I’m playing around with a browser text replacement script, and I made one for “arms” to “arse” without realizing that it would affect, well…
Tag: 8.2p1
I apologize if anyone is disturbed by the occasional morbid jokes I make. Humor is how I default to dealing with some things, and I’m really sorry if it ever seems like I’m trivializing things that mean a lot to you.
Endbringer of Extermination 8.2
So is this where we call in Godzilla to step on Leviathan and save the day? I dunno, I haven’t watched any of those monster vs. monster kaiju movies (or really any kaiju movies at all).
The battle has started and at least one formerly unnamed cape, WCM, is dead and many injured. Dang it, Timmy!
At least we’ve learned a lot about the Endbringers, finally. There are three of them: Behemoth, Leviathan and the Simurgh. Behemoth is the strongest one physically, the Simurgh is the most cunning one, and Leviathan balances the traits out more and has a focus on water. Leviathan’s known powers so far include monstrous form, macro scale hydrokinesis with extreme range and capacity, “water echo” leaving water behind every time he moves, high movement speed (especially when swimming) and possibly weather manipulation.
And Brockton Bay just so happens to be situated on a sinkhole-vulnerable aquifer. Great.
We’re certainly in for a ride here, folks!
Next chapter, Taylor needs to figure out what she’s supposed to do in this battle as her comrades fall around her. This won’t be easy.
See you then!
He was fast.
Fast enough that his clawed hands and feet didn’t touch the road beneath the water – after the initial push, his forward momentum was enough to let him run on the water’s surface.
As long as he keeps moving, at least, but I have a feeling water never particularly hinders Leviathan.
Fast enough that before I could finish drawing in a breath, to scream or shout something or gasp in horror, he was already in the middle of us, blood and water spraying where he collided with the lines of assembled capes, and the armbands were beginning to announce the hopelessly injured and deceased. Carapacitator down, CD-5. Krieg down, CD-5. WCM deceased, CD-5. Iron Falcon down, CD-5. Saurian down, CD-5…
Let the bloodbath begin.
No pun intended.
As he got closer to the heroes and villains that were organizing into lines, shouting something I somehow couldn’t hear over the buzz of fear and adrenaline, I could almost make out his face.
It’s a little late for “buzz”, don’t you think? :p
It was something you never really saw in the videos or pictures. He had no nose or mouth, no ears.
Eyes?
That would be a weakness Taylor could exploit. She’s got experience in getting rid of that particular facial organ.
His face was a flat, rigid expanse of the same scaly skin that covered the rest of him, like the scales of a crocodile’s back. The hard, featureless plain of Leviathan’s ‘face’ was broken up only by four cracks or tears – one on the right side of his face, three on the left.
Huh. Scars from previous attacks?
In each of those dark gaps, the green orbs of his eyes glowed with a light that pierced through the rain.
Huh, never mind. Asymmetrical eyes. It’s unusual, but I can dig it.
His head moved faster than the rest of him, twitching from one angle to the next like someone’s eyeball might flicker left, right, up and down, taking us all in, uncannily out of time with the rest of his body.
Not expecting so much immediate resistance, pal?
“Get ready!” Legend howled the words.
It was hard to say whether Leviathan heard the command or if Legend had spotted some tell, but Leviathan dropped to all fours at the same time Legend gave the command. With Legend’s cry still ringing in the air, Leviathan moved.
Something about that italicization and what we’ve been told about Leviathan’s mobility tells me he’s not gonna be moving just a few feet.
His proportions were wrong – his calves and forearms seemed too long for his height, his clawed fingers and digitigrade feet doubly so.
Basically, scratch “seem to remain in human form physically”.
He moved with a languid sort of grace as he advanced through the spraying water. His arms moved like pendulums, claws sweeping against the water’s surface, while his upper body swayed left and right, as if to give counterbalance to his great height.
I feel like this is reminding me of some kind of specific animal, but I can’t quite place it.
His tail, forty or fifty feet long and whiplike, lashed behind and around him in time with his steps, perhaps borne of the same need for balance that gave him his teetering gait.
Oh jeez, he’s a long boi.
Gallons of water poured around him in the wake of his movements, roughly the same amount of mass as the body part that had just occupied the space.
This ‘afterimage’ streamed down him and splashed violently against the water he waded through.
Ahh, that’s what it means.
As if the ocean didn’t make it hard enough to deprive him of ammo, he just needs to move a little to create loads more.
Also I guess Godzilla isn’t really associated with natural disasters.
I looked around, saw the other heroes and villains composing themselves, climbing to their feet in the knee deep rush of water. A few fliers were conveying our ranged combatants up to the rooftops.
Wasting no time, I see.
At the end of the road, downhill, was the Boardwalk, or what was left of it. From what I could see through the downpour, the wooden pathways and docks had been shattered by the initial wave, to the point that many were standing nearly straight up, or were buckled into fractured arches. Water frothed and sprayed as it rushed back against the ragged barrier that had been Brockton Bay’s high end shopping district.
R.I.P. the Boardwalk.
I think I’ll count that as a death for tagging purposes, and that’s before considering that it might not have been empty when the wave hit.
He was there, too. I could see his silhouette through the rain and the spraying water that was the tidal wave’s aftermath, much as I had on the television set. Thirty feet tall, the majority of him was was muscled but not bulky.
Ah, okay, so he is huge. I had just begun to think he might not be.
He’s not quite as huge as the Lovecraftian monstrosities would’ve been, but still a lot bigger than a regular human.
His hunched shoulders, neck and upper torso were the exception, bearing cords of muscles that stood out like steel cables. It gave him a top-heavy appearance, almost like an inverted teardrop with limbs and a tail.
Not gonna lie, the comparison to steel cables just made me think of Weld.
So Leviathan has a tail, huh?
…I just realized what a suitable comparison might be. We’ve got a tailed monster attacking a city, with associations to natural disasters, being fought against by the locals and other parts of an organization in this case sort of analogous to the army.
It’s a kaiju movie. Leviathan is like a kaiju.
Although admittedly he’s a really small one compared to even the smallest iteration of Godzilla.
The air was sucked out of my lungs, and there was a noise like thunder.
Much like when those out-of-towner heroes were taxiported in.
My entire body was rattled down to the core, and I thought I might have been struck by lightning. I was outside, I realized, on my hands and knees in what I first took to be the middle of a shallow river. The rain that pounded down on us was more like a waterfall than any rainstorm I’d been in.
Is this shallow river perhaps a street?
The taste of the salty ocean water filled my nose and mouth. My soaked mask clung to my lower face, forcing me to hang my head to keep my breaths from pulling more water into my mouth. A few coughs and heavy exhalations cleared the worst of it away.
Phew.
So is she alone? Did Strider end up scattering people?
We’d arrived in the middle of a road,
Well, one for two so far in this post.
one I’d crossed several times when going to the loft or leaving it. It was still dark out – either the sun either hadn’t started to rise yet, or the storm was enough to obscure it. The ‘river’ that I was kneeling in was the ebb of water from the first tidal wave, receding downhill toward the beach and the ocean. It brought waves of trash, litter, broken windows, wooden boards and dead plants with it.
It has begun.
That said, the voice being synthesized kind of makes it sound like Strider is an AI or something. That’s fitting if true.
Another option is that she’s mute.
Krixwell Liveblogs 