Amelia, Ch 295- Victoria
"We have his destination," Dragon informed. "He appears to be targeting San Fransisco, and likely the surrounding area. We'll be unable to stop him from getting into the bay, and once that happens the entire region is at risk."
I ran the thought in my head, the same thoughts everyone else faced. "He's certainly picking a historic city for his grave," I boasted, with far more confidence than I could convince myself I felt. There weren't a lot of places on earth worse for fighting Leviathan. In fact, the only place I could think of was Venice. Leviathan wasn't going to make this fight easy for us.
Space warped as Missy did her thing. I couldn't see her influence directly, but it messed with that constant stream of data that showed me how to avoid injury and kill pretty much anything in front of me. Zerg started travelling through, setting themselves up however Taylor saw fit. Meanwhile, Eric was tapping people and shifting them into location using his power. Pity it didn't work on the zerg, or the Endbringers for that matter. We could drop Leviathan off on the moon and that would be the end of it.
"Worst case scenario?" Taylor asked.
"The attack could likely splinter the San Andreas fault," Dragon answered. "We might lose all of southwestern California, in addition to significant consequences for the whole Pacific region. I'm already issuing alerts to the leaders of several nations. This could easily be a disaster on the same scale as Kyushu."
I could see the emotions bounce through the others. They weren't too different from my own. I could imagine Taylor swearing up a storm under her breath. "Victoria," she spoke, her voice ice. "Restrictions are off. Future Endbringers be damned, there is no scenario where we can afford to give anything less than our best in this battle. Leviathan cannot be allowed to survive this battle, under any circumstances. I trust you don't have a problem with that."
"Oh fuck the hell yes," I smiled.
....
The Golden Gate Bridge looks different when swarmed with giant bug monsters. Taylor had the fliers take perch all along the bridge, resting until they were needed. Leviathan's signature downpour falling off of their uncaring forms. Several of the defenders had taken to hiding under the Gargants in their positions along the coastline, trying to stay out of the rain as much as they could.
Meanwhile, I was on the bridge, standing shoulder to shoulder with the Triumvirate and watching the ocean. I wasn't sure how many of them could even see the ocean in these conditions. Certainly Alexandria couldn't. Probably not Legend, either. Who knew what Eidolon had going for him right now? I walked over to Sveta and Alexandria. The two of them appeared to be planning something. "So, you holding up okay?" I asked the girl.
Sveta looked at me. Other than a self repairing Yggrasil body suit that only functioned to give her a working shunt drive and some modesty, she was without armor. "Still scared," she admitted. "So many people are depending on us. I don't know how the two of you handle it."
"Just one of those things that comes with experience," I responded. "It gets easier with time." Alexandria gave me a glance that told me I wasn't fooling her. Of course, she wasn't fooling me, either. We were both faking it. "I'm sure you've heard I got one of the theoretical anti-Endbringer weapons."
"I saw the design being tested," Alexandria responded. "It's pretty intimidating. The goal is still to let Atropos use her power to get the kill. We need to delay the Endbringer long enough to make that a reality. You're the backup, in case that fails."
I know. God help me, I know. But it should be me to do it. That fucker stole half my friends and family from me, he trashed my city. I deserve to be the one that kills the bastard. "I understand."
She looked at me. She was harder for me to read than most, because her power kept her body in a state of near perfection. Her emotions, if indeed she even felt any, didn't impact her body significantly. That was even more true after the improvements I gave her. But I could tell she didn't believe me, expected me to break rank and take it into my own hands. She might not be wrong.
The swell started before I could say anything more, the initial tidal wave of the many that Leviathan would unleash this day. I lived through this once already, and I would do it again, but the sheer scale of his power was intimidating. Even Amy couldn't use her power like this. There was shimmering as forcefields came into place. Most from the zerg, some from local defenders and Protectorate and Guild heroes. At some point, San Francisco had picked up a tinker forcefield capable of covering the whole city. It wasn't going to stop Leviathan's power, but it was an extra layer of defense.
"He's coming through your way," Dragon informed us, and my HUD shifted to give me an idea of where to expect. I activated the lowest setting of my laser and fired it toward the Endbringer. "That's your laser guidance," I told the others. "Hit him with everything you've got."
Fighting Leviathan in the water was normally a bad idea. The usual strategy has always been to wait for him on land, where we had the advantage. That wasn't something we could afford to do here. Eidolon struck first, and parted the ocean like something out of the bible. The Golden Gate bridge spans three miles of ocean, and is one of the more iconic landmarks in the country. That ocean was forced back, leaving an open arena.
A moment later, Leviathan splashed through the wall of water and fell a ways before landing hard on the exposed seabed. He glanced back toward the safety of the ocean behind, but chose to bolt forward toward the bridge, and us. A part of me was glad for that. If he ran, there was nothing we could do to catch him and my chance at payback would be gone.
Atropos opened fire, a wide spread that left gouges in Leviathan and shredded the ground beneath him. He was spared the worst of it by sheer speed and erratic movement. Lily might have perfect aim, but she didn't have the power to foresee an enemy's evasion attempts like I did. Of course, against an Endbringer I didn't have that power, either.
Legend's fire came next, as a series of forcefields from Narwhal hemmed the monster in, but Leviathan's shocking speed allowed him to avoid getting struck by any of them, instead allowing himself to be scratched by dozens of other potshots from lesser capes and the Zerg.
"He has a Thinker power," I spoke to our command group. "Kinda like my combat precognition. Or some weird form of personal time manipulation. I'm not sure how, but there's no possible way he can avoid attacks like this without some way to see them before they happen."
"Makes sense," Lisa agreed.
The water started caving back in around the edges of battlefield. Whatever Eidolon had done was apparently temporary. Alexandria grabbed Atropos and dived down, pulling the girl faster than her flight system could ever go on its own. Not fast enough, however, as the Endbringer broke through the side, gripped the remnants of a ship anchor that had been down there for however long, and chucked it at the pair. Alexandria was forced to let go, and the anchor dissolved as it struck Atropos.
The plan clearly wasn't to kill anyone, simply buy a chance to escape as our Endslayer was going too fast to correct her flight course without Alexandria's guidance. She hit the ground and kept going, using her power to destroy the mud and stone so she wasn't killed by colliding with it.
Looks like I'll get my shot after all, I smiled. "Sveta, I need you to throw me down in front of the Endbringer," I demanded. To her credit, she didn't hesitate. Although she dislocated my shoulder in her haste. That's going to be annoying.
I hit the ground hard enough to shatter several bones in my feet and break one ankle, but I was standing and facing the fucker that ruined my family and my future. The armor's reinforcements still held, and I shifted to my combat mode. Amplifying my physical abilities at the cost of most of my mental ones. None of which worked on Endbringers to begin with.
I charged forward, the shimmering blade in front of me set to the nanothorn grade cutting potential. Wow, that really does eat up a lot of power. It's worse than the cloak and shunt modes combined.
In a vague mirror of my fight with Baal, and Taylor's legendary last stand against Leviathan in Brockton Bay, I stabbed the Endbringer in the crotch. Not that it mattered. I didn't expect to hit anything important. Endbringers were nothing more than machines, after all. But it was the central body mass that I could reach. His core had to be in here somewhere, I'd just have to keep cutting until I found it.
Leviathan's claw came down toward me, setting off all my danger senses. I clicked over to the super cutter mode and leapt upward, glad that I could only feel pain if I wanted to. I carved a long arc over my head, splitting through his torso, his shoulder, and then along the entire arm that was coming for me. The fucker collapsed around me. And then turned into water. I stood there unable to process it for a few seconds. A water double. I wasted my attack on a fucking water double. And if I'd just thought about it for a fucking minute, I would have known better. FUCK!
My weapon flickered, and alerts popped up on my HUD warning me that the sword was about to break. I tossed it away and it vanished with an explosion little different than a cherry bomb. If it was anything like the blade's effect, I would have lost my arm.
"Leviathan sighted in C-7, M-2, and R-8," Dragon's tech rattled off.
"Something must be wrong with the system," Dragon herself spoke.
I slapped the override system. "No," I replied. "Leviathan has a new trick. He's creating body doubles made from water. They're not the real Endbringer, but they're still tough. I'd class them as a five for brute and mover. And keep in mind that any of the doubles might actually be the real thing."
"Thank you," Dragon responded.
"Leviathan duplicates sighted, C-8, F-9, M-2, R-7," the system responded.
"It won't be any of them," Lisa added. "Wherever Leviathan's at, he's choosing to fight by proxy. If you spot one, it'll just be a clone, not the real thing. For the purposes of this battle, we're fighting a Master power set."
===============
A/N- Wildbow said that if Leviathan felt like fighting for real, his combat strategy wouldn't be that different from Skitters. I'm taking that at face value.
Also, I'm trying narrating the fight scene from the ones on the ground this time. I liked using Taylor and Amelia for their ability to get greater awareness of the situation than most... but it could be fun doing it like this, too.
but at same time you forgot they have and can.
