It was a contingent of lesser heroes that joined the fray, now.  It was as though the tougher fighters were staggering their attacks, to ensure that just the right amount of force was being exerted to keep Leviathan on his heels, taking the maximum amount of damage while being prevented from taking out too many capes at once.

Hm… I guess that might work?

These three were clearly members of the same team, flying in formations, moving in sync.  Two of them had super strength, and were gripping at the damaged areas of Leviathan’s flesh, tearing, pulling away as he lashed out in response, while the third had a massive battleaxe with what looked like a chainsaw setup on each blade, opening more wounds.

Oh hey, massive battleaxe guy. We’re getting closer.

And we’re actually doing some damage against Leviathan!

The damage was superficial, only taking off slices of Leviathan’s hide, but surely stripping away his hard exterior would help in the long run?

It may take about a thousand licks to get to the center of a lollipop, but we’ve got a lot of people doing the licking here.

I nodded, pressed both buttons on the armband and spoke, “Next!”

Hm… maybe last time, the armband recognized that the guy with the crushed leg was coming back to whatever sort of base has been set up to take care of the wounded.

As we emerged from the alley, there was a massive explosion,

“We”?

five times what had followed when Dragon launched her missiles at Leviathan.  Leviathan reeled – He had a shallow burn along one side of his neck, more on his face, one of the four glowing orbs of eyes were dim, but it wasn’t as much damage as I might have suspected.

Is this when Dragon’s mech explodes, or is that what Taylor means by “what had followed when (…)”?

He lashed his tail violently, as if in anger, or maybe he intended to use the echo of his tail’s lashing to strike down others, I couldn’t be sure.

Could be both.

His eyes widened, “I can’t do that!  Her face-”

“-Is half scraped off.  She’s not going to care about a burn.

Heh. Desperate times call for desperate measures, I guess.

There’s nothing close to a clean bandage anywhere here, and she’s going to die if we don’t stop the blood loss.”

Looking a little sick, he nodded, wreathed his hand in flame and then pressed it against the woman’s face.  She pulled away, made a gurgling noise.  I gripped her head and shoulder to keep her in position.

This is a somewhat odd medical procedure, but if it works, great!

“Come,” I said, after he pulled his hand away, “Help me move her.”

Greenfire – I wasn’t sure on his name, and it didn’t seem the time to ask

–

Heh. Not a bad impromptu name, at least.

If I had to give him a more thought-through one, I might’ve gone with something involving “Jade”, but that’s probably just because I’ve been reading Miraculous Ladybug fanfics with a “Jade Turtle” recently.

I hooked one arm under her armpit, I used both hands under the other one, and we hauled her off to one side, into an alley, propped her up sitting.

“I’ll stay here,” Greenfire said, “Keep an eye on her.  You go.”

Greenfire can probably do more against Leviathan, but there are a lot of people on that already.

Too heavy for me to lift, and I didn’t have first aid supplies.  Fuck, I could have kicked myself for that.

Ah, shit.

Anything I did have – epipens, smelling salts – were probably spoiled by the water and the septic conditions.  Not that they would have helped.

True. It’s not like Leviathan is making venomous bugs sting people. That’s Taylor’s domain, buster.

I looked up, looked around.  Spotted what I needed.  Someone was manifesting green fireballs in his hands, lobbing them at Leviathan, where they exploded violently.

The color green immediately makes me think of Eidolon, and some of the fanart had him manifesting green orbs of some sort in his hands (well within his established power set, which is “pretty much anything”), though it seems odd for Taylor to describe him as “someone”.

I rose, hurried to him, keeping low so I didn’t walk face first into anyone’s laser blasts or gunfire.  “Your fire, is it radioactive? Is it anything special, extra dangerous?”

I don’t know why Taylor considers this what she needs. She’s lost me on this one.

He gave me a look, lobbed another fireball, “It’s fire, it combusts if I concentrate it.”

“Okay.  Great.  I need your help.”

He nodded.

Is she trying to use his fire medically? Scorch off the other half of the woman’s face so she’s at least kinda symmetrical?

I showed him the woman.  “Blood loss is a problem.  She needs the wound cauterized.”

Ahh, I see… I knew there was some medical use for heat, but I couldn’t remember what it was.

I hurried to the next target on my armband.  It was a woman witih a white costume, white hair and what was probably skull paint on her face.  It was hard to tell, and not just because of the rain smudging the make-up.  Nearly half her face was torn off.

…that’d do it, yes.

Glanced by one of Leviathan’s claws, maybe, or caught by the lash of water from his tail.

Either way, if she survives this, she’s gonna have a hard time avoiding getting a certain nickname from the Batman fans in her life.

“Hey,” I shook her gently by the shoulders, “You awake?  You alert?”

Maybe a stupid question.  I didn’t even know if she could talk with her face like that.

If she can’t, there might be other methods of communication available to her, like moving an arm.

A small wave sloshed against us, she sputtered and turned her head, didn’t respond.  That was a ‘no’ to at least one of my questions.  I suspected her condition was a combination of shock and blood loss as much as anything else.

Another thing that getting half your face torn off will do to you.

A series of explosions and a massive collision marked Dragon firing a full salvo of missiles and entering close quarters combat with Leviathan.

Speak of the devil!

Also, this sounds familiar too. It seems we’ve rewinded a bit again, seeing Dragon’s attack and seemingly self-destructive “suit”splosion again, from Taylor’s perspective.

In other words, Tattletale hasn’t happened yet and her fate is still up in the air.

Alexandria was gone – no, wait, she was rising from the water, where Leviathan had been holding her down.  Standing, staggering, falling again.  Had he been drowning her?

Not a pleasant experience.

Dragon began breathing out a stream of what might have been plasma in Leviathan’s face.  From his increased struggles and frenetic clawing at her, I gathered he didn’t like it.  Still, it was doing surprisingly little damage to him.

That seems to be the norm by now.

Leviathan found a point to get a solid grip on Dragon’s armor, and tore off a plate.  His next swipe took off another, and it careened a good twenty feet before landing with a heavy splash, close enough to me that I was caught in the spray.

Yeah, here we go. I wonder if Taylor will figure out that Dragon isn’t in the suit like Tattle is about to, simply through her habit of thinking about things rather thouroughly.

Tattle certainly has an advantage, though.

Most of the capes took the chance to retreat and expand the gap between themselves and the Endbringer, firing lasers or sonic blasts or whatever else at him as they retreated.

Nice work, Alexandria, giving people time to withdraw further.

It was so strange to think I was just like the rest of these people.  Even after all this, the last few long weeks to get used to being in costume, it felt like I was the bystander.

To be fair, you’ve got a relatively weak power under these sorts of circumstances, but even if you didn’t, it’d probably take a while to get used to this thought.

Maybe it was that my power was ineffectual here, in the water and the rain, maybe everyone felt that way.

…I can’t think actually reasonable things without Taylor either ninjaing me or following right after, can I. 😛

A flier with fringes of ribbons down the sides of her arms, legs and body landed next to me, “Give him to me.”

Nice. Now you can go find someone else to help.

We transferred the bird-boy to her grip, and they were gone in an instant.  My armband flashed and pointed me toward the next target.

The armband is really advanced. Dragon did a good job.

Anyone else might have been staggered in the face of several tons of water moving forward at the speed of a locomotive.  Alexandria intertwined her fingers, swung her arms forward as though she were holding a baseball bat, and cracked her hands against the image a second before she disappeared headlong into it.

Didn’t we see her do this in 8.2 or Interlude 8 as well?

There was a sound like a bomb going off, water spraying everywhere, followed by an earthshaking crash as Alexandria used the crook of her arm to catch Leviathan around the neck and heaved him backwards and onto the ground.

…damn

Let’s just say I understand why nine-year-old Taylor liked Alexandria so much.

She’s wrestling the mini-kaiju. That’s badass as fuck.

Our progress was agonizing.  Move too slowly, and we fell behind, move too fast as we waded through the trash-ridden water, and we risked falling, lost precious time.

And lives.

Had to find the middle ground, and we weren’t moving fast enough even if we did find that sweet spot.  Hell, it would have been kinda difficult even without my burden.

Yeah, this is a pretty vulnerable situation.

Chubster down, CD-5. Good Neighbor deceased, CD-5.  Hallow deceased, CD-5.

On some level, I feel like Wildbow is getting less serious with these cape names. 😛

Sham, Harsh Mistress (probably has gravity powers), Woebegone (healer?), Chubster, Good Neighbor…

It was Alexandria who speared forward to confront Leviathan.  He saw her coming, ceased his onslaught to rear back and then lunge ahead to meet her.  When they were only fifteen feet apart, he stopped, let his water echo rush forward to meet her.

I don’t fully get how he can do this. If the water appears in the space he vacates, then he’s in the way of it. You could argue that it appears in front of him due to rearing back as he stops, but that water should have backwards momentum, just like the parts of him that rear back, right?

I wanted to apologize for not having a better power to help this person, but the breath would have been wasted.  It was hard work to help him along, to slog through the water.

Maybe if Taylor had found someone with the power to make animals grow or shrink to team up with, she could control a swarm of giant bugs to pick up wounded or fallen capes.

The fight was ongoing, with a dozen heroes in Leviathan’s vicinity, more than twenty others shooting at him from range whenever there was a clear shot.

pew pew pew

Yet more were on the fringes, to keep him from slipping past the combatants and to take the place of the fallen.

Ah, yeah, there’s been a bit of an “only a few at a time” mentality going on here.

It wasn’t enough – the damage we were doing was negligible and his long strides were advancing him further and faster than the rest of us could back away through the water.  Trash and debris threatened to trip us up with every step we took.

Water is notoriously slow to move through, especially when it’s getting above your knees.

He forced a fighting retreat, moving quickly and often enough to avoid being caught by any concentrated fire.

Coddamn speedsters…