Armsmaster spoke, authoritative, less impassioned, but confident,

To be clear, the fact that Legend looked to Armsmaster because it was Armsmaster’s turn to speak changes nothing about my previous post. I wasn’t saying Legend looked to Armsmaster because the former was expecting the latter to sacrifice himself or anything.

“The Wards are handing out armbands of Dragon’s design.  These are adjustable to slide over your arm and should be tightened around your wrist.  The screen on the top of the armband notes your position on a grid, as well as Leviathan’s last updated location.  Use this.

That’s handy.

You’ll also note there are two buttons.  The button to the left lets you send messages to everyone else wearing an armband.  It will not, unless you are a member of the Protectorate or otherwise a veteran of these fights, directly communicate what you say to everyone else wearing an armband.

So basically the expert channel? Any exceptions for this? Maybe that it does go in to Dragon or someone else who can redistribute it if it’s important?

Dragon has a program screening messages and passing them on through the network based on priority, to cut down on unnecessary chatter that could distract from crucial information.

Something else, fair enough.

Unless it’s an AI that’s advanced enough to be a person of its own, the limits of which is grounds for endless philosophical discussion.

If you must bypass this three to five second delay, speak the words ‘Hard Override’ before conveying your message.  Abuse of this feature will lose you the ability to send any further messages.”

Good call adding in an override. Sometimes that short delay can be dangerous enough.

“You are doing a good thing.  The greatest thing.  This is why we are tolerated, why society allows and accounts for the capes that walk the streets and fight in its towns.  

Those pesky capes can play their little game, as long as when it really matters, they put their lives on the line to protect everyone from the true threats.

Because we are needed for situations like this.  With your assistance, we can forestall the inevitable.  Your efforts and, if you choose to make them, your sacrifices, will be remembered.”

Even those of the villains? I mean, you did bring up the villains who had sacrificed their lives in the past in this meeting, but I mean by the public. Will the public remember their sacrifices? Or will the Protectorate gloss over it like they did with the villains’ efforts against the ABB?

He looked to Armsmaster.

Okay so in response to “sacrifices”, I was thinking of maybe repeating that I think Armsmaster might end up performing a heroic sacrifice (and if he doesn’t, he still has a huge death flag). I decided not to because it seemed a bit redundant, but that was before Wildbow put this immediately after a line about being remembered for one’s sacrifice.

My doubt is dropping. I think Armsmaster is going to sacrifice his own life in a way that may be critical to the victory of this battle.

Legend frowned.  The windows were rattling with the force of the rain against them.  It was almost impossible to see through them with the water that streamed down, and the overall gloom beyond.

I genuinely do wonder if Leviathan has weather manipulation as a power of its own.

Either way, the rain gives him a clear advantage that he can use even if driven away from the sea.

“This is what the Endbringers are.

Yeah, I’ve been wondering about that. Thank you for all your answers.

As of yet, we’ve been unable to stop them, unable to get through even one confrontation without grievous losses, be it civilian casualties, the loss of a city, or the loss of the lives of some of the bravest and strongest of us.  And they will keep coming, one after another, winning these small victories, and winning some major ones.

And that’s when they come alone.

Can you even imagine if they hit a location together? Damn.

“Brockton Bay, this location, is a soft target.  The city was originally founded at this location because of the proximity to the coastline for trade routes and an aquifier that provided the first settlers with access to fresh water.

Interesting!

This aquifier, essentially an underground lake beneath the city, is our weak point.  From the moment Leviathan shows himself, we expect Leviathan will stir and manipulate this underground reservoir to erode the surrounding sand, silt and rock.  Add the tidal waves from above, with the resulting tremors and impacts…”

…plop, suddenly Brockton Bay is a jumbled mess in a wet pit.

I doubted anyone failed to understand what would follow.  A section of the city, perhaps most of the city, could collapse into the aquifier.

He paused, “We have to end this fast.  Each wave he brings on top of us is stronger than the last.

There’s that bit about him getting stronger again. It really does sound like it’s a part of his power that it gets stronger each time.

This means we have two priorities.  First, we cannot let him out of our sight.  From the moment the battle is initiated, we hem him in, sustain an offensive onslaught.  If we let him slip past our defensive lines, precious time will be wasted chasing him, getting him in another situation where we can contain his movements.

Plus he’d be able to get to a more tactically advantageous position for himself if he wanted.

“Our second priority is that we need to find ways to hurt him.  If you cannot, if your attacks are deflected or prove otherwise useless, work to support those who can.

Sounds reasonable. I guess that’s the situation Taylor ends up in.

It is vain to hope to kill him, but he can be whittled down enough that he will flee back to the ocean, and if we hurt him enough, it may delay the time before he is capable of making another attack elsewhere.”

Nice.

The television screen showed a cross section of Brockton Bay as seen from ground level.  The West end of the city was bordered by hills, and the terrain sloped gradually from the base of the mountain down to the water.

It’s unclear to me from the maps and Wikipedia whether this is the case for our world’s Brockton or Plymouth, Massachusetts, but one thing I did find out was that Plymouth is in an area called the Plymouth Pinelands.

I think we’ve had enough pines for a while, so I should probably move on from trying to figure out an exact location for the city for now.

Directly below the image of the buildings that marked the city’s location, there was a large cavern, bordered by rock on all sides except the part nearest the beach, which was sand.  It was marked blue – filled with water.

Shit.

This is the kind of formation that causes sinkholes, and here we have a villain who can use the water inside the hole to make it unstable. If Leviathan knows the cavern is there (and there’s a good chance he can sense water like Taylor senses bugs), he can theoretically make sinkholes swallow large portions of the city.

That would be a teeny tiny bit inconvenient.

He paused.  “We have since classified the locations the Endbringers target as either hard targets or soft targets.  The hard battlefields are where we stand our ground, buy time, wear him down.  The soft ones are locations where we cannot afford to do this.”

And Brockton Bay is one of the soft targets?

I wonder if this is based on Wildbow researching the subaquatic geology of the northeastern American coast. Maybe specifically in the area around Plymouth, Massachusetts.

I mean, it seems like something he’d do.

Of course, making Brockton Bay one of the soft targets is something he’d probably want to do anyway as a writer, to add tension and a sense of even more urgency to the situation, and this is certainly something he’s well within his rights to do as a matter of artistic license. It’s not like Brockton Bay isn’t a fictional place to begin with.

Although I kinda suspect that Brockton Bay might have replaced Plymouth and Kingston, Massachusetts. That would be a little strange considering Plymouth’s importance in American history in our ‘verse, but I guess it could just have gotten a different name.

There’s also the possibility that part of Massachusetts is gone in the Wormverse – as I’ve mentioned a long time ago, there is an inland city named simply Brockton near Boston and Plymouth, which is the other county seat of Plymouth County. Maybe that’s a harbor town in this world for some reason?

I just kinda… had a hunch that that would be a Monday. Dunno why.