I wiped the beads of water from my lenses with my glove, which only seemed to divide each of them into a mess of smaller droplets.  

Anyone who wears glasses knows how difficult this kind of thing can be.

Leviathan was bigger than me, stronger, faster, tougher.  I had to think like a mouse who might run into a murderous cat at any moment.  Like prey.  Use my small size.  Hide.

Sounds like a decent plan, but from there you still need to work on figuring out how to help. Hiding is what all the civilians are doing.

I needed a position that kept me out of sight, gave me a good vantage point, but left me free to make a run for it.  A spot where I had an escape route if things got bad.  To top it off, in the event Eidolon couldn’t stop the wave, I could also do with cover.

Sounds like you might want some height, but too much height makes it hard to have an escape route. That’s what got Tattle killed.

It was the sort of street you saw often enough in the Docks.  Large buildings lined either side, like giant boxes made of concrete or brick.  I could have maybe found a fire escape to climb up, in the hopes that I’d be out of reach of the wave, but my experience with Lung back on day one had taught me better.

Heh, yeah.

The higher ground was an advantage, sure, but if your opponent could get up or down from that location faster and more easily than you could, that stopped being an asset really damn quickly.

It suddenly becomes a trap.

If there was anything that was going to be useful, it would be on ground level.  I saw a rusted van that had sat in front of an old workshop since I’d first passed through this area, all tires flat, windows broken, interior gutted.

Hm. If not for the broken windows and Levvy’s way with water pressures, it could’ve made a decent wave shelter, but no.

A chain link fence stretched between two buildings, but someone had cut the wires that connected the fence to the frame, so half of it was curled back and waving slightly in the wind and rain.

The Docks really are a mess.

I was hurting, too.  The only thing keeping the throb of my arm from consuming my attention was the fear.  It was a kind of grim cycle:  the pain reminded me of why I should be scared, but the emotion and the adrenaline kept the pain as this intensely unpleasant background chatter in my brain, where it might have crippled me otherwise.

A pretty basic survival mechanic. Pain and fear are good for alerting you to danger, but it doesn’t help if it prevents you from doing something about that danger.

It was a teetering balance that had me on edge in a way I’d never experienced to this degree.  There were probably people who lived for that hypervigilant, heart-racing, brain-going-in-overtime experience.  I wasn’t one of them.

Yeeah, not really Taylor’s style.

Priorities.  Back to what I was thinking about – there obviously wasn’t anything to be found here that would win me a fight against Leviathan or even hurt him.  Ridiculous to think that way.  Any advantages to be gained would be ones that kept me alive.

That’s the first step towards winning a fight, anyway.

That’s an oddly hopeful way of saying she’s abandoning hope.

She isn’t, really. What she’s doing is abandoning hope that Leviathan will be Somebody Else’s Problem, hope that the others will defeat him, and putting that hope on herself instead. She knows, logically, that she’s not very fit for this battle, but she’s holding on to the hope that she can find a way to help nonetheless.

She’s not abandoning hope, she’s redirecting it.

Stuff I could use…  hardly.

Naturally.

It wasn’t like there was any weapon I could deploy, no feature of the terrain I could use to deliver the critical blow.  This was Leviathan.  

This was Leviathan and your power is to make insects do your bidding.

A creature that had killed more people in the last 12 years than I had even seen in my entire life.  Seen in person, anyways.

Nah, I think that holds true even without that qualifier.

Hell, you could swap out “the last 12 years” for “one day” and I still think it’d hold true. I doubt you’ve seen nine million people in total over the years.

…that said, I’m saying that as someone who lives in a minor town in a country of about five million.

I was scared.  A huge part of me wanted to just close my eyes and hope Leviathan didn’t come, that I wouldn’t have to deal with him.  It would be nice to join the three hundred and fifty thousand other Brockton Bay residents that were trusting the heroes to handle things, find a peace of sorts in surrender and helplessness.  Except I couldn’t.

Unless Taylor gets incredibly creative, she’s practically without powers here, but her heroic instinct forces her to do whatever she can to help nonetheless. Even though she’s nominally a villain, and even if it turns out she’s not able to save anyone except Clockblocker, just the fact that she’s still trying under these circumstances… that makes her a hero.

I’d seen firsthand how Leviathan had taken down some of the strongest capes.  I couldn’t find refuge in that kind of trust anymore.  My mental and emotional resources were better spent on figuring out how to help than they were on hope.

Yeah, that’s fair enough.

Beyond those first few moments after Leviathan woke up, it woul (sic) be anyone’s guess.

Then round 2 will be on.

Taylor mentioned orders. Where is she supposed to go, and what is she supposed to do there?

I hurried away from the site Armsmaster had indicated to me, my right hand on my left elbow, keeping my arm from moving too much.  Sector CC-7, a block and a half South, a block West.

Alright, well, that answers the first question, I guess.

So strange, to think that this was an area I’d walked through a dozen times, on my way to or from the Loft.  Now I was looking at it as a battlefield, trying to figure out what routes Leviathan would take.

Sometimes, home becomes a battlefield.

It sucks, but it’s the reality of it.

What things I had to watch out for – the grates leading down to the storm sewers, the rain barrel on top of one of the buildings that might or might not be intact enough to retain any water in it.  Puddles.

I wonder how much the storm drains have been able to do against Leviathan’s water echo and waves. Probably not all that much.

But they’re still threats. Sources of even more water for Levvy to fling around.

Too many others were capable of delivering the hurt, but were too fragile: Browbeat, Shadow Stalker, Lady Photon, Purity, Laserdream, Brandish and others I didn’t know.

The Ward with the crossbow, some guy with crimson skin.

Have I learned what Brandish’s power is? I don’t think I have.

There was a light show in the sky above as Kid Win teleported in pieces of the cannon he’d had at the bank robbery, manifesting them onto a hovering platform set directly in front of Leviathan.

Yesssss

The Tiro Finale is back, biches!

He’d get anywhere from a few seconds to a minute’s worth of concentrated fire with the gun firing on the highest settings, directing a beam through a gap in the bars to where Narwhal’s razor sharp forcefield had opened a gap in Leviathan’s neck.

Hell yes.

There were a little more than fifty of us left.  

There must’ve been a lot more people at the start than I got the impression of in 8.1.

Hookwolf, Fenja, Menja, Genesis, Aegis and Manpower were among the fifteen or so standing combatants that remained and were able to go toe to toe with Leviathan. 

Considering how fast Levvy dispatches his enemies, that’s not a lot.

Parian, the girl in the doll costume, had formed some massive stuffed animals – a lion and a pig that stood as tall as Leviathan’s shoulder.

“formed”? So does that mean she has the power to make them, or has she been stitching all this time?

Tougher than they looked, according to her.  I had my doubts.  I mean, it wasn’t just that they were stuffed animals, but according to Parian, this was her first fight.

She is a rogue, after all.

While Kaiser worked, Armsmaster was simultaneously ensuring that he could maximize the damage delivered the second Leviathan moved again.

Ah, I see. Yeah, I suppose this is a golden opportunity to attack without Leviathan being able to react in time.

Gingerly, he worked with the grenades the Protectorate had liberated from Bakuda, the same explosives Miss Militia had been firing at Leviathan, and hooked them up as motion activated or proximity mines.

Oooh, that’s a really good approach. Got anymore of the time bombs? Although I suppose that didn’t hinder him that much last time.

A complicated affair, I imagined, when your target could start moving any second, and when you couldn’t fully know or understand what the individual bombs did.

I’m still kind of surprised the Protectorate is using them in the first place. I mean sure, take any advantage you’ve got, but this is Bakuda we’re talking about. I have a hard time believing she didn’t predict this kind of thing might happen if the Protectorate were to get their hands on her stuff, and it would be just like her to stick a bunch of bombs that would hurt/kill the user among all the other ones, and label nothing so that only she’d know which ones do what and are safe to use.

In the end, though, it was still our best bet to do one final measure of damage against Leviathan before he was free to wreak havoc once more.

Yeah, it’s a pretty clever way to go about damaging him the moment he moves – instead of relying on people to identify his movement and react to it, they’ve covered him with devices that do both parts automatically.

I got my orders and left behind a bizarre scene where Armsmaster was working hand in hand with Kaiser, of all people.

Heh, the things a temporary truce can do.

I suppose Kaiser is good at organization.

Kaiser worked to build the same sort of trap that he’d imprisoned Lung in, some time ago, creating bars of metal between and around each of Leviathan’s limbs, a cage tight to the body.

Oh, but apparently that’s not what’s motivating this cooperation.

This is a good idea. The more they can restrain Leviathan while he’s out, the more additional time they have once he’s back.

Rune and another telekinetic were working to bend the metal from Kaiser’s shaken barrier around Leviathan’s limbs and face.

Nice.

So what’s Armsy’s role in this?

It wouldn’t last.  Leviathan was too big, his tail extended a long distance behind him, and it was thin and supple enough to slip through almost any barrier Kaiser could erect, strong enough that it could bend metal.  Leviathan would get free, there could be no illusions on that front.

Yeah. It’s all about how long it takes him to do so.