The boy with the metal skin formed one hand into an oversized blade,

I’d be saying the same thing about Weld as I did about Flechette just a moment ago, but thankfully we readers learned his name in Interlude 7, so my frustration over Taylor not knowing it isn’t quite as high.

I’m sure she’ll learn it in time, one way or another.

as long as he was tall, managed a solid hit at Leviathan’s injured knee as the Endbringer whirled around to face Flechette.

Good. It seems like people are generally attacking the knee now, having identified it as a weakened spot. Which of course is helpful, since the more his movement is hampered, the better.

Leviathan slapped the teenage hero down, swiped at one of my swarm-people, then was forced down onto all fours as Purity struck him square between the shoulderblades with a column of light.  A metal shelving unit shot from the interior of a store, Ballistic’s power, I was almost positive, and made Leviathan stumble back.

So far this chapter is going pretty well. No one’s died yet, except for Sir Tony and the other stuffed animals, and not that many people are down.

Let’s hope I didn’t just jinx it.

We had the upper hand, but that wasn’t necessarily a good thing.  More than once, in the past hour alone, the Endbringer had demonstrated that any time the fight was going against him, he’d pull out all the stops and do something large scale.  A tidal wave or tearing up the streets.

Right.

We did not have what it took to withstand another wave.  No forcefields, no barriers.

Aren’t you at least somewhat in from the coast? I’m not sure, but if you are, that might help a little.

I had one of my gathered swarms explode into a mass of flying insects as they got close enough to Leviathan, make their way against the drenching rain to rise up to Leviathan’s face.  Many clustered in the recessed eye sockets that looked like tears or cracks in his hard scaled exterior.  Others crawled into the wounds other capes had made.

Nice! I don’t think there’s much they can do there, other than maybe blinding Leviathan or making it easier for you to track his precise movements, but nice.

Shadow Stalker down, BW-8.

Ah, yeah, taking half of Hookwolf to the head doesn’t sound pleasant.

I didn’t recognize the next cape to charge in to attack.  A heroine in a brown and bronze bodysuit.  She flew in low to the ground, gathered fragments of rock and debris around her body like it was metal and she was the magnet, then went in, pummeling with fists gloved in pavement and concrete.

Cool!

You could tell, almost right away, the woman didn’t have much training or experience.  She was used to enemies that were too slow to move out of her way, who focused their attention wholly on her.  Leviathan ducked low to the ground, letting the heroine pass over him, then leapt for Flechette.

“Here, let me let you through…”
“But I wanted to hit you.”
“Oh, I can’t let you do that.”
“Rude.”

In the very last fraction of a second, the girl flickered, and was replaced by the brown-suited cape, who took the hit and stumbled back, fragments of rock breaking away.

Trickster?

Flechette dropped out of the sky where the cape had been, landed hard.  It took her a few seconds to recover enough to fire another bolt at Leviathan, strike him in the shoulder.  Trickster had just spared brown-suit from making a fuck-up that got someone killed.

Nice.

Leviathan used his claws to heave Hookwolf off his face, tore the metal beast in half, and then threw the pieces down to the ground, hard.

Welp.

One landed straight on top of Shadow Stalker, the other almost seemed to bounce, rapidly condensing into a roughly humanoid form before it touched the ground again, landing in a crouch.  Hookwolf backed away, the blades drawing together into a human shape, skin appearing as they withdrew.

Huh. Are you sure you’re not Hookworm?

He brought his hand over his head and pointed forward at Leviathan.  A signal for the next front-liner.

Yeah, this sounds like the kind of experience you’d want to switch out after.

“Careful!” the crossbow-girl – Flechette, I took it – replied, loading another shot.

Shadow Stalker timed her advance with a pounce on Hookwolf’s part.  Empire Eighty-Eight’s most notorious killer latched onto Leviathan’s face and neck, blood spitting around where the storm of shifting metal hooks and blades made contact with flesh.  

Nice!

Shadow Stalker ran within twenty feet of the Endbringer, firing her twin crossbows.  The shots penetrated this time, disappearing into Leviathan’s chest, presumably fading back in while inside him.

Oh right, that’s part of her power – the crossbow bolts have the same kind of fading Shadow Stalker herself can do. By getting closer, she made it so that the bolts don’t have time to fade back in before they hit Levvy.

Flechette fired a needle through Leviathan’s knee, and the Endbringer’s leg buckled.  He collapsed into a kneeling position, the knee striking the ground.

Sweet!

Huh, y’know, with how Flechette’s projectiles are consistently described as needles, I can’t help but wonder if Parian’s telekinesis would work on them.

It wasn’t much, I didn’t have many bugs gathered here yet, but I was able to pull some together into humanoid forms.  I sent them moving across the battlefield towards Leviathan.

Nice. Distractions!

If one of them delayed him a second, drew an attack that would otherwise be meant for someone else, it would be worth the trouble.

Yeah!

I looked around, trying to find Brandish, Chevalier, Assault or Battery, or even someone tough.  Someone that could take the Halberd and make optimal use of it.

Hm, good idea, but I have a feeling you’ll end up using it yourself, somehow.

One of crossbow-girl’s shots,

Can somebody tell Taylor this girl’s name already?

like a needle several feet in length, speared under the side of Leviathan’s neck, out the top.  Shadow Stalker’s shots, at the same time, failed to penetrate Leviathan’s hard exterior.

Huh, I guess hers are more powerful.

“Flechette!  I’m getting closer!” Shadow Stalker called out, looking back at her new partner.

Thank you.

All of the ‘stuffed animals’ deflated.

Well, that answers that question.

To be clear, it doesn’t actually rule out the “breath of life” theory, but that needing upkeep makes it less likely.

The girl with the crossbow and Shadow Stalker opened fire, joined by Purity from above.   Laserdream dropped me at the fringe of the battlefield with the Halberd before joining them, flying above at an angle opposite Purity’s, firing crimson laser blasts at Leviathan’s head and face.

Alright, time to figure out what you do with this Halberd in the meantime. Try to stay alive.

Leviathan readied to lunge, stopped as a curtain of darkness swept over him, the majority dissipating a second later, leaving only what was necessary to obscure his head.

Grue! Good to see you!

Well. Not see you, per se. You know what I mean.

That said, you stay alive too, please.

It took Leviathan a second to realize he could move out of that spot to see again, a delay that earned him another on-target series of shots from our ranged combatants.  Grue was here, somewhere.

Nice work.

I had been near here a little less than two hours ago.  The skeleton of a building in construction was in view, a matter of blocks away, an unlit black against a dark gray sky.  Beneath that, I knew, was Coil’s subterranean base of operations.

Well. I guess that construction is at a high risk of having to start over, or never being completed.

Parian had given life to three stuffed animals that lumbered around Leviathan.  A stuffed goat stepped forward, and sidewalk cracked under a hoof of patchwork leather and corduroy.

Huh. That takes some force. Does her power also make these stuffed animals as strong and heavy as their forms and sizes would imply – i.e. as if they weren’t made of fabric and stuffing?

A bipedal tiger grabbed at an unlit streetlight, unrooted it, and charged Leviathan like a knight with a lance couched in one armpit.

I dub thee Sir Tony.

The third, an octopus, ran interference, disrupting Leviathan’s afterimages before they could strike capes and wrapping tentacles around Leviathan’s limbs if he tried to break away.

Nice work!

Parian was gathering more cloth from the other side of a smashed display window, drawing it together into a crude quadruped shape, moving a series of needles and threads through the air in an uncanny unison that reminded me of my control over my spiders.

I guess she has some power over needles, cloth and threads to help make the stuffed animals too. Neat.

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.