was almost as long as Leviathan was tall. He swung it as if it were light as a feather; it hit Leviathan like an avalanche. The return blow from Leviathan didn't rock him either; no point carrying a shield when he already carried a sword far larger than himself. How it could be light enough for him to swing, and heavy enough for Leviathan not to knock him over at the same time was beyond me, but powers didn't exactly have to make sense.
Hookwolf leapt from one of the nearby roofs, rising right over the forcefields and going for Leviathan's head while he was down to one knee. We still weren't sure if Leviathan 'saw' with his eyes, but it wasn't a bad choice of target. It was still a predictable approach in ways a flying cape wasn't, and Leviathan raised one hand to catch Hookwolf for the second time today. And while Leviathan squeezed with that hand, the other gestured toward Chevalier… and the water answered with a thundering rush, funneled right toward the opening the heroes were preparing to use.
Others were charging from the other sides of the killbox: I recognized Armsmaster coming from the east, but crossing that ground would take precious seconds. For the moment, the south side fought alone.
Chevalier's armor let him stand unmoved in the crash of water that followed, though judging from the fact that it had an open eye-slit I didn't think he would do well with being submerged. Behind him, Myrddin jabbed at a point in the air and Leviathan's onrushing water shadow surged into that point, vanishing into a tiny sphere; Chevalier stood as firm against that immense pull as he had against the original push. When Myrddin sent that sphere against Leviathan, for all its marble size it knocked the beast back further than I'd seen anyone but Alexandria manage, clearing a space for the other capes on foot to join the fray from all sides of the trap, Dauntless' white fire flickering among them.
Leviathan was actually using Hookwolf like an improvised golf club, each swing tossing one or two capes high into the air. To his credit, the Empire's current leader took that treatment the same way he did the slow and killing pressure Leviathan was applying with his grip: with a furious disregard for his own safety, and indeed for anything but the next chance to hurt the Endbringer before him.
Or at least the next chance to try. Hookwolf could scrape Leviathan, even cut the beast — shallowly.
Nothing more.
Alexandria herself was off to the side; costume half-melted against her own invincible self, blinking rapidly. I guess that earlier display had been brighter still for someone right in the midst of it, but she shook her head and launched back into the fight, knocking Hookwolf free and then staying low — those who could were still striking from range, but aiming high to avoid hitting allies. Some sparks flew off of Leviathan's face, near one of the eye-holes, and I traced them back to Miss Militia, set up two rooftops away with the biggest rifle I'd ever seen: bipod-mounted and still larger than it looked like she could carry.
On our roof, cheers had gone up at Flechette's shot; she herself reloaded while her Tinkertech arbalest drew the string back.
"I think that was a hit!"
Vista had actually jumped up, seeing it.
Clockblocker punched the air.
I found myself smiling, not that anyone could see.
"It went all the way through his knee, out the other side, and into the ground." I was speaking loudly, to be heard over the noise of the battle taking place two blocks away. "Will it stop?"
"Couldn't see if the first one had done anything, couldn't even see if it had hit. Put a little extra on that one — it'll have worn off already. I'll be more careful next time." Beneath her calmness bubbled satisfaction: Leviathan was up on both legs again, reaping a terrible harvest among the capes facing him, but she'd brought the Endbringer to his knees for a moment.
Literally.
If that didn't justify pride, nothing did.
Even Gallant, always calm and collected, had a touch of excitement in his voice. "How large an object can you do that to?"
Below, Chevalier's blade again struck true, saving a hero face down in the mud long enough for two more to get him clear… but it pushed the beast more than it cut him. An inch, or inches in depth, nothing more.
If he could actually do damage the way Flechette could, he could cut Leviathan in half with one swing.
"Big. I tried that with Chevalier once. Something about the way my power works didn't play nice with his: his sword… came apart somehow. It was strange." Flechette picked her moment, launched. "Besides, it's too easy for someone else to hurt themselves badly with something I've charged."
Her shot sailed just a few feet high as Leviathan dropped into a shambling charge, overrunning the line of heroes and crushing two before great hands of asphalt rose up from the road beneath and grabbed his heel. I could see the moment where her power wore off, as the quarrel went halfway through Leviathan's still-standing water shadow like the water was so much air, and then stopped like it had hit concrete. The asphalt didn't hold Leviathan more than a moment, and he shattered the grasping hands and followed the shrapnel through the heroes' ranks again, smearing two more against the ground and pinning a third to the ground with his claw like a butterfly in a case as he rampaged all the way to the opposite forcefields.
The dodging — if that's what it was — worried me.
Chance?
No way to tell.
The fact that those five seconds had left us with as many down and probably dead worried me more. That wasn't even close to a sustainable rate.
Flechette tsked. "Can't shorten flight time without getting closer."
We all looked to Vista.
She shook her head. "There are too many people fighting around him. I can't change things much with people already in the way, and I'm not sure what it would do to your aim if I could."
Clockblocker shrugged. "We needed to get in arm's reach for me to try anything anyway. Chief?"
Aegis glared at Clockblocker a moment. "We won't get up among the Protectorate forces, let alone into touching distance… but we can get a roof or two away from Leviathan."
Most of the roofs we could run across, and Vista shrank the one empty street we had to cross into a sidewalk crack we could skip over.
I had no idea what would happen if one of us fell into that distortion, but breaking someone's back might be the least of it.
Over the minute and change it took us to reposition, the fight went on.
On the one hand, the Protectorate tactics were working as designed: Leviathan was for the moment contained, and taking visible damage. Every time Leviathan tried to go through the forcefields, they slowed him up long enough for the others to re-engage and keep the fight going on the chosen killing ground. Legend, Purity, Dragon, New Wave and a dozen other capes were pouring fire into him from above the whole time.
On the other hand, despite fighting the fight we wanted, we weren't getting any of the results we'd hoped for. None of Leviathan's wounds so far passed beyond superficial… and while Panacea could heal any of the living who made it to her, she could do nothing for the dead. That minute and a half alone cost over a dozen capes dead. We'd had maybe a hundred to start with, had taken losses just to get him here to fight, and not all of us could fight in melee anyway.
I was not at all confident we would win if this became a question of attrition. We wouldn't run out, not completely… but we might run down to the very few who could and had done this a dozen times before. The veterans, the ones who went to every fight, and came back too, whether in victory or defeat, and then got up and went to the next one anyway.
The strongest among us, in many ways.
Legend, Eidolon, Alexandria, Chevalier, Myrddin, Armsmaster, Dragon, Narwhal… the list went on. Strong as they were, they hadn't ever been enough on their own, though each could tip the balance under the right circumstances.
Scion — if he showed up while we could still fight — might be enough to win this day. The golden man, the first parahuman and still in some ways the strongest, had helped beat back Endbringers before, in the same impartial way that he did disaster relief or stopped violent crime: one person at a time. But he devoted the same apparent attention to house-fires as he did to Endbringers, and he didn't make it to all the fights.
He didn't make it to half of them.
I checked the sky with my swarms anyway.
Nothing, not that that meant much with his speed.
On the up side, I was pretty sure Eidolon would only have to hold out for one wave, maybe two, more.
After that, either Leviathan would be gone, or the defenders would be mostly dead.
The crowd struggling around Leviathan's feet was already almost half the size it had been when Chevalier led his charge. I'd worried about how they'd get back through the barriers once they were reset; now I thought that their numbers would be small enough that it might not be a problem.
So, we were losing.
I'd been there before, and had gotten through by being cunning, and careful, and ruthless.
Cunning and care weren't helping much right now.
The rain had only continued to get heavier, but as we came up on our destination I could feel the spray from the battle with Leviathan, violent enough that it reached three stories up and most of a block.
Flechette lined up a shot, sighting over an air-conditioning unit, and delivered another shot which lodged itself in Leviathan's chest: where his heart would be, if he were at all like us.
Whatever he kept there, it didn't have a problem with a crossbow bolt drilling through it.
Aegis stood on the edge of the roof, looking toward the fight.
He wouldn't have noticed a wound like that either, with his redundant and adaptive biology, so it wasn't unprecedented.
I'd been thinking, looking for an answer.
Something, anything.
Gallant's question; Flechette's answer; the risks of anyone else using her trick…
Aegis.
"Does what you do affect the ballistics at all?" I was practically shouting to be heard over the noise of the battle.
She shook her head and shouted back. "If I do the whole thing, yeah, the fletching doesn't work. If I do the leading edge? No. Part of why I just do the tip."
I tapped Aegis, and pointed at the row of air conditioners on the roof. "Think you could throw one of those far enough?"
He looked at me a moment, then nodded and simply ripped one of the air-conditioning units out of the roof.
That was the closest I'd ever been to someone using superhuman strength — not counting those desperate clashes with Lung, when I really hadn't had time to watch and think about it — and it was in its own way something as thoroughly alien as flying. Someone his size and weight and leverage just shouldn't be able to do that, and my brain locked up for a moment on the impossibility I'd seen. Another part tracked the trajectory as he threw it, watched it go through the air awkwardly but accurately to bounce off Leviathan's muscular shoulder and to the ground beside Armsmaster.
He turned back around, and I could see Flechette's smile through her ski-goggle sized visor, her cheeks were drawn so tight.
Aegis was smiling pretty hard himself, turning to the next unit, but paused. "Friendly fire?"
"Timing and trajectories are one of my minor tricks, and I choose how long the effect lasts, up to about a minute. If you miss, it'll go inert before it gets below twenty feet from the ground."
Her quarrels had punched holes right through the Endbringer — small holes, the size of my finger. From what I could see, they were already healing, and the Endbringer was still fighting. Something that size would make a hole a person could fit through, depending on where it hit.
Would that be enough for him to feel it? He'd been practically ignoring some of the strongest attacks from the strongest capes throughout the fight.
It would be more than anyone had ever managed before, and Leviathan had been driven into retreat before.
It would have to be enough to make him notice. To make him fear, if he felt fear, to give him reason to go.
To make him leave, for any reason or none, and let us begin to try to put the wreckage back together.
Aegis ripped the unit out and held it ready to throw.
"Anything I should know before I throw?"
"I'm going to try to leave your handholds alone. Don't touch it anywhere else, at all, after I've touched it, and there's a decent chance you'll lose your hands anyway. I'll give you a count to throw. On three."
Flechette reached out and tapped the air conditioning unit. "One…
I held my breath.
Below, Legend's lasers struck the Endbringer's face, corkscrewing into the eye-slits in an effort to blind while Alexandria led another charge, Armsmaster a step behind and Hookwolf looming above them both, but still knee-height to the Endbringer.
"Two…"
Leviathan absorbed the blows upon his bleeding flesh and struck back, his too-long arms letting him reach the ground without stooping, hook a cape in power armor up, and crack the shell like a walnut with one clawed thumb.
"Three!"
Aegis threw, and his right hand was erased by the outbound projectile, cut off just below the wrist.
He held it with his left, the stump clotting over almost instantly, his whole attention on the tumbling trajectory of our hopes.
His aim was true, and it flew straight toward Leviathan's muscular shoulder.
Until the moment when Leviathan dropped and whipped around, flinging several heroes into the air and wrapping his tail around Alexandria as he had when she'd saved Glory Girl's life. None of the capes clipped the inbound air conditioner, but Alexandria met it going the other way with as much speed as Leviathan could generate at the end of his rotation.
Alexandria was close to physically invincible. Tough enough that the projectile didn't simply go through her as it had everything else so far, Leviathan's tail included.
Not tough enough that she could ignore it.
I saw her bleed and then I saw her fall, Legend diving with impossible speed to catch her and being met with a rising backhand that sent him flying back the other way.
No, not flying.
Falling, in an uncontrolled parabolic trajectory.
Well, we'd found a threat Leviathan noticed.
And now he was leaping, over a hundred feet into the air.
Directly above us, and descending.