His proportions were wrong—his shins, forearms, and especially the claws of his hands and toes were too long for his height. He approached in a stream of water, moving gracefully but as if with lazy indifference. His arms swayed back and forth like pendulums, claws catching the water's surface, while his upper body swayed from side to side with each step, as if his height was too much for such a build. His fifteen-meter tail lashed from side to side in rhythm with his stride—perhaps it also helped the monster maintain balance.
A water trail followed him, roughly equal in volume to his body—dozens of cubic meters of water. The "trail" flowed down from him and cascaded into the sea.
He was approaching. Heroes and villains lined up in battle formation and shouted something, but I still couldn't hear anything. My head buzzed with fear and adrenaline, but I could almost make out his face. You don't see this in reports or photographs. He had no nose, no mouth, no ears. His face was flat and hard, covered with the same scaly, crocodile-like skin as the rest of his body. On the hard, flat plate that made up Leviathan's "face," only four cracks or fractures stood out—one on the right side of his face and three on the left. In each of the dark cavities burned green orbs of his eyes, their light piercing through the rain. His head moved faster than the rest of his body parts, jerking from side to side as someone's eyeball might move—right-left, up-down, encompassing all of us, strangely out of rhythm with the movements of the rest of his body.
"Ready!" Legend roared. It was hard to say whether Leviathan heard the command or if Legend noticed something, but Leviathan dropped to all fours at the same moment the command rang out. The shout was still ringing in the air when Leviathan already surged forward.
He moved with incredible speed. He was so fast that his clawed hands and feet didn't touch the road under the water—the force of the initial push allowed him to run on the water's surface. He was so fast that before I could take a breath to scream or cry out, or even open my mouth in horror, he was already among us, blood and water spray scattered where he collided with the line of arranged capes, and the bracelets began announcing seriously wounded and dead.
"Armadillo down, CD-5. Blitzkrieg down, CD-5. WCM deceased, CD-5. Iron Falcon down, CD-5. Lizard down, CD-5..."
What am I doing, a thought suddenly struck my temples, he's already among us and I'm standing like a statue, move Taylor! I raise my hands above my head, a blood-red blade forms in them and I rush from my spot, aiming where Leviathan is raging! Water spray blocks my eyes, but I still know where he is—I feel it with some sixth sense, that famous "battle precognition."
"Ahhh!" I scream, striking one of his "arms" and seeing with satisfaction how the bloody sword blade leaves a fairly deep cut. If I strike again in the same place... he waves his arm—I barely manage to dodge to the side only for a powerful stream of water to knock me off my feet and I roll backwards down the water-flooded street. Where I had just been, his tail comes down, smashing everything to hell and raising a fountain of water.
I jump to my feet. Somewhere behind, containers with my combat insects open, having already disassembled Bakuda's bombs and preparing to take an attack course. Can't attack head-on, capes are fighting Leviathan, holding back his assault, a swarm of insects from the same direction is too risky an undertaking, so I force my legions to make a combat turn and approach the target not only from behind but from above, like World War II dive bombers. Like Junkers 87s—my Medici and Stingers rise up above the target, turn belly-up and crash down, clamping their jaws on bombs just before contact.
The roar of explosions! For several seconds Leviathan disappears from view in a cloud of blasts, his entire upper part vanishes and something skips in my heart. Did it work? It should work. An insect attack would have given nothing, none of my charges could have bitten through his skin... but Bakuda's bombs are a completely different matter!
When the bomb blasts subside and wind carries away the smoke, I see what remains of Leviathan and my lips involuntarily stretch into a wide smile. Leviathan's upper part is practically gone! Pitiful scraps, everything else either turned to mince, crumbled into glass shards, or froze in Null Time bubbles. Now Leviathan looks like a strange figure, as if stepped from impressionist canvases, as if Picasso had drawn him—here there's flesh, and here there isn't, here are shards of greenish glass, and here seems like an undamaged piece, but frozen in time... he has no half of his head, and the other half is caught in the Null Time area!
Could it be... could it be that I succeeded?! I don't have time to digest this thought when Leviathan begins to move. And this doesn't look like agony, no, he's breaking free from the bonds of Null Time areas, tearing chunks of flesh from himself and making a low growling sound that makes me uneasy. How can he still be alive with such damage?!
The capes that had frozen in place after my attack begin moving again, attacking Leviathan. Furious beams crash into the base of his torso, I see how an arrow from a crossbow pierces him through. Sophia?! I didn't know her arrows were capable of that. Even my blood blades can't cut deeply into the Endbringer's flesh, and I've never encountered material capable of stopping these blades. But my Swarm tells me it's not Sophia. Some girl sends bolt after bolt into the Endbringer and each one pierces him through! Leviathan swings his tail, and a wave hits the building where the crossbow sniper had positioned herself!
"Furious deceased, CD-5. Adamant down, CD-5. Flechette down, CD-5," the voice sounds in the bracelet.
The battle continued, about ten heroes attacked Leviathan up close, and more than twenty shot at him from a distance whenever the opportunity presented itself. Even more heroes were visible on the third line of battle, they didn't let Leviathan flank the fighters from behind and were ready to take the place of the fallen. This wasn't enough—the damage we inflicted was insignificant, he moved further and faster than we could retreat through the water. At every step we risked stumbling over debris and building rubble. He forced us to retreat, moved quickly, changing direction to prevent us from concentrating fire on him.
We advanced painfully slowly. If we didn't move fast enough, we fell behind, and if too fast, we risked falling and losing precious time. We needed to find the golden mean, but even finding it, we still moved too slowly.
"Chubster down, CD-5. Good Neighbor deceased, CD-5. Relic deceased, CD-5."
Alexandria rushed forward. Leviathan stopped his assault and retreated, then lunged to meet her. When there were about five meters between them, he stopped and let his water afterimage rush forward to meet her. Someone else might have staggered, taking several tons of water moving at locomotive speed straight to the face. Alexandria, interlocking her fingers, struck forward with her hands as if holding a baseball bat, and shattered the wave a second before it covered her head. A sound like a bomb explosion rang out, and water sprayed everywhere as Alexandria grabbed Leviathan's "neck" with her hand and knocked him to the ground.
Most capes used this opportunity to retreat further from the Endbringer, firing lasers, sonic cannons, and everything they had in their arsenal.
I quickly went through all the arsenal I had. I needed to save the insects with bombs, it was already clear that this attack, even though it delayed him, even though it damaged him, wasn't fatal. Or was it the opposite? He was rapidly regenerating, his head had already regrown, what if I attacked in waves? How many of Bakuda's bombs did I have left? No, first I'll try everything I have in reserve!
I disappear to appear again, this time above Leviathan's head, and unleash everything I have in reserve at full power—I cause festering wounds, throw pain impulses, sharp stings of throwing knives made of blood, use everything, leaving nothing for myself. I disappear again, appear, attack. And again. And again.
Leviathan heavily turns his head, scattering heroes and seeming to experience not the slightest discomfort from my actions. Damn.
"Taylor!" a voice in my earpiece. "Do you hear? It's useless! He doesn't actually feel pain. He's like a puppet. His real body isn't here at all, this is a projection... like a shadow from a three-dimensional body into a two-dimensional dimension!"
"Understood." I really did understand. Everything immediately fell into place... well of course, a projection. This explains everything. And raises even more questions, actually. What kind of dimension, how to get there, how to fight him then, if we're all here dealing with just his shadow? Dimensional differences... my brain breaks when I try to think about it, but lately I've read enough books to understand what she's talking about. Two dimensions—length and width, x-axis and y-axis. This is a plane. A sheet of school notebook paper. We are three-dimensional beings, we also have height. If one of us stands on such a sheet, the inhabitants of the two-dimensional dimension will see our projection... and most likely these will be bare footprints. Now imagine that the inhabitants of the two-dimensional dimension try to attack our projection. This is as useless as shooting at a shadow. And finally—we just need to lift our foot and... the naive inhabitants of two dimensions will think they've won... but then it turns out that the Endbringers don't actually take any damage. Why do they retreat then? No one has ever inflicted such damage on Leviathan as Bakuda's bombs delivered by my insects, but here he is—fighting as if nothing happened.
"Instructions?" I briefly throw out the question. Tattletale is silent. Well... let her think, she'll definitely come up with something, she's smart, and I have work here...
"You came to my city, bastard," I say to myself, pumping myself up with anger and rage, displacing fear of Leviathan's invulnerability. "You came here. There's only one rule in Brockton Bay, creature! No one dares stand in my way!" And I disappear to appear below, at the very feet of the monster. A swing of the blade, extended to three meters, and I disappear again to appear in another place. Unexpectedly—next to Armsmaster. He raises his halberd.
"Ropey down, CD-5. Valiant down, CD-5."
"Cover me on the left," Armsmaster commands briefly and steps forward, holding his halberd at the ready. "Stay left and cover from attacks."
"Roger," I nod. I don't know exactly what he's planning, but for the duration of this battle we're allies, which means I'll cover his left.
"Kaiser!" Armsmaster shouts. "Now!" For a second I'm surprised why in the heat of battle Armsmaster is calling his enemy, but then a metal cage begins to grow around Leviathan, leaving him only one path—to us. To Armsmaster and me. At first I think that metal won't hold Leviathan, he'll crush it like paper, but then I see how Clockblocker touches the metal and it dawns on me—this metal is now under the influence of Clockblocker's ability, Null Time. It can't be crushed. Leviathan heads for the only exit from the trap. To us.
"Stupid creature," Armsmaster growled, raising both his halberds. "Every battle you've participated in was recorded on camera. I watched those recordings and ran them through my program. I have a computer on my back, connected to a super-network that notices your every movement, using ultrasonic pulses to build a picture of the entire street in the finest detail, every building and every detail of the terrain. I know exactly what you want to do next—you're going to try to catch me with a wave from behind."
Leviathan lunged, swinging a huge claw. Armsmaster rolled to the side and struck back with both halberds, vaporizing the approaching wave. I followed him, ready to deflect an attack or attack myself.
"Don't even understand what I'm saying, do you? If you did, you'd realize I've already won. Others helped me, slowed you down, stopped the waves. But victory, the final blow—it will be mine alone. Administrator—don't interfere! He's mine!"
"But..." This was so uncharacteristic of Armsmaster that for a second it seemed to me he was being controlled. Armsmaster, always calm, always speaking in an official and dry tone—could he be like this? Because of this, I almost missed the Endbringer's next attack.
Leviathan rushed forward, stopped abruptly, sending his water afterimage ahead of himself, and continued moving half a second later. I put up my blade, cutting through the afterimage. Armsmaster jumped back, leaped high, pressing his knees to his chest to let the claw strike pass under him, and released a hook into the ground between Leviathan's legs to instantly find himself below. He slid by inertia right between his legs and raised the halberd with a blurred blade, striking near the base of Leviathan's tail. Where the halberd touched the Endbringer's body, it crumbled to dust, hiding Armsmaster's shoulders for a moment.
"See the cloud around my blade? These are nanostructures designed to pass between atoms, destroying molecular bonds. Cuts anything. Absolutely everything. Like a knife through air."
Leviathan lashed Armsmaster with his tail. I deflected the blow with a blood blade, redirecting it slightly to the side, I couldn't block it with a simple parry, I would have been carried away and slammed into a wall. Armsmaster also moved aside, striking the tail with the flat side of the blade. Another piece of flesh disappeared, turning to dust, ichor splashed from the wound. Armsmaster dodged the water afterimage with what seemed like a lazy movement.
Leviathan turned around. Armsmaster fired a hook, wrapping one of the Endbringer's claws with a chain. Leviathan continued moving, not noticing or not caring. Armsmaster waited for the chain to tighten and pressed a button on his weapon.
The chain and halberd stopped moving and even Leviathan's strength wasn't enough to move them. Leviathan was carried forward and fell on his back. His wrist was still held by the chain. Half a second later the chain sagged and immediately tightened when Armsmaster rushed forward. He put the misty blade in front of himself and struck the monster's face, using all the force of his movement's inertia. Pulling out the blade that met no resistance, he struck again, freed the chain and used it to quickly move across the street to where Leviathan's cruel retaliatory strike couldn't reach him.
Damn, I thought, watching Armsmaster dance around the monster, damn, Uncle Armsmaster is cool. Really cool. Cooler than Lung for sure... unlike Lung, he's cold-blooded and calculating, brave and smart. And... actually, what was expected from the head of Protectorate Heroes in Brockton Bay.
Taking advantage of the lull, I attacked Leviathan from the other side, slashing his leg with my blade. Again a deep cut, deep, but not like Armsmaster's halberd, his blade seemed to vaporize flesh in its path. Leviathan didn't even pay any attention to me, he seemed to be carefully watching Armsmaster.
"Let's see how quickly you react to classical conditioning. Every time you try to run away, I'll do something similar to you. For reference, the last trick is a temporal stasis trigger, for which I should thank one of my subordinates. It severely drains my batteries, but you don't understand anyway, right?" says Armsmaster. Water rages around us, Leviathan rushes straight at Armsmaster and he fires a hook at him, again stopping him in the air using Null Time. Leviathan ran right through the hook, the thing pierced his throat and came out his back. The Endbringer, as if not noticing this, continued rushing toward Armsmaster.
Armsmaster let the chain sag, dodged the lashing tail, jumped forward and slightly to the side to avoid the following claw strike. Another jump and roll, and he slipped under the water afterimage, ending up behind the Endbringer, and delivered two strikes with the misty halberd to the back of Leviathan's thighs. Armsmaster's chain reeled in, tearing from Leviathan's neck with a fountain of blood, and returned to the end of the halberd. Armsmaster immediately fired the hook again, moving to the other side of the street, then turned to face Leviathan and stopped.
He transferred one of the halberds to his other hand and wiped his mouth with his glove.
"I will be the one who takes your head, creature. I can only hope that in your last seconds you'll know the same terror you inspired in those you attacked."
I raise my sword, looking with satisfaction at the work of my hands. I managed to cut off the creature's tail!
"Administrator!" Armsmaster snarls. "Cease attacks. This creature is mine."
"You don't understand," I say rapidly. "This isn't a creature. This is just a projection and..." At that moment I feel something tearing through my ribcage. The tail, he threw it away, yes... but his tail is also just a projection. He can still control it through another dimension. I see the sharp end of his tail sticking out of my chest.
"Administrator down," the bracelet on my arm announces.