She gave me a look, I turned my attention to her armband, tried to discern where Leviathan fell on the grid.  Around the same moment I figured it out, I felt him halt.  “BX-8 or very close to it!  He’s downtown, and he just stopped moving.”

I wonder if there’s any particular reason why he went there in particular, or if he just destroyed in whatever direction he felt like.

Also: It’s pretty clear that Leviathan has some interest in actually causing mayhem directly. If he only wanted to destroy the city, and to do so with certainty, he could hide out of sight while messing with the aquifer, but instead he’s attacking in person, allowing people to fight back. Either he’s not smart enough to think of that, or he has his reasons for this course of action.

I’m inclined to think those reasons are that it’s fun, in whatever twisted way whatever contains Leviathan’s apparent consciousness defines “fun”.

Alternatively, maybe Endbringers feed on misery and death somehow.

“You sure?” came Chevalier’s voice from the armband.

That confirms it: Those who aren’t moderated in the chat don’t have their voices replaced. Makes sense, though.

“Ninety-nine percent.”

“Noted.  We’re teleporting forces in.”

Laserdream didn’t argue with me.  We arrived at the scene of the battle a matter of seconds later.  Familiar territory.

Here we go.

“He’s at or near BZ-6, heading south.”

The area we were entering had been further from the heroes with the forcefields, where waves hadn’t had their impact softened or diverted by the the PHQ’s forcefield or the larger, heavier, blockier structures of the Docks.

Oof, so this place was probably wrecked far more than everything we’ve seen.

Entire neighborhoods had been flattened, reduced to detritus that floated in muddy, murky waters.  Larger buildings, what I suspected might have been part of the local college, were standing but badly damaged. Countless cars sat in the roads and parking lots with water pouring in through shattered windows.

At some point, a road stops being a road and becomes a river.

Not sure how that interacts with parking law. Are you allowed to park your car in a river? Does it make a difference if you parked before it became a river or after it? Lawyers, get on it.

Laserdream changed course, to follow Lord street, the main road that ran through the city and downtown, tracing the line of the bay.

“What are you doing?” I asked her.

“The wreckage goes this way,” she responded.

Hm, but it sounds like Leviathan didn’t, according to Taylor’s power?

I looked down.  It was hard to tell, with the damage already done, the water flooding the streets, but I suspected she was right.  One building that looked like it should have stood against the waves thus far was wrecked, and mangled bodies floated around it.  It could have been the tidal wave, but it was just as likely that Leviathan had seen a target and torn through it.

Yeah, but did he tear through it with his body, or with a blast of water?

“Maybe, but he might have been faking us out, or he detoured further ahead,” I said.  I pointed southwest.  “That way.”

Yeah, that’s what I was thinking too.

What spooked me was that I’d been through the Weymouth shopping center more than a hundred times.  It was the closest mall to my house.

Ahh, shit. Yeeah, we might’ve seen the last of that house – in liveable conditions, anyway.

Damn, what if Tattle was wrong and Danny stayed home due to his concern about Taylor taking precedent over his own safety? It would be a stupid decision, but panic isn’t exactly the kind of thing that makes people make smart decisions.

When I sensed Leviathan turning south, towards downtown, I didn’t feel particularly relieved.  There were enough shelters and enough space in the shelters to handle virtually every Brockton Bay resident in the city proper.

“Virtually” is a scary word sometimes.

From what I remembered, not everyone had participated in the drills that happened every five years or so, choosing to stay home.  It was very possible that some shelters near the residential areas might prove to be over capacity, that my dad, if he arrived late, might have been redirected to another shelter.

Hrm.

One closer to downtown, where Leviathan was going.  I couldn’t trust that he was out of harm’s way.

Yeah, no, that was never a certainty.

We passed over a gas station he’d stampeded through, and Laserdream erected a crimson forcefield bubble around us to protect us from the smoke and heat of the ongoing blaze.

“BZ-4,” I reported.  Then I saw movement from the coast, called out through the armband’s channels, “Wave!”

Okay, so there are coordinates starting with B too. I was just starting to wonder if the C all the coordinates so far have started with could stand for something else, since it seems like we’re much deeper into the system on one axis than the other.

I was glad to be in the air as the tidal wave struck.  The barrier of ice and the wreckage at the beaches did a lot to dampen the wave’s effect, but I watched as the water streamed a good half-mile into the city.  Buildings collapsed, cars were pushed, and even trees came free of the earth.

Oof.

No cape casualties announced from Laserdream’s armband, at least.

Good! That’s improvement.

We passed over the Weymouth shopping center.  It had been devastated by Leviathan’s passage, then had largely folded in on itself in the wake of the most recent wave.

“Fuck this, I’mma just fold myself together and cry. Shopping centers can cry, right?”

From the way the debris seemed to have exploded out the far wall, it didn’t look like Leviathan had even slowed down as he tore through the building.  That wasn’t what spooked me.

Hm? What did, then?

My power’s range was almost double the usual, and I had zero clue as to why.  I wasn’t about to complain.  Using Laserdream’s armband and my right hand, I passed on details.

It may be a mystery, but at least it’s a helpful mystery.

“He’s at CA-4, heading Northwest!”

The roads beneath us were damaged, shattered.  When Leviathan had shifted the position of the storm sewers, he’d gone all out, and he’d gone a step further than just the storm sewer – he’d also torn up the water supply network for the city.

Ouch. All of this is going to be such a bitch to repair if the city survives.

The occasional pipe speared up between the slats in the sidewalk, fire hydrants were dislodged, and the water that poured from these was barely a trickle now.  That might have meant too much was leaking from the damaged pipes to give the water any pressure.

Of course, Leviathan can still give it pressure, and direct it through the pipes as he wants.

As he’d beaten a path deeper into the city, he had found opportunities to do damage on the way.  A police car had been thrown through the second story of a building.  A half block later, as he’d rounded a corner, he had elected to go through the corner of a building, tearing out the supporting architecture.  The structure had partially collapsed into the street.

Not only is he going to get a parking ticket, but he’s gonna be that guy who cuts through the corners, too, no matter what’s in his way?

Rude.

Laserdream and her mom looked at me.  I felt like I should say something.  Give condolences?  Tell them that their family had died well?  I couldn’t think of a way to put it that didn’t tell them something they already knew, or anything that wouldn’t sound horribly offensive or insincere coming from a villain.

Awkward…

“Let’s go get that-” I stopped, both because I suddenly felt that something like motherfucker was too crass, and because I wanted to bend down to pick up Armsmaster’s Halberd, the one with the disintegration blade, grabbing the pole of it with my good hand. “Let’s go get him,” I stated, lamely.

Ooh, that might come in handy. Even if it doesn’t quite manage to sever Leviathan’s tail, it can still be used on other things.

It took some doing for Laserdream to lift me without pressing against my broken arm or touching the blade. She wound up holding me with an arm under my knees and the crook of her elbow at my neck.

Alright, now imagine the two of them exiting a church like this, both dressed in wedding dresses on top of their cape outfits. Neither one of them know how they got there.

(Trickster is hiding in the bushes, snickering to himself. Meanwhile, a newlywed lesbian couple find themselves wherever Laserdream and Skitter were just a moment ago, and suddenly in their underwear.)

She held the Halberd for me.  I resigned myself to being cradled – there was no dignified way to be carried.  She had morning breath, a strangely mundane thing – she’d likely been woken up at half past six in the morning by the sirens, hadn’t had time to brush her teeth or eat before coming here.

I guess in one way, the early meeting with Coil was helpful for Taylor.

Lady Photon – Photon Mom to Brockton Bay residents and the local news media – bent down by Armsmaster.

I suppose the evident heartbreak she’s dealing with is one reason for the change in how Taylor refers to her in the narration. This is a newly widowed and, uh, de-sonned and de-brothered woman, and Taylor is painfully aware of that fact. Least Taylor can do in this situation is mentally refer to her by her proper name rather than the nickname she doesn’t care for.

She created a shaped forcefield tight against his shoulder, lifted him with a grunt.

Not sure what that’s supposed to accomplish. Stop the bleeding, I guess?

“Take him,” Lady Photon’s voice was strangely hollow, though firm.

“No.  I’m a better flier, and more likely to hurt that thing in a fight.  I’ll take the girl and help against Leviathan.”  Laserdream had a little more life in her voice than her mother did.

Makes sense. Besides, it might be a bit less awkward for Taylor to be carried by someone closer to her own age.

The girl.  Like I didn’t warrant a name, or it wasn’t worth the effort to remember.

To be fair, they haven’t actually asked what it is yet. Which, alright, is kind of rude, and there are better ways to refer to someone whose name you don’t know. All I’m saying is she might not be using your name because she doesn’t actually know.

A part of me wanted to stand up for myself, a larger part of me knew this wasn’t the time or place.

After a long few seconds of deliberation, Lady Photon nodded.  She looked like making that decision aged her years.

Poor Photon Mom doesn’t want to lose the one child she has left. 😦

More than anything else, though, the two of them had the look of people who had seen half their immediate family brutally and senselessly torn apart over the course of one terrible hour.

Literally all the men we know of in that family.

These women are not having a good day.

As though they’d had their hearts torn out of their chests and were somehow still standing.  It wasn’t that I had seen anyone in those circumstances before, but that look existed, and they had it.

I like this analogy.

It was painful to look at.  It reminded me of when my mom had died.  I’d been in a similar state.

The feeels– And just as I paste that into the liveblog post, Nyan Cat starts playing.

Maybe I should switch to a less varied, more fitting playlist.

Her daughter had a stylized arrow pointing down and to her right, on her chest, with a half dozen lines  trailing behind it, over her left shoulder, one line zig-zagging across the others.

Fitting.

The entire design gradually faded from a ruby red to a magenta color in much the same way her mom’s did.  Similar rows of lines with the zig-zag overlapping them ran down her legs and arms.

A starburst can look both like a shield and as a bunch of lasers going in all directions, whereas this design is unambiguously lasery.

She didn’t dye her hair in her ‘color’ like her younger brother did -had, past tense-, or wear the tinted sunglasses, but she did wear a ruby red hairband over her wavy hair, to ensure she always had a coquettish sweep of hair in place over one eye, and to pull the magenta, red and white color scheme together.

Is this the first mention of Shielder’s blue hair in the actual text, or did I miss that earlier?

Anyway, I like Laserdream’s design. 🙂