Category: argh krix fix your categories

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A stab of pain from my arm reminded me I was hurt.  Fuck, it hurt a lot.  It throbbed, and each throb seemed to be worse than the last.  I felt shaky as I used my good arm to stand.

Leviathan didn’t make noise.  I kept expecting a roar, or hiss, or something, but Leviathan was dead silent.  I somehow imagined a victorious howl as he broke through the barrier, crouched, and lunged into the crowd.

Ah, yeah… I guess that’s what happens when he doesn’t have a mouth.

He stopped, and I thought he was using his afterimage, halting so it could rush forward, but even the watery echo stopped a second after it appeared, only the very edges of it continuing forward to crash violently against the sides of the alley.

Huh.

For several long heartbeats, it was nearly quiet, but for the sound of rain, people’s noises of pain, mine included, and the sound of one of Kaiser’s iron columns ripping free of the wall and falling atop a pile of blades.

So, uh. You good there, Leviathan?

How’s your day?

Want some, uh, tea?

It took me a second to realize what had happened.  Leviathan hung frozen mid-pounce, and his emerging afterimage similarly stood there, frozen in time.

Oh shit, did he forget about the time bubble? Or does someone in the crowd have a time– CLOCKBLOCKER

Clockblocker, you beautiful bastard! Good job!

In the midst of the afterimage was Clockblocker, half-immersed in water.

…well, that’s probably not the best place to be once the effect of this wears off. I think this might count as a heroic sacrifice.

Just, one with a delay.

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Kaiser – I hadn’t even seen him in the group – erected a latticework of blades across the front of the alley, between us and Leviathan.  It wasn’t enough.

It was a nice try, at least.

Leviathan tore through them like I might tear through a wicker basket.  Edged pieces of steel spun through the air and clattered to the ground.

Unfortunately, “nice try” isn’t enough against this overpowered motherfucker.

Kaiser changed tactics, creating columns of steel instead, each three or four feet across, harder to shatter.  They were slower to emerge, but they bent rather than broke.

Nice! Essentially huge prison bars… at least it sounds like they’ll be a bit sturdier.

Leviathan responded by pushing.  He exerted his full strength on the barrier of blades and the columns, leaning against them.  The walls broke around the base of the columns, and the pieces of steel fell.

Dammit.

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I was shoved back – not by the water itself, but the tide of bodies that were struck, crushed and thrown by the afterimage.

Dominos!

…I don’t know, I’m just trying to find some kind of brightness in here.

As I was pushed backward, hard, I was spun by an impact at my shoulder.  My arm slammed against a windowsill, and it exploded with a sharp, jarring pain.

Ouch!

I landed on my back, saw someone else get sent head over heels over the crowd, colliding against the wall with an audible cracking sound, landing limp as a rag doll, a matter of feet from me.  He had a trumpet and a flag on his chest.

That, uh, doesn’t sound very promising for Trumpetflag.

Escutcheon deceased, CD-6.  Herald deceased, CD-6.

Trumpetflag wasn’t good enough for you, eh, Herald?

I’m honestly surprised that attack only killed two people.

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Turning on the spot, Leviathan moved his claw, creating a wave with all of the water he’d generated since entering the alley, driving it into one of the two gathered groups.

Uh oh.

As those capes stumbled and fell back, Leviathan leaped over the time distortion bubble, landing at the front of the other group.  The group with some of the local wards (sic), Velocity, some of Empire Eighty-Eight, and out-of-town capes I couldn’t name.

Landing from a parabolic arc means a spray of water echo over top of him, right?

The group I was at the rear of.

Shit.

Someone stepped up to grab him mid-lunge – some woman I didn’t recognize, who Othala was touching.  She was granting this woman some form of invincibility that let her take a hit and not get knocked away by Leviathan.

Ooh, that’s a cool power.

Invincible though she might be, she couldn’t do anything to stop the afterimage from crashing against and around her, through our assembled ranks.

A lot of people are about to get wet.

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Laserdream’s ragged scream was like something distant, something I was barely aware of, because Leviathan was landing back in the area where the two alleys met.

I’m sorry. 😦

He leaped in Sundancer’s direction, caught the ground with the claws of his hands and feet to halt his momentum.  His echo surged forward, some striking the superheated orb, where it blossomed into massive clouds of steam.

It’s fire versus water… what’s going to prevail here?

The rest went low, catching Sundancer below the waist, sweeping her legs out from under her in one violent rush.  She flipped forward, her upper body colliding with the ground.  The miniature sun winked out of existence.

Well, there goes that chance of getting more of a look into the Travelers’ issues via Sundancer…

Sundancer down, CD-6.

…wait, she isn’t dead! (Sunny surprise!)

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Leviathan wrapped his tail around the spherical forcefield that surrounded the siblings, bringing it and the pair down toward the roof as he fell.  When they were halfway down, the constriction of the tail broke through the forcefield, snaked around Shielder’s body and Laserdream’s arm.

Welp.

The Endbringer landed on the roof with a shuddering impact and a showering of detritus, crashing through the roof.  He bounded up to the edge of the roof, lunged off it.

It’s generally a good idea to land in a spot that can sustain your landing. Not that it seems to have slowed Leviathan down by any significant amount.

I could see it like it was slow motion.  Laserdream’s hand glowed and she fired, using the concussive force of her laser to get her trapped hand free, flew up and back out of the way as Leviathan continued to fall.

…but we’ve just established that Shielder isn’t as good at either of the things his sister is using to survive. I don’t feel good about his survival chances.

Shielder, still in Leviathan’s grip, had his upper body brought down against the ragged edge of the building in passing.

Shielder deceased, CD-6

Yeah.

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Legend fired a barrage of lasers at Leviathan, but the Endbringer was quick to hop to one side, landing on the roof’s edge.  He made a sudden, standing leap a good eighty or a hundred feet into the air, tail extending to reach for the airborne heroes.

I guess getting away wasn’t his goal after all.

Oh, and not only will he possibly be able to reach one or two of the flying heroes, but any movement above the rest of the heroes will result in a water echo that can come crashing down on them a moment later.

The whiplike tail struck Legend, and there was a firework display of light and sparks, Legend tumbling out of the sky, head over heels.  In the same movement, the tail reached for Laserdream and Shielder.

Legend down, CD-6,  The armbands announced, just in time to coincide with Legend hitting the ground.

Oof.

Laserdream put her own shield up, and I could remember how Photon Mom, Laserdream and Shielder all had the same basic powers.

Oh, so she’s not entirely without shields, nor is Shielder entirely without lasers. They’re each just better on one than the other.

The difference between them was that while Photon Mom’s powers were well rounded, Shielder had a far, far, better forcefield, almost no flight ability and weak laser blasts.  Laserdream was the opposite… her lasers and flight were good enough, but her forcefield, not so much.

It’s a pretty good setup.

Incidentally, I really like that Taylor is referring to Photon Mom by that nickname.

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Though he’d disappeared from my line of sight, I saw his afterimage continue rising.  Shielder, floating in the air with the help of his sister, used a forcefield to stop the pair of them from being pulverized.

Nice.

The shield flickered out of existence a fraction of a second later.  His reserves were exhausted, after helping save me and others from the last wave.  He wasn’t strong enough to take a hit from Leviathan or his afterimage.

…not nice.

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Jotun deceased, CD-6.  Dauntless deceased, CD-6.  Alabaster deceased, CD-6.

Well, there goes our favorite Greek-themed hero, among others.

Wait. Why is it CD-6 now? I don’t really know what CD-5 meant to begin with, but something’s changed here all of a sudden. Is it the location on the grid, maybe? We did move.

He lashed his tail, sending out a scythelike blade of water toward the other group, turned and leaped.

Miss Militia down, CD-6.

Well, that didn’t exactly go the way she wanted.

Fenja and Menja moved to attack him, each tall enough to be at his shoulder level, but Leviathan was quicker.  He darted backward, gripped the side of a building, and turned to run up the wall.

Like a true kaiju. Gotta get that King Kong in there, y’know.

He used his tail to radically adjust the angle of his ascent, hooking it on an open window and swinging himself forward over the edge of the roof, before anyone on the ground could get a bead on him.  Debris fell where his tail had pulled through a section of the wall.

He’s getting away… not good.

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The third was a modified explosive I recognized.  It bounced off the ground between Leviathan’s foot and the hand he had planted on the ground, landed a ways behind and to the side of him, and exploded much like any other grenade might.  What I recognized was the shimmer in the air around it, a near perfect sphere encompassing the surrounding area, catching Leviathan’s leg, the end of his tail, part of his waist and stomach.

Whoop, gotcha!

The explosion made Leviathan rear back, and the water that followed in his wake moved slower in that bubble, slowed down with each passing second.

Okay, yeah, this is definitely Bakuda’s tech.

The time slowing bubble would’ve really gotten him stuck if he hadn’t reared back. It’s hard to get your body parts out of a space that experiences time at a crawl.

Leviathan himself wasn’t as affected, and he had one foot and an upper body outside of the bubble to help him pull himself free.

…except apparently he’s partially resistant to he warping of spacetime itself?? Or is that just because he’s a speedster?

He raised his leg free of the golden string goop and up out of the sphere, lashed his tail toward the crowd I was at the back of, catching three people, entwining the tip around their arms, legs and necks.

Uh oh.

He flicked them into the center of the time distortion bubble, where they got caught, unable to make their exit fast enough to avoid being frozen in time.

Well… shit.

There goes that cleverness they weren’t supposed to underestimate.