Weaver Nine (Worm Fanfic (AU)) - Thread 2

[Thinker6]

Okay. Here we go. This is a Worm fanfiction called Weaver Nine. A first draft of the first chapter was originally posted here. The story started in thread one, and is now being continued here in thread two.

Index:

Arc 1: Prologue
1.1

Arc 2: Slash
2.1
2.2
2.3
2.4

Arc 3: Allies
3.1
3.2
3.3
3.4.1
3.4.2
3.4.3
3.4.4
3.5.1 and 3.5.(-1) Bonus File
3.5.2
3.5.3
3.6
3.7
3.8
3.9
3.10
3.11

Arc 4: Aftermath
4.1
4.2 and 4.2.(-1) Bonus Scene
4.3
4.4
4.5 and 4.5.(-1) Bonus File(?)
4.6
4.7 (updated 2015 Feb 9)

For a polished, improved version of the fic, see fanfiction.net here and ArchiveOfOurOwn.org here. The ArchiveOfOurOwn link lets you conveniently download it in ebook format.

Author's note explaining the story: this is an alternate universe fanfiction in which (Taylor and Jack were born in each others' places).

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Fanfics of this fanfic (non-canon):
Thoughts from Doctor Mother by PoignardAzur

 

[Thinker6]

This is the conclusion of the arc, a double-update.
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Weaver Nine

Allies 3.10

Leviathan's true self, his black inner core, floated a hundred and fifty feet in the air at the center of his sphere of water. A network of tendrils writhed across the surface of the sphere, across the pedestal below that supported it, drawing together to form a hundred whirlpools aimed at targets throughout the city.

Jack let his ruined right hand drop by his side, stretched his newly healed left hand onto Armsmaster's halberd, and pressed the tip of his pinky finger into the gray blur of the nanothorns. He hissed in pain and forced himself to concentrate on his points of contact with the blades, on projecting them at his targets. He was getting better at using his power on the thorns. Each microscopic piece of his body gave him thousands of points of contact with the thorns for the brief moment before it was torn apart. Pressing his flesh into the thorns more quickly meant more points of contact, more blades to send at his enemy.

Two seconds and his finger disintegrated down to the first knuckle. The cost for him to project a wide-angled attack, disrupting the forming whirlpools on the lower half of the sphere. The whirlpools on the upper half survived intact and accelerated their spins, then were dispersed by Eidolon's aerokinesis, each whirlpool pierced with a lance of solid air. They had stopped Leviathan's first volley.

Leviathan was moving now, pulling his sphere of water along with him, moving the length of a city block in seconds. He was on a path to pass directly between Jack and Fletchette. Jack saw his plan. Once Leviathan got between them they wouldn't be able to combine their forces to block his attacks. He would be able to aim all his whirlpools at a single target. Fletchette would have good odds of surviving the first volley, protected by Alexandria and Eidolon, but if Leviathan sent his full arsenal at him...

Fletchette shot a bolt through a building this time, attacking Leviathan while staying out of his line of sight. The Endbringer dodged anyway, dancing to the side within his sphere of water and then returning to its position at the center. Was it sensing her attacks somehow? Sensing the disturbance in the water when her bolts pierced his sphere, instantly moving aside before they hit?

Leviathan abruptly dropped into the lake and disappeared from view.

What?

"Shit. He'll be faster underwater." said Armsmaster. He stowed his nanothorn halberd and moved to the edge of the roof, scanned the surface of the water. Leviathan's lake in the center of the city, the flooded streets around it.

"He was-" Jack bit back a hiss. His voice was coming out wrong, tight with pain. "He was already in water. The sphere."

"No. He's fast in the water, inside the sphere, but his hydrokinesis is slow. Carrying the sphere with him slowed him down, he was going sixty miles an hour at most. And it takes him seconds to make those jets."

"Still fast. Enough to tear us apart."

"Right." said Armsmaster.

A moment of silence. They stood side by side, looking out at what was left of their flooded city, still and calm under the moonlight.

Jack coughed. "Not attacking. He retreated, then. We drove him off."

Armsmaster scanned the water again, then looked over the edge of the roof. "No."

Jack had only a second to react. Armsmaster barreled into him at high speed, grabbing him by the waist with one arm while using the other to unsling his standard halberd and shoot out his grappling hook. Jack forced himself not to flinch, forced his mangled hands away from his body so they weren't damaged further by the impact, and the next moment he was flying through the air.

A roar erupted from behind him. The building they had been standing on had collapsed in an instant, its first ten stories engulfed by a living mass of water that struck at weak points and tore apart foundations.

Still in flight, Armsmaster retracted his grappling hook and fired it again, changing their course in midair to aim for a twelve story apartment building. As they flipped up onto the rooftop, the first building they had been grappling to was torn apart by a storm of Leviathan's water jets.

Jack gasped for breath. He had the wind knocked out of him. Armsmaster held him by the waist for a long moment, keeping watch for Leviathan. Then he let go.

"Not coming after us?" said Jack.

Armsmaster shook his head. "He was passing by. We weren't his target."

Jack staggered to the edge of the rooftop to see. Leviathan was in the flooded streets halfway across the city, having traveled a mile and a half in seconds. He was forming a new sphere of water atop a new supporting pedestal, more slowly this time without a vast lake to draw from.

The Society broadcaster was still speaking, trying to coordinate a last-ditch attack. "What? The railgun's at the Medhall building, head west and look for the shimmering- FUCK!"

Leviathan was attacking the Society, using his newfound mobility to truly engage their base for the first time in the battle.

Jack stared. Of course. He was so stupid, he should have known. He was starting to understand the Endbringers, to see them as true opponents instead of forces of nature, but he had forgotten the most important part of their strategy. They wanted heroes to fight them, they wanted to stage a grand battle, so they always needed a target, something to force the heroes to give a spirited defense, some rich resource or great advance of humanity they aimed to destroy. The oil fields that Behemoth burned when he first arose under Ciudad Bolivar, the newly formed European league of parahumans that Leviathan destroyed when he sank Oslo, the century of peace and concentrated economic power that the Simurgh turned to terror in Lausanne.

And now he realized that Leviathan had been moving in a nearly straight line throughout the battle, distracted by cape attacks and targets of opportunity but always drawing nearer to the Society building, always sending waves and lightning and water jets to attack them even when he paid for it by diverting resources from his close quarters battles. The Society had been doing something here in his city, a secret project that the heroes didn't know about, that he hadn't heard a whisper about despite all of his research. A secret project that Leviathan had discovered with his unnatural senses, a project that he saw as a great boon to humanity or a threat to his game of endless war. A target for termination worthy of his personal attention.

Now there was nothing left to stand in his way. Leviathan had moved himself into a position close to the Society building where he could target them with a full battery of water jets, while keeping Jack and Eidolon behind him, facing the back of his sphere of water, unable to see or disrupt the whirlpools forming on the other side.

Jack couldn't stop him. He could probably focus his blades and project them through Leviathan's four hundred foot sphere in a narrow area, turning a small cylinder of water into vapor, but that would only disrupt a fraction of the hundred whirlpools that must be forming on the other side. Fletchette's group was trying to stop the Endbringer with little success. Eidolon was gesturing with his hands, trying to do something with his aerokinesis. Fletchette fired twice at Leviathan's core and he dodged both shots with ease.

Effects flickered into being around the Society building as the villains tried to defend themselves. Their barriers of ice and crystal and glass were supplemented with forcefields, with a wall of flame, with a fusillade of bombs detonating in front of the building to create zones of shimmering heat and warped space.

It wasn't enough. A hundred beams of water raked across the Society building, this time at much closer range than before. Half of the beams were deflected by the defenses but the other half struck home, knocking out forcefields, shattering barriers, and gouging deep into the foundations of the building. The middle of the building crumbled. The top floors sank by twenty feet and began to tilt precipitously.

The broadcaster's voice, desperate now. "We still have a shot! Hold out for one minute, we're going to try to trap-"

Her voice cut off as the roof above the top floors caved in.

Leviathan continued toward the Society base at a steady clip, his sphere of water engulfing buildings as he passed, shaking their foundations until they crumbled into the flooded streets. He unleashed another barrage of beams at the Society's base, sending half of the beams into a small area inside the collapsed top floors of the building, the other half deep into the building's basement. Striking at specific targets, at capes he considered a threat. Great chunks of the building crumbled to the ground.

Armsmaster was shouting, using his visor to communicate the the other heroes. "We need evac immediately, highest priority! We have a weapon and power proven highly effective against Endbringers. Send Strider if you-right. Jetstream? Rerouter?"

Jack swallowed. That was it, then. His time in the limelight was over. The only goal that remained was survival.

Evacuation wouldn't be easy. The city was flooded with ten feet of water. It was impossible for anyone but a Mover or a champion swimmer to leave. Teleporters could do it, but apparently their best had died in the battle.

Fuck. It would be humiliating to die due to such a poor use of resources. Yes, teleporters were powerful in battle. Jack had gained a special appreciation for that during his fight with Oni Lee. Even with the element of surprise, with his well-laid plans, with him and Sophia working together like a well-oiled machine, it had been a near thing. And yes, he wasn't averse to risking precious resources or even his own life to get a chance to deal a critical blow to his enemies. That was exactly the plan he had used to take out the leaders of the Empire. But that approach only worked when you took a calculated risk. When you understood your opponents, when you researched their powers and personalities, when you could make plans where the level of risk was clear and it could be weighed against the reward. That was why he had had such success in his campaign to wipe out the villains in his hometown, why he was so reluctant to move to a new city with opposition he only knew from Parahumans Online entries.

Now that he had seen an Endbringer face to face, seen how the Protectorate and the Society fought him, he realized that even the most powerful capes in the world barely understood the Endbringers at all. Yes, he had seen that they weren't invincible. The Endbringers could be hurt, defeated, and even killed. They had pressed Leviathan hard enough to make him reveal trump card after trump card to survive. But the fact that the Endbringers had trump cards meant that it was impossible to plan a decisive engagement to end the threat. His own attack with Armsmaster had seemed to deal critical damage, until it revealed an inner layer of flesh that still resisted them. What they needed was the ability to try out attacks like this and then retreat, regroup, survive. Come back next time with an even better nanosword.

And he wanted to come back next time. He had gained Armsmaster's trust. The Tinker would make him a new blade, one he could use without having to mutilate himself, maybe even one inspired by Fletchette's power that could hurt the Endbringer's core. Or they would find a healer to give him regeneration and painkillers to let him use the thorns as a matter of course.

Yes. He would come back stronger with a new message for the enemies who had taken his city away from him. A message about the true nature of power, the same message he had sent to the leaders of the Empire, now magnified a thousandfold. The Endbringers thought they were playing a game. That humans were nothing more than insects to be burned under the magnifying glass. Wrong. He would live to see them panic and squirm when he and his allies ripped them apart piece by piece, when they realized in their last moments that even forces of nature could be killed by the gnats they chose as prey.

Armsmaster was still speaking into his visor, searching for a way to evacuate. "Dovetail? Aegis?" He looked to Fletchette's group. "Alexandria? Eidolon?"

Eidolon was still protecting Fletchette with his violet octagonal forcefield, but he was no longer gesturing his hands to use aerokinesis. Instead his hands were raised in the air, supporting a hazy bubble slowly coming into place around him and Fletchette. A means of escape.

Alexandria flew through the air in a blur and landed at his side. "Eidolon will evacuate you. Stand by me and I'll carry you."

Armsmaster went to Alexandria's side without a word, let her wrap one of her arms around the waist of his power armor. He looked at Jack. "Good job, Jack Slash. We hit that bastard hard today. We'll hit harder next time."

Jack stepped forward. He had fought one of the scariest monsters in the world, the most powerful supervillains who were worse than a natural disaster, and he had done as much damage as the greatest of all heroes. He wanted to hold on to that feeling.

All he needed to do was survive-

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>> Harbinger was sweating now. It almost made him smile. Ekwensu was the first opponent in years who had made him sweat in a long-range firefight. He would have appreciated the novelty if he wasn't an inch from death.​

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A maser beam, hot enough to make the trees it hit burst into flame. Harbinger dodged by five feet, a necessary margin to avoid the heat of its passage. Ten seconds later, a storm of obsidian swords materialized in the air around him. He picked out the four swords that were a danger, turned them aside with precise taps on the flat of their blades with the butt of his sniper rifle. Ten seconds later a mutant ice-breathing tiger flickered into existence in mid-pounce. He rolled out of its way, opted to neutralize it by kicking dust in its eyes, freeing up his hands to take a shot at his target. A clean shot. One point four miles. One ricochet off a wall, a second ricochet off a cobblestone on the street, striking Ekwensu in the heart. Death in less than a minute. Not fast enough. The ten seconds were up. Ekwensu's power restored his body to pristine condition and granted him a new form of attack. Harbinger jumped into a tree to avoid foot-long poisoned caltrops spearing from the ground under his feet.​

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Ekwensu's attacks were always powerful but their true danger was their unpredictability. Harbinger's own perceptual power was strongest when he had time to collect data on his targets, to get a feel for their numbers, for the margins of error, until he became able to dodge their attacks by mere millimeters if that was what it took to approach and land a fatal blow. That was impossible against Ekwensu, whose faint tracings of mathematical notation disconcertingly reset every ten seconds as he drew new powers from his endless bag of tricks.​

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But over the years he had learned that the numbers weren't everything. And so he saw it. Not something the numbers told him directly but a pattern he saw through his own skill at reading them. A commonality between the equations. He charted the range of his target's powers, the probabilities of the many futures he might face, the paths to futures where his opponent would be vulnerable. He saw it now. A path to neutralize his opponent with high probability, albeit with some degree of...unavoidable self-sacrifice.​

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I have you.​

<<​

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All he needed to do was hold out for one more minute, find a way to hold on to that feeling for one moment longer before he was forced into retreat.

Jack stopped, spoke to the heroes. "The Society said they have a plan. I saw their railgun, their cape who made all the bullets hit. We can still kill him if Fletchette uses her power."

Armsmaster glanced to the Society building.

Leviathan had reached the ruins of the Society building and enveloped them in his sphere of water. The water was vibrating, breaking the remains of the building into fragments, breaking the fragments into shards, breaking the shards into dust.

Armsmaster turned back to Jack. "They're dead, or retreated. You have good courage, but it's time for us to go."

Alexandria reached out to Jack, but he backed away.

"They said they have a plan!" shouted Jack. He gestured with his left hand, the one that still had fingers left, that wasn't a throbbing mass of pain. "Just wait for one more minute! You ever see his core before? This is the best chance you've ever had to kill one of these motherfuckers!"

"We don't have time for this discussion." said Alexandria. She moved forward in a blur and grabbed Jack by the elbow. An inescapable grip.

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>> Can't move the crosshair, wait for it-​

<<​

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A flash of light, then an earsplitting roar.

A massive explosion erupted from the ruins of the Society base, shattering the two city blocks around it, ripping apart Leviathan's sphere of water and sending him flying half a mile in the air.

Leviathan spun wildly in the air for long seconds, trailing his water echo behind him. Fletchette took advantage of his temporary vulnerability and sent two bolts into him in quick succession, timing them perfectly to strike him mid-flight.

Leviathan fell toward the lake he had carved in the center of the city. His flight trajectory sent him directly over ground zero of the battle. Over the cast-off cocoon of his inner flesh that still lay suspended in the air above the lake, still trapped by the two fields of frozen time.

A great dark blur struck from the sky, a deafening crack.

Jack stared. Leviathan was gone.

The cast-off shell of the Endbringer's flesh was swinging in the air, like a hammock stretched between the time fields. The shell was bulging with something trapped inside. On top, blocking the slit the Endbringer had cut in the shell to escape, was an enormous red-hot slug of metal, crumpled and half-melted.

The orbital gun.

The Society must have retargeted their gun during the battle to aim at Leviathan's prison. They hadn't been able to fire it then, the Endbringer had been surrounded by capes, but they had used the shot now to strike the Endbringer out of the air, to seal him once again inside his cast-off shell.

For a moment, everything was still.

Fletchette was the first to recover, single-minded in her determination to attack. She sent a shot through the shell of flesh to strike at the Endbringer inside. The shell writhed, the prisoner inside reacting.

A trickle of water began to flow from the hole Fletchette's shot made in the flesh. Leviathan's echo, creating new water inside his prison. He began to reform his sphere from the water of the lake.

No. If he surrounded himself in water he would escape again, much faster this time around. The Endbringer's flesh was much worse for wear after the first engagement, and the exit to the trap was blocked off by mere metal.

"Armsmaster! The thorns!" shouted Jack.

Jack turned to Alexandria, tugged at the arm she was gripping. "I can stop him, I can keep him inside! Go for the railgun!"

Alexandria looked to Armsmaster. Armsmaster studied Leviathan, then nodded and unslung his halberd. "Right. We'll keep up our attack, keep him on the defensive."

Alexandria let go without a word and flew to Fletchette.

This was it. The chance he had wished for. To show the beast who took his city away from him that he wasn't a toy to be played with, that even Endbringers could be brought to an end. Jack wrapped his arm around the halberd, stretched his hand toward the thorns, and focused on his target.

 

[Thinker6]

Weaver Nine

Allies 3.11

Jack focused on his target. He found a tug of war. Leviathan was forming his sphere of water, and the sphere was studded with whirlpools ready to fire. But the sphere was being distorted, chunks of it repeatedly dispersing and reforming, and the whirlpools were being disrupted. One of Eidolon's powers, a new form of aerokinesis. Enough to slow down the Endbringer but not enough to stop him.

Jack pushed the remains of his left pinky finger into the thorns. His heard himself let out a scream of pain, but it didn't matter. He let his body deal with the pain. What captured his attention now was the sheer scale of the fight. The greatest of heroes had acknowledged him as their equal, had deferred to his judgement, had trusted him to succeed against their greatest enemy. For a moment he felt as if he had left his material body behind him and become an entity that lived purely in the conflict that surrounded him, replaced his breath and pulse and brain with attack and defense and plans for victory.

Jack sent his millions of blades in a wide-angled attack around Leviathan, taking care not to hit the plug of metal that sealed him in his shell. The water within fifty feet of the Endbringer turned to vapor, surrounding him in a dense cloud of mist.

The mist moved like it was alive, reforming into tendrils that flowed in the air above the Endbringer and recondensed into water around the metal plug that sealed him in his prison, vibrating, trying to dislodge it. Then the water and vapor abruptly dispersed, blown out of the Endbringer's range by a gust of air. Eidolon's power.

Jack coughed, moved on to his ring finger. Him to turn the water to mist, Eidolon to disperse it. Their combined efforts could suppress the Endbringer until Fletchette got to her weapon, until the Society's reinforcements came with new ammunition.

Four seconds later his ring finger was a cloud of red mist. He moved on to his middle finger. They couldn't keep this up for long. Every second Jack turned the water near Leviathan to mist, but in the next second new water rushed in from the lake around him to take its place, the water's movement accelerated to be nearly instantaneous by the Endbringer's hydrokinesis.

They couldn't fight the sea, but they could still-

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>> Her last traveling trunk wouldn't fit through the door. It wouldn't budge, it was stuck...floating in the air. Aww, cute. Hyakujugo finally learned to fly!​

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Out of the corner of his eye he saw a dot floating in the sky, silhouetted against the moon. Capes from the Society base, teleported miles into the air-

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>> She remembered the halls of Jötunheimr, teatime with Lady Skaði, her elegant crystal tea set. She called it to her now as Venom's experiment began. The Tinker's new chemical formed and immediately dissolved the mixing vat, dissolved the containment case, dissolved the forcefield, and finally dripped down to collect safely in her crystal teacup below-​

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They couldn't destroy the sea, but they could still contain it.

A disturbance appeared in the water, a great circle ringing Leviathan. Chunks of white crystal slowly took form and rose above the surface of the water. The Society's defensive power, now being used to create a trap. A vast bowl around the Endbringer to hold the sea at bay, to keep the water from coming inside his radius of control.

The water in Leviathan's radius churned and tendrils writhed across the surface. A hundred whirlpools formed aiming at Jack and Eidolon. More vortexes formed underwater to crack and shatter the crystal before it finished forming the bowl.

No. This was their chance to contain him, to trap him for good.

Jack plunged his entire hand into the thorns, first his middle finger, then the next, then the next, then the meat of his palm, a relentless wide-angled attack to vaporize water across the Endbringer's entire control radius. Attack. Attack. Empty the bowl until the last dregs of the Endbringer's water were turned to mist. Leave it it trapped in its prison with only its echo for sustenance.

A great cloud of mist rose around the Endbringer, the aftermath of Jack's attack. The mist began to condense around the core, thick enough that it resisted Eidolon's aerokinesis for seconds. As the last of the mist was finally dispersed, Jack saw the fruit of his efforts...

A good start, but not enough. The bowl was holding back the sea, was reducing the flow of water to less than a tenth of what it had been before, but all the same, water was rushing back inside. Over the unfinished edges of its lip, through a hundred hairline fractures and three great gouges that Leviathan's underwater vortexes had torn in the bottom of the bowl, through the holes in the Endbringer's prison where his echo was pouring out. Leviathan was forming the water into buzzsaws to cut through his prison of flesh, into grasping tentacles to grapple the slug of metal above him, into vortexes to break the bowl apart, into whirlpools to attack the capes above.

Jack's allies were still fighting. The bowl was slowly repairing itself. Eidolon was pushing water out of the bowl with his aerokinesis and keeping water away from the core with a new power, some kind of hypergravity field. But they were being overwhelmed. They could only hold out for another minute-

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>> Fuck that. Behemoth was here, less than a thousand kilometers away in Hyderabad, practically next door. Mom and Dad were coming halfway across the world to personally honor their treaty and join the fight, and they seriously expected him to follow orders and sit tight and listen over the coms as they threw themselves into the meat grinder?​

<<​

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-and one minute might be enough. Jack caught sight of a spark of light on the horizon moving at high speed over the bay. A massive aircraft, the Society's reinforcements, ammunition for Fletchette to deal the deathblow.

Something moved above Leviathan.

The metal slug that sealed him in his prison was shifting, tilting in place. Leviathan was breaking free.

A hundred holes opened in the sides of the slug and spouted tendrils of water. Channels that Leviathan had carved into the metal with water from his echo, water he had created inside his prison. The tendrils grappled the slug, exerting force from all angles and directions.

The slug wobbled, then lifted up out of the shell of flesh and fell to the side. Leviathan's core shot up into the air like a bullet, surrounded by sphere of water five feet thick.

Eidolon's forcefield flickered into existence above Leviathan, a violet octagon blocking his path. Leviathan rebounded off the forcefield and began to fall, using his water to control his descent, gliding away from the bowl and moving toward the water of the lake. Eidolon shifted his hypergravity field onto Leviathan. It disrupted Leviathan's fine control over the water around him, slowed down his glide through the air, but had no effect on the core. Eidolon switched approaches and simply slammed his forcefield straight down, dispersing Leviathan's water and pressing him back into his prison of cast off flesh.

Leviathan wouldn't stay trapped for long. Water was still rushing into the bowl through the cracks and gouges in its walls, and as the water entered Leviathan's range it formed dozens of whirlpools ready to attack. Eidolon gestured and used aerokinesis to disperse the whirlpools.

Seconds later, twice as many whirlpools formed. Eidolon disrupted the ones aimed at him, at Jack, and at another target that must have been Fletchette. The rest of the whirlpools spun up and fired, shooting twelve beams of water into the city. A building collapsed by Jack's side, the last one that would have been close enough for Armsmaster to grapple to in an emergency. The Society's jet, the spark in the sky, spun wildly and went out of control. Their last chance of victory had been shot-

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>> "Keep driving. I'll boost you. Just think of it as a controlled descent-"​

<<​

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Their last chance of victory was still alive as long as the Society capes survived. He needed to focus, to make sure his allies kept Leviathan locked down long enough for Fletchette to begin her counterattack.

The water around Leviathan rippled, forming another set of whirlpools. Twice again as many as last time, too many for Eidolon to handle with his aerokinesis. The violet forcefield that was trapping the Endbringer flickered, as Eidolon prepared to return it to his side to defend himself-

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>> Eidolon's homing mass-annihilation bursts pummeled the Simurgh, striking home where the attacks of a dozen other heroes failed. He knew he could do better than this. He had a matter-distortion power that would amplify the bursts tenfold, and he was nearly certain it would answer his call. But to get that power he would have to give up the intangibility that protected him from the Simurgh's telekinesis, or the electromagnetic interference field that was disabling the minions of the Master 8 cyborg Tinker the Simurgh had driven mad.​

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He could do it...but he would have to trust the other heroes to protect him, even ask them to protect him. To admit his weakness to the world. And that was a line he could never allow himself to cross.​

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He wasn't a vain man. He didn't want to be praised or worshipped. He didn't want to be the great one, the most powerful hero in the world short of Scion. But that didn't change the fact that he was the strongest hero, and everyone knew it. To see him begging for help would be a fatal blow to morale. And if the heroes he trusted failed to protect him, if he lost his life, humanity would lose its best chance of killing the Endbringers-​

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"I've got this!" Jack shouted. "All powerful hero, trust the rest of us to protect you for once in your fucking life! Nail the fucker down and make it his coffin!"

An act of desperation, not even a coherent argument. He couldn't do any better, he barely knew the man. But he didn't need to convince him. He just needed to make him hesitate, stay the course, buy a few seconds of time. Eidolon's forcefield held the Endbringer in his prison for a moment longer.

Jack swallowed, then gave evidence to back up his words. He stretched his left arm along the halberd and fed his body to the thorns. The back of his hand, then his wrist, then the flesh and bone of his arm, using the contact to vaporize the water around the Endbringer again and again and again.

There was a piercing sound in his ears. Someone screaming. His own screams, maybe. His left arm was gone halfway up to the elbow, leaking blood. He reached out with the remains of his right arm. He would last another thirty seconds at most. Had to make it count.

A faint clap of displaced air behind him. One of the Society's reinforcements. A young man spoke with an odd tone in his voice, a forced cheer that didn't fit the situation. "Railgun's coming! Got power boosts for you here, perception and healing."

As Jack moved his right arm toward the gray blur of the thorns, his vision began to cloud with fine dust, motes floating in the air. No, not dust. The dust was moving, motes condensing to form lines, lines arranging to form patterns, thin tracery overlaying everything in his vision. The lines traced out paths of motion. Precise trajectories in three dimensional space, showing him how every piece of every object had moved, was moving, would move in the next instant of time. The ripples on the surface of the water, the slow destruction and regrowth of the Society's crystal bowl, the distortions of those trajectories as they were altered by Eidolon's aerokinesis and hypergravity field. Jack had thought Eidolon's powers came with fine control, but his new vision revealed that they were crude, coarse, their apparent precision coming purely from Eidolon's skill as their wielder.

And above all else Jack saw the tens of thousands of trajectories of the water in Leviathan's range, as the Endbringer used the water to form attacks and defenses, tendrils and buzzsaws and whirlpools and vortexes. Leviathan's movements were precise, measured, striking at weak points, directed to a hundred goals at once without a moment of wasted effort.

Leviathan must see the world like this, he realized. But now he would meet the Endbringer on his own terms.

Jack touched his right hand to the nanothorns and a brilliant flood of lines poured forth. The points of contact he had sensed through his power, now visible before his eyes with crystal clarity. He directed the lines toward the Endbringer's water, splitting them into groups to hit the most important targets. Sending his blades to vaporize the whirlpools, the vortexes, the buzzsaws cutting Leviathan out of his flesh. His strikes were efficient now, paying only a fraction of the cost in flesh to achieve double the effect.

A new set lines appeared in his vision, forming another layer on top of the first. Threads connecting pairs of objects. Showing how their movements were coupled, how attacks against one weak point could serve a double purpose and destabilize another. Jack struck at vortexes so as to make the resulting bursts of vapor destabilize whirlpools, struck at whirlpools so as to place their vapor in the path of Eidolon's wind gusts.

A third layer of lines appeared. Symbols in a language he didn't recognize, one with the taste of numbers, of mathematical notation. Equations governing the motion of hundreds of elements at once. Jack spent a sliver of flesh to project his blades in fifty two pencil-thin beams, striking eleven whirlpools in the precise places and at the precise times to destabilize them and turn them into calm ripples of water.

"Healing next. You'll be a bit of a monster but you don't look like you'll mind."

Jack felt someone behind him slice off the back of his rain poncho, jacket, and shirt, exposing his back to the air. Then something pricked his neck, and his flesh writhed. His new perception told him that his flesh was moving in impossible vectors, transforming. His back dissolved into a great mass of tendrils that practically leaped out to latch onto a package the man held behind him, biting deeply into the thick chunk of biomass and greedily drinking it in to make it his own. A disorienting twist in his gut and he blacked out.

Jack opened his eyes. The scene was the same. He had been out for less than three seconds. And the pain was gone. Not merely treated but entirely removed, as if his neural connections for sensing pain had been dissolved, recycled, put to another purpose. He opened his eyes, more of his pairs of eyes, and his surroundings snapped into focus in hyper resolution. A heightened sense of depth that would have been disorienting without his new perceptions. He flexed his hands, saw that he had hands again, great dark paws that were halfway between an a gorilla's fists and the claws of an insect. Two hands in front, more hands on the arms sprouting from his back like a spider's legs.

He turned to the capes behind him. Two Society capes in flight suits, Armsmaster staring at him with alarm. He tried to speak and found his mouth slipping over the words, voice a buzzing drone. "I-, I-, w-what did y-you, w-what am-"

Armsmaster put a hand on Jack's shoulder and turned him around. Forced him to look at Leviathan. "Focus! Get rid of the water, hurry!"

Jack hissed in frustration, a sound like a cicada's cry. Stupid, he had let himself get distracted. He had more important things to worry about. In the time he had blacked out the bowl around Leviathan had filled nearly a third of the way with water, fifty three whirlpools forming on the surface, twenty two vortexes underwater opening more cracks in the bowl with each passing second. He read the equations blooming around the mass of water, around Leviathan's hundred simultaneous maneuvers, and touched a claw to the thorns.

At the cost of a mere sliver of flesh Jack sent narrow beams of nanothorns to cut apart Leviathan's constructs, sending them just deep enough to pierce the whirlpools and vortexes without chipping the crystal surface of the bowl. He felt his new body react to the damage, flesh immediately knitting to staunch the blood loss and seal the ragged edge of the wound.

More water constructs immediately formed in place of the ones he dispersed. Ah. Leviathan's ability to build constructs grew superlinearly with the amount of water around him. More water gave his constructs redundancy and resistance to attack. Best to use brute force to get a clean slate.

Jack spent five inches of his arm to turn Leviathan's entire supply of water into mist, doing it by sending a single wide beam sweeping in a counterclockwise pattern over the water that neatly sent the resulting vapor into the path of Eidolon's aerokinetic wind, dispersing it immediately. Now that the bowl was cleared he could focus on the flow of new water coming in through gouges and hairline cracks in the sides of the bowl, high-pressure streams of water spouting into the air and coming alive as they entered Leviathan's radius of control. Eidolon stretched his hypergravity field to overlap the bottom of the bowl, robbing the waterspouts of their force, and Jack projected his blades in beams precisely targeted to turn the spouts to mist.

For one minute and thirty seconds Jack held the water at bay, spending only the flesh of a single arm to project his thorns. With each second he and Eidolon suppressed Leviathan's attacks the Society's bowl repaired more of its gouges and cracks, gradually reducing the oncoming rush of water to a mere river, then to a trickle.

The young man's voice came from behind him. "Railgun's almost ready. Buy us a minute, I need to boost our Vishpala. Hope you don't die. Use your arms, you've got eight of them." He spoke to someone beside him. "Port us."

A clap of air and two layers of his new perception faded away, the notation and the threads disappearing. All that was left was the first layer of perception, the faint lines tracing out each object's paths of motion. The Society cape's perception-boosting power must fade with distance.

Jack smiled anyway, a movement that twisted his new mouth into an unfamiliar shape. Almost there.

He was less efficient now, had to pay more dearly for each second of suppressing Leviathan. Twenty seconds at the cost of another arm. Another twenty seconds at the cost of another. And then-

His perception warned him an instant before it happened, the motion paths around Leviathan's prison shifting in unison.

With a wet ripping sound, a slit opened in the bottom of the cast-off shell of flesh. Leviathan had used the water he created in his prison to cut himself an exit.

Leviathan's core fell free.

With each foot Leviathan's core fell through the air, his radius of control shifted to overlap another foot of water in the lake underneath the great crystal bowl. The bowl immediately began to crack and buckle. Leviathan sent high-pressure waves into cracks and fissures, formed vortexes chipping away at the crystal surface, exerted immense upward force across the entire bottom of the bowl to lift it upward by inches, bringing that much more of the lake under his control. The trickle of water coming in through the cracks became a river.

Jack spent four inches of a claw to vaporise the water Leviathan brought with him when he fell free from his prison, to vaporize the first pulse of water rushing into the bowl.

Eidolon shifted his forcefield under Leviathan to arrest his fall, then lifted the forcefield straight up to carry Leviathan into the air, away from the lake. Leviathan's core gushed water and used it to maneuver, sending himself skidding toward the edge of the forcefield. Jack vaporized the new water immediately and Eidolon grappled the Endbringer with aerokinesis. Their combined efforts delayed the Endbringer for three seconds before he shot over the edge of the forcefield and resumed his fall. Eidolon's forcefield flickered and reappeared under Leviathan again, buying another three seconds before the Endbringer overcame the obstacle.

The lines in Jack's vision abruptly disappeared. Jack was back to his original senses now, or the modified senses of his insect form. He would need to burn through his flesh faster now, inches every second to suppress Leviathan's water echo and the water rushing into the bowl. But he smiled, because it meant-

​

>> "In my range there are three two two six motor vehicles. In my range there are six five moving motor vehicles. The moving vehicles are ten trucks and six marked police cars and two unmarked police cars and-"​

​

He closed his eyes, tried to block her out. Her quiet, emotionless voice reporting the numbers. It was her game. One of the games Mom taught her to keep her sane, to keep her power under control. After five days hidden in a basement, it was getting old.​

​

"There are five five seven hospital patients, in my range. Four eight with tuberculosis. Four five are alive. Three are dead. The alive ones taste bad. The dead ones taste very bad. Not nutritious. They were sick for a long time."​

​

"I don't care whether some schmucks with tuberculosis are alive or not." he said. "I care about Mom and Dad. I care about you. You have to face the facts."​

​

"They are alive."​

​

"They didn't make it out in time. You saw it. They're gone."​

​

"No. They are alive. They will come back. They will always come back." She managed her best imitation of a smile. "Trust your big sister. I have superpowers."​

​

"Work on your flexibility." he said. Make it sound like a lesson, and she would listen. "A what if. What if they don't come back."​

​

She frowned. "That won't happen."​

​

"If they don't come back," he said. "Then we find the one who killed them, and we make sure he doesn't come back either. Got it?"​

​

Her frown deepend. "That won't-"​

<<​

​

-it meant the Society cape was giving his full attention to Fletchette. Ready to fire.

Leviathan pushed himself over the the edge of the forcefield again, then gushed water behind him to vault off of the bottom of the forcefield and send himself flying at high speed down to the bowl below. As Leviathan flew downward he gained more control over the water underneath the bowl. The surface of the bowl cracked in a hundred places, and Leviathan drew water through the cracks to form a pool of water five feet deep, to pull tendrils of water into the air toward his body.

It was Leviathan's last chance to escape before Fletchette began her attack. If Leviathan touched the tendrils he could escape in seconds, pulling himself down into the pool and then using the water there to accelerate himself out of the bowl, sink himself in the water of the lake.

No. Not a chance. Not when they were so close to victory.

Jack pushed his fifth arm into the thorns and turned all of the water into the bowl to vapor. Leviathan landed on the bare crystal surface of the bowl, tried to draw new water to himself through the cracks.

A gray blur flew from above and impaled Leviathan. Fletchette's first attack. A five foot spear of metal that pierced through his core and halfway into the crystal below, fusing him to the crystal to hold him in place.

Leviathan immediately broke free. The piece of crystal that the spear had touched had vanished. Fletchette's spears couldn't fuse with the crystal, their physics-breaking effects disrupting whatever power was sustaining the crystal's existence.

But more spears were already in flight, embedding themselves into the crystal around Leviathan with simple physical force. A dozen spears surrounded Leviathan, the bars of a prison.

Leviathan gushed water, propelled himself upward, above the bars. Eidolon's forcefield flickered into existence above him, forming a ceiling, trapping him inside. Jack's blades and Eidolon's aerokinesis dispersed Leviathan's water echo an instant after it formed, dispersed the new water he was drawing into the bowl.

More gray blurs came from above, now attacking Leviathan in earnest. Fletchette's shots were being enhanced by the Society capes. Perceptual enhancement to choose the targets, space-warping to make them strike home. Her shots twisted in impossible trajectories to strike Leviathan through the bars, each shot embedding the full length of a spear into his body, chewing vast chunks out of his core with each passing second.

Leviathan was desperate now, moving inside its prison in a blur, using his brief instants of contact with his water echo to maneuver and evade. He was managing to evade nearly half of Fletchette's shots despite their space-warping trajectories, but the other half struck home.

Leviathan changed tactics, used his control over the water below the bowl to push the water down and away to all sides. The bowl instantly sank fifty feet into the lake. The lip of the bowl was now far below the lake's surface. Water poured in from all sides.

Jack practically threw his sixth arm into the thorns, using the brief contact to vaporize the tons of water rushing in toward Leviathan. Three more seconds, six more bites taken out of his core.

"Almost there! Come on!" Armsmaster's voice behind him.

His seventh arm. His core was reduced to less than a third of its original size.

His eighth arm, his last. His core was less than a sixth of its original size, practically a sliver.

Jack leaned back against Armsmaster, hopped, kicked out to push one of his legs into the thorns. He slipped and fell. Couldn't make it.

Water flooded into the bowl and touched the last fragment of Leviathan's core.

Leviathan moved so fast he seemed to teleport. One jump out of the prison of metal spears, his body so small now that he could slip between the bars. One jump around Eidolon's forcefield that moved to obstruct him. A third jump, using the water around him to launch himself out of the bowl so fast that he shot into the air, moving toward the bay at lightning speed. Already drawing water from the lake towards himself, a score of outstretched tentacles, any one of them giving him a path to instantly slip beneath the waves.

The stream of spears followed Leviathan, twisting in the air to pierce him from all directions. Eidolon lashed out with all three of his powers, using hypergravity and aerokinesis to push Leviathan's water away from him, flickering his forcefield underneath Leviathan to lift him in the air, to pull him away from the lake. Buying another two seconds for the spears to do their work. A black blur flew alongside the spears. Alexandria, leaving her position by Fletchette to join the fight.

A vast mass of water flowed from the lake and rose toward Leviathan, overwhelming Eidolon's powers. The surface of the lake rippled and turned to crystal, interrupting the flow. Armsmaster lowered his halberd and Jack kicked, feeding the thorns the lower half of his right leg, using the moment of contact to turn Leviathan's mass of water into a great cloud of mist.

Another spear pierced Leviathan and his core split in two. Water gushed from the split and propelled the two halves in opposite directions, tumbling off opposite sides of Eidolon's forcefield. Eidolon shifted his forcefield to catch one, Alexandria caught the other. They lifted their fragments of Leviathan into the sky, pulling them away from the lake, away from any water they could control.

The fragment of Leviathan held by Eidolon's forcefield spewed water, pushed itself over the edge of the forcefield and down toward the lake. A stream of Fletchette's spears struck the fragment as it fell, pierced it over and over and over again until nothing remained.

Alexandria was struggling with the last sliver of Leviathan. It was spitting a high-pressure stream of water into her nose and mouth, suffocating her, using hydrokinesis to pull her down from the sky. Jack kicked his left foot into the thorns and sent his blades to disperse the water, trusting Alexandria's invulnerability to protect her. The water turned to mist. Alexandria's costume was atomized but she was unharmed.

Leviathan flared with a bright blue light. A new power. A last, desperate defense.

Alexandria threw the last piece of Leviathan three hundred feet in the air. Seconds later it was pierced by a dozen spears from all angles.

Leviathan exploded into a shower of sparks, filling the air throughout the bay with thousands of dancing blue motes of light.

The stream of spears kept up its pressure, each spear's trajectory swerving to hit hundreds of sparks. Catching them before they touched the water, canceling whatever effect they were meant to create.

But it didn't matter.

The sparks slowly lost their glow. Lights winking out, one by one. Then they all went dark.

All that was left was the pale glow of the moonlight.

Leviathan was dead.

...

There was a long moment of silence before anyone reacted.

Jack panted for breath. He rolled onto his side, managed to raise himself up to a sitting position with the stubs of his arms. He was shaking. Not from exhaustion, not from blood loss or any other physical wound. He was shaking from the overwhelming tension that had grown within him during the last, desperate thirty minutes of battle. Always on the edge of victory, always on the edge of defeat, until they lived and breathed their endless series of attacks, counterattacks, tactics, counter tactics. Exactly what the Endbringer wanted, exactly the game he wanted to play with the humans he thought were mere insects he could crush at will. Until today, when the Endbringer was finally ended by an insect's sting.

And then...his tension was gone, and there wasn't anything else he could do.

Jack laughed and laughed and laughed.

His voice sounded wrong, like an insect's buzz. An effect of the transformation that gave him a second wind. It didn't matter. They won.

"Yes! Hell yes!" shouted Armsmaster. "That's what you get, you son of a bitch! We fucking killed you! You're dead! You're gone! You're dust!"

Jack redoubled his laughter. Uncharacteristic emotion from the man. And he managed to be so inarticulate in his celebration that it was comical. The end of an Endbringer was the greatest victory humanity had ever achieved. If you were going to eulogize the occasion with words, you had better pick good ones. But Armsmaster didn't know how to gloat properly. He hadn't had any practice. He had probably lived his life as a stoic, an ascetic, convincing himself that he prized utility and efficiency above all. Now, faced with the greatest victory any hero could hope to achieve, he had no idea how to react and his true self shone through his facade.

It was perfect, really. If your message is big enough, important enough, then you can make people act in ways they never imagined. And the message he and his allies had sent today was the greatest message of all. The message the people of the world had been denied for decades, the message they still desperately longed for, hoped for, wanted to believe with all their hearts.

A world where the heroes can win.

Jack watched Armsmaster's impromptu dance of joy and grinned. Maybe there was something to being a hero in the system, after all.

There was movement in the lake, under the spot where Leviathan had died. The crystal that had formed above the lake was being replaced by a floating island. The island's surface was thick with a fantastical forest, trees bearing fruit in strange shapes and sizes that glowed in all colors of the rainbow. And at the center of the island was a great slab of stone, rising forty feet into the air. It was...

Jack laughed once again. A tombstone. A grave for the Endbringer. At least some of the Society capes knew proper symbolism. As he watched, words etched themselves into the slab.

"Leviathan. 1996-2011. R.I.P."

Maybe there was something to being a certain class of villain, as well. If it meant having single-minded determination to defeat the true abominations like the Endbringers, spending decades learning about their abilities if that was what it took to mastermind plans to trap and kill them for good.

Jack looked for Fletchette, the keystone of their victory. He found her atop the Medhall building in front of the shimmering air of the railgun, supported in Alexandria's arms. Half a dozen capes in Society armor stood nearby, occupied with varying degrees of celebration. A nearby roof held the crashed wreck of the Society's massive tinkertech jet, shot down by Leviathan's water beams during the battle.

Above them in the air, Eidolon floated alone. Staring at the coastline, at the place where Leviathan was killed. The strongest hero, contemplating the first true victory against his greatest enemies.

​

>> "They're calling the beast Behemoth." said Eidolon. "A creature created by God, so fearsome that only God himself can defeat it. And I...I'm strong, but I never claimed to be God. What if it comes back? I was close, I was dealing real damage near the end, but my power didn't give me what I needed. Use your power, Contessa. Tell me what I need to do to kill the beast."​

​

"My power doesn't give me answers concerning you, Eidolon. You know this."​

​

"Then model the scenario: victory against the beast. Tell me how anyone would do it."​

​

Contessa studied him for a long minute. Not only modeling the scenario he requested, he knew. Modeling him, using her power to decide what to tell him to get the reaction she wanted. An unavoidable consequence of her power. At length she spoke.​

​

"Eidolon, you're our best hope. We can't afford to lose you. You know this Behemoth is not our true enemy. Until we can make more parahumans with powers like yours, we'll need to ask you to preserve yourself when fighting them."​

​

"You can't see a path to victory, then? Or the path is uncertain, so-" He stopped, caught the hidden meaning in her words. "Them? Plural? There's more than one?"​

​

"I know very little about them. I had hoped they wouldn't appear. Now that one has made an appearance, I will tell you what I can."​

​

He felt his heart sink. Disappointment, frustration, anger. Cauldron was hiding critical information from him once again, information that cost lives. "You knew a beast like that might come and you didn't tell us?"​

​

"My power doesn't give me answers concerning them. That's why we need you to be cautious. I can't see whether they can be defeated, or whether they have measures in place in case of defeat-"​

<<​

​

No. Wait. That wasn't why Eidolon was staring.

There was a faint blue glow in the air above the bay. A thousand blue ripples, slowly expanding, one where each of Leviathan's blue sparks had winked out and died. Within each ripple was a window, and within each window was a small, shining yellow light. A view of a foreign sun seen from deep beneath the ocean, its light refracted by miles of seawater.

The ripples were expanding now, faster and faster, joining together to create a single window stretching from horizon to horizon, stretching from sea level to far above the clouds.

Then the window shimmered. The window became a door. The water on the other side began to flow...

A final act of spite.

In his dying moments, Leviathan had opened a doorway to his well. To the well he drew from to create his water echoes, deep enough to pour out water equal to the size of his nine ton body for every moment of the fifteen years he had been on Earth.

A solid wall of water, miles long, miles wide, and miles high, rushed into Brockton Bay.

Jack had time to make a faint sound in his throat, to hear Armsmaster swearing and shouting something into his visor.

Then the wall of water reached him, and everything went black.

...

...

...

...

When he woke, it was light again.








---
(Author's note)

 

[silentcrusader]

What? No witty thread name?

 

[Heleor]

Well, that's a cliffhanger. Jack might have enough information for the Society to deduce where the Endbringers come from. I'm guessing the Society has him, since they're the ones with an evacuation plan.

 

[Red Sectoid]

Daaaaamn.

That is all I can say.

 

[Anasurimbor]

Leviathan's final present makes Behemoth's attempt at a Fuck You seem amateurish in comparison. That is easily a planetkiller if someone doesn't close the portal quickly. Truly a chance for Eidolon to show his power, even if he wasn't the one to kill the Endbringer directly.

That or Leviathan just wanted to prove once and for all that his well was deeper.

 

[Tsar]

Cliffhanger...why you do dis!?

I'm satisfied, its odd to say really, because so few fics can actually give me that feeling. So congratulations Thinker on writing something that so far sits among the best pieces of fiction in the fandom.

Looking forward to the next update whenever it happens: tomorrow or a year from now.

Also, maser should be laser I believe.

 

[esran]

Honestly I would have preffered if it just ended with the celebration. Awesome fight but enough is enough.

 

[Thinker6]

Leviathan's final present makes Behemoth's attempt at a Fuck You seem amateurish in comparison. That is easily a planetkiller if someone doesn't close the portal quickly. Truly a chance for Eidolon to show his power, even if he wasn't the one to kill the Endbringer directly.

That or Leviathan just wanted to prove once and for all that his well was deeper.

Click to shrink...

Hah, remember that this is Jack's POV. He's making a guess about how much water is being sent from Leviathan's well. All he knows is that it is really big.

It's even possible that Leviathan was drawing his water from Earth Bet, instead of other earths. Putting portals deep in the sea and using them to teleport water onto his location, maybe with a filter to screen out deep sea organisms so that only pure water passes through.

Cliffhanger...why you do dis!?

I'm satisfied, its odd to say really, because so few fics can actually give me that feeling. So congratulations Thinker on writing something that so far sits among the best pieces of fiction in the fandom.

Looking forward to the next update whenever it happens: tomorrow or a year from now.

Also, maser should be laser I believe.

Click to shrink...

Ah, in this case it's actually a maser.

 

[Racheakt]

(unable to breathe)

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

Weaver Nine​

Click to shrink...

​

Allies 3.10


This was it. The chance he had wished for. To show the beast who took his city away from him that he wasn't a toy to be played with, that even Endbringers could be brought to an end. Jack wrapped his arm around the halberd, stretched his hand toward the thorns, and focused on his target.

Click to shrink...

​

​

​

Weaver Nine

Allies 3.11

When he woke, it was light again.

Click to shrink...

(collapses)

...

...

When I awoke, it was light again.

Now for the fallout!

 

[silentcrusader]

Hah, remember that this is Jack's POV. He's making a guess about how much water is being sent from Leviathan's well. All he knows is that it is really big.

It's even possible that Leviathan was drawing his water from Earth Bet, instead of other earths. Putting portals deep in the sea and using them to teleport water onto his location, maybe with a filter to screen out deep sea organisms so that only pure water passes through.

Click to shrink...

No. He fills the water with sharks, snakes, electric eels, beasts from the lowest pat of the ocean, giant squid, giant sperm whales, and all types of poisonous beasts. Because no fuck you is good without raw animal in front of you.


Anyone else imagining that scene from 2012? 5:39 IS THE PART.

 

[memoryofglory]

Hah, remember that this is Jack's POV. He's making a guess about how much water is being sent from Leviathan's well. All he knows is that it is really big.

It's even possible that Leviathan was drawing his water from Earth Bet, instead of other earths. Putting portals deep in the sea and using them to teleport water onto his location, maybe with a filter to screen out deep sea organisms so that only pure water passes through.




Ah, in this case it's actually a maser.

Click to shrink...

Thinker6, you win at Worm fanfic forever. Seriously, this was every bit as good as Wildbow's original Leviathan & Behemoth fights, you just blew every single Endbringer fight in fanfiction out of the water.

 

[silentcrusader]

Thinker6, you win at Worm fanfic forever. Seriously, this was every bit as good as Wildbow's original Leviathan & Behemoth fights, you just blew every single Endbringer fight in fanfiction out of the water.

Click to shrink...

Except maybe Silent.

 

[spamholderman]

My god. How the hell can you top this? Where do we go from here? WHY AM I SHAKING SO HARD.

 

[Racheakt]

My god. How the hell can you top this? Where do we go from here? WHY AM I SHAKING SO HARD.

Click to shrink...

This is where the game becomes a stealth-n-stalk, the shift in genre is sure to get mixed reviews, but the writing is stupendous.

 

[Requiem_Jeer]

An Excellent ending to the arc. Can't wait for the denouement.

 

[Tsar]

Ah, in this case it's actually a maser.

Click to shrink...

Learn something new everyday.

 

[Thinker6]

Thank you for your compliments!

And now, here are the semi-serious Author's Notes I've been holding in for the last four chapters. (which were originally supposed to one chapter, until I realized that my fight scenes become really long and intricate).

--

Author's notes:

1. I always imagined that Endbringers in 'try mode' are pretty badass. So I tried to represent that idea a bit in this fic. Psycho Gecko had it right, in his comment after Worm's Leviathan chapters went up:

Psycho Gecko on March 6, 2012 at 4:26 AM said:
...
I was so excited when you said hydrokinetic, but then you go with macro hydrokinetic…mwahaha…I’d love the power to control water at all levels. You know how much of your brain and body are water? A lot. You know what would happen if you make ever drop of that water go a different direction than any of the others? Bad things, for someone.

Click to shrink...

If you're reading this, dear Gecko, I hope you're smiling!


2. So, in canon we have Behemoth hero-killer, Leviathan city-killer, and Simurgh terror weapon.

In this fic Leviathan the city-killer becomes Leviathan the hero-killer. But was he really going all out? We didn't get to see Leviathan the terror weapon. I guess Trollviathan is already bad enough. Simurgathan would be beyond the pale. Using hydrokinesis on water in our brains, his song of madness calling from the sea, from where he sleeps in his house at R'lyeh...

Also, I believe some people in the previous thread asked why canon Leviathan wouldn't have whipped out this hero-killer mode against Scion. I couldn't say then because of spoilers, but the reason is now revealed in chapter 3.10. Like Behemoth, his hero-killer mode is a tad slow. His hydrokinesis becomes very strong and precise, but loses some of its speed. So, he can still move very fast inside the water, but his ability to carry a full load of water with him is limited to mere car-on-a-highway speed. Since Scion can't be directly torn apart by hydrokinesis, and I imagine that Scion's beams and golden explosions could disperse hero-killer Leviathan's water pretty fast, the hero-killer mode wouldn't have been as big of a benefit against Scion as it might have seemed.


3. About the guy from the Harbinger transmission, Ekwensu. Ekwensu's power is basically to make his opponents become the protagonists of I Wanna Be The Guy. Harbinger had to best Fruit, Spike, and Moon to defeat him. In this transmission you only got to see the Spike-besting part. Fruit and Moon were a lot harder!

Of course, this means that Ekwensu was The Guy. Which means that when Harbinger killed him, Harbinger became the next The Guy.

Which was why Leviathan was attacking, of course! Leviathan sensed the presence of The Guy in Brockton Bay and came to kill him, so that he could become the next The Guy. An Endbringer who was also The Guy - yikes. Humanity would just give up hope and commit collective suicide, right there.


4. For the curious, the power combination the Society used to try to contain Leviathan's core was:

Labyrinth to create the giant crystal teacup. Tatu to move Labyrinth's mental self directly on top of Leviathan. Dreamer to keep Labyrinth in a dreaming state for maximizing her power and control. Setsu and one of her traveling trunks containing an unknown dreaming being that can fly, to give them a platform to sit on top of four miles up in the air, keeping them outside of Leviathan's range unless he used his long-range beams. Galvanate to make them invulnerable in case Leviathan did use his long-range beams. Heavenly Fist to get them into the air with instant speed by punching them directly into the atmosphere. Dice to calculate precisely when and how Heavenly Fist should punch them to ensure that they would arrive close to the desired location - in particular, they need to arrive within four miles of Leviathan's core, so that he would be within Tatu's range for moving Labyrinth's mental self directly on top of him. And of course, Weaver, Harbinger, and the rest of the Society to plan it all.

...

Yes, that's right. Four eccentrics crowded on top of a traveling trunk, flying in the sky under the light of a full moon, trapping Leviathan inside a giant teacup from an ice maiden's tea set. Noooo! This is Worm, it's not supposed get this silly! I only realized it afterward, but I guess I was unconsciously influenced by the cover of The Light Fantastic.

 

[silentcrusader]

My god. How the hell can you top this? Where do we go from here? WHY AM I SHAKING SO HARD.

Click to shrink...

That is the scary thing. Thinker6 will keep on escalating. That is the true horror. He will continue to topple his old accomplishment with even greater ones. Fear him.

 

[memoryofglory]

No. He fills the water with sharks, snakes, electric eels, beasts from the lowest pat of the ocean, giant squid, giant sperm whales, and all types of poisonous beasts. Because no fuck you is good without raw animal in front of you.


Anyone else imagining that scene from 2012? 5:39 IS THE PART.

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And that's what happens when the Endbringers start taking their jobs seriously.

 

[MadGreenSon]

EPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPICCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh my God, that owned me so much! My body was not ready! Thinker6, that chapter almost sobered me up!!!!!

 

[Anasurimbor]

Number Line and Escherichia seem to have fairly broken powers. One is basically a projective version of Harbinger, and the other controls bacteria(or does she merely sense them?) They definitely take after their parents.

One thing I liked about this arc is how it really let us see lots of the kind of crazy power combination that Worm always teased at but rarely actually provided. The way they trapped Leviathan was well done. The bit about Eidolon being way more useful if he can rely on others to protect him and/or provide some of his mobility is very true and I hope he takes it to heart. Railgun Fletchette was scary, although I'm not sure how well her power would interact with space warps.

It occurs to me that this is the first time I have seen anyone convincingly kill an Endbringer without broken crossover powers or Scion. Well done. Now go fix that cliffhanger!

 

[meianmaru]

...Wow. Heroic Jack Slash is truly heroic. He really doesn't do things the half-way, does he? And Levi, you really shouldn't have chosen to escalate with the memetic queen of escalation. It never ends well for the opposing party.

 

[Pahan]

Weaver Nine

Allies 3.11


...

...

...

...

When he woke, it was light again.

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The following is a textual description of the visual representation of what's currently going on inside Pahan's head:

Picture an imaginary theatre or auditorium. The curtain has fallen on the last scene's tableau.​

​

There is absolute, awed silence. Not a stir among the audience, not a breath.​

​

There is a tentative, cautious clap, trying itself out against the crushing silence. The second clap is more sure, louder. It is quickly joined by another clapper, then another, then another in an exponential wave, until the individual claps have merged into an overwhelming rattle. Soon, it is joined by the clunking and thumping of pivoting seats as the audience begins to rise in a standing ovation.​

​

They are still clapping.​

This doesn't really do justice to my mental state at the end of that chapter, but it's the best I can do on short notice.