Tag: Chapter 8.2

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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?

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“Kyushu, the night of November second and the morning of the third, 1999.  His sixth appearance.

At least it doesn’t sound like the Endbringers appear super often overall.

Nine and a half million killed when the region was swamped with tidal waves from every direction while Leviathan disrupted prearranged evacuation attempts.  Nearly three million evacuees rendered homeless, a nation sundered.

Brutal.

“These were errors, grave mistakes from defending heroes.  We had but one strategy at the time – to hem him in, minimizing the effects of growing waves and casualties until Leviathan was beaten into a retreat or Scion arrived.

Hm. Does Scion scare him away? Or just kinda pick him up and cart him off somewhere?

These areas, however, were too vulnerable.  Waiting let Leviathan build up the strength of his attacks, and we lost.”

Does he get stronger the longer he fights, kind of like Lung, or is it simply a matter of him building up more… ammo in the form of sea water? Something like that?

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He went on, “Were it just that, this fight might still warrant a show of force like what we’ve gathered here.  But things are more serious than that, which brings me to our primary concern.  As much as Dragon and Armsmaster’s advance warning might give us the opportunity to make this a good day, other issues threaten to make it just the opposite.

Hrm. So besides the early warning, things are even worse than usual, huh?

“I spoke of Leviathan as a hydrokinetic.  I can’t state this enough – Leviathan is primarily a hydrokinetic on a macro scale.  There is no better illustration than the days where Leviathan won.

…tsunamis? Floodings? That kind of thing?

Or worse, we stop getting all this rain in buckets and get it in one big droplet?

“Newfoundland,” he spoke.

I knew exactly what he was speaking of, and mouthed the date as he spoke it, “May ninth, 2005.  Nearly half a million dead. 

Rest in peace.

image

Mondays, am I right?

The Canadian island simply gone, after the shelf of land holding it up cracked in the face of what we now understand were incredible pressures beneath the water level.

Damn.

Welcome to beautiful Newfoundland, Atlantis.

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“I will tell you what you may not know from the videos.  He feels pain, he does bleed, but few attacks seem to penetrate deep enough past the surface to seriously harm him.  He is like the other two Endbringers in this respect.

So how do you defeat him? Just annoy him until he goes away?

Also Taylor has enough problems with doing damage to people like Lung or Hookwolf. What exactly does she expect to accomplish here?

“What sets him apart is his focus on water.  

Makes sense. A Leviathan is traditionally a sea monster, after all.

You’re likely aware of his afterimage, his water echo.  This is no mere splash of water.

I’m not entirely sure what this means but it doesn’t sound good.

At the speeds Leviathan can move, surface tension and compressibility make water harder than concrete.

So does that mean he runs around on the surface like some bugs do, but can’t slow down or he’ll sink?

He also has a crude hydrokinesis, the ability to manipulate water, and there will be water on the battlefield.  We believe that this is what lets him move as fast as he does when he is swimming.  Faster than he is normally, far faster than any speedster we have on record.”

Actually maybe we don’t want him to go under the surface.

I wonder if the storm is a result of him manipulating the water vapor in the sky. That said, it seems like it needs something more to go from clear day to maintaining a “buckets of water” rainstorm.

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Legend paused, glanced out the window.  The storm clouds had reached the beach, and torrential rain stirred the water into a froth.  Not just rain, but buckets of water.

(Lewd.)

We’re running out of time.

“We think of Leviathan as the middle child; he was the second of the three to arrive.    He is not the physical powerhouse Behemoth is, nor the cunning manipulator that the Simurgh so often proves to be.

Interesting. So there are three Endbringers total: Behemoth, Leviathan and the Simurgh. The Simurgh, believed to possibly be a mind reader, is a cunning manipulator, which implies a fairly good intelligence.

Oh, I guess I haven’t actually made this explicitly clear yet, but I’ve been a bit unsure on how human these monsters remain, not just physically, but mentally. That the Simurgh is intelligent is a sign that they might be doing all this by choice.

I’m not sure if that’s a good thing.

So if Leviathan’s strength isn’t Strength or Wisdom, then what is it? Magic, as in powers that don’t involve enhanced physical ability or insight, maybe?

That said, I would advise you to think of him as having many of the strengths of both siblings at once. 

A bit of a balance, I see. So he’s not as strong as Behemoth or as cunning as the Simurgh, but he’s both strong and cunning where Behemoth and the Simurgh probably each focus on one of the stats?

You’ve seen the videos on television and the internet.  You know what he is physically capable of.

I don’t. Those videos would be spoilers.

I want to be clear that despite the image he might convey, he is not stupid, and he can display a level of cunning and tactics that can and will catch you off guard.

So he does appear to be stupid?

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There was a quiet murmur through the room at Legend’s words.  One in four dead.  And that didn’t mean the rest of us would get away unscathed.

Also a good point. You could easily get horribly maimed and still survive.

(Hear that, Coil? ;p)

“I’m telling you your chances now because you deserve to know, and we so rarely get the chance to inform those individuals brave enough to step up and fight these monsters.

Which I suppose means you get quite a few overconfident ones. That said, underconfidence, lack of morale, is possibly even more damning.

The primary message I want to convey, even more than briefing you on the particulars of his abilities, organizing formations and battle plans, is that I do not want you to underestimate Leviathan.  I have seen too many good heroes,” he paused for a fraction of a second, “And villains, too, die because they let their guard down.”

Good heroes, good villains, good rogues… rest in peace.

Extermination 8.2

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There we go. As I was saying…

Howdy! Welcome back to the Penny and Clyde Show, with me, Jaune Arc!

Last time we met a bunch of people who are likely to die in the upcoming chapters, and I bummed myself out at the end by speculating on who would. On the horizon looms a dark storm and a terrible beast known as Gl’bgolyb. Soon enough our bug-themed protagonist K.O. will join her (formerly?) fellow Teen Titans and a slew of other capes – among them Spiderman, Enoby, Pumbaa, Garnet and the Triangle Clan – to fight this evil Doombot threatening their city.

I’m not sure the fight proper will start in this chapter, though there’s not much time left – Celestabellebethabelle said it’s on the order of minutes, so whatever he still has left to say in this briefing meeting, he’d better say it quick. Whether or not they actually start fighting Gl’bgolyb in this chapter or not, chances are we’ll at least finally learn a bit more about it, and the Doombots in general.

I hope I didn’t mix up any more names. That would be embarrassing.

Anyway! Let’s get this show on the road, and may the odds be ever in your favor.