by wildbow
The timing, the fact that it was happening so soon after Behemoth had died… it was all wrong.
Behemoth had come from deep underground. Leviathan had emerged from the ocean. The Simurgh had approached from the far side of the moon and descended to hover just above the tallest building in Lausanne.
The fourth, it seemed, was appearing in plain sight.
The dust took forever to clear. But for a few mutters here and there, small animal sounds of despair from the audience and studio employees who were watching, the studio had plunged into quiet horror.
It stood somewhere between Leviathan and Behemoth in height, if I ballparked by the number of stories in the adjacent buildings. I waited patiently for the view to clear, revealing more details. Clues, as if there was a solution to what we faced here.
I pegged him as a he before I saw too much else. He was broad, a Buddha in physique, if more feral in appearance. He was as black as night, with something white or silver giving definition around the edges of his various features. He didn’t wear clothes, but he had features somewhere between leaves and fins, with elaborate designs at the edges, curling away from elbows, his wrist, his fingers and around his legs. It made his fingers and toes into claws, and left dangerous looking blades elsewhere. His face was a permanent snarl, frozen in place, his teeth silvery white behind the ebon lips. Tendrils like the whiskers of a catfish marked the corners of his mouth.
All across the exterior of his body, there were gaps, like the gills of a fish, and that brilliant white or silver glimmered from beneath, a stark contrast to the absolute black that marked the rest of him. It made me think of a tiger. And at the center of it all, quite literally, there was a perfect sphere of that same material, a marble or a crystal ball, his body perched on the upper half and his legs attached to the lower half.
Arms extended out to either side, he took a step, almost waddled. He floated as though he were walking on the moon.
“He’s not a fighter,” I murmured.
“No,” Tecton agreed.
“What is he?” Grace asked.
People were fleeing, still in close proximity to the site, evacuating tall buildings. The Endbringer stopped and extended a hand. His arms weren’t long enough to reach around his girth, but his upper body rotated on the sphere that formed his midsection, giving him the freedom of movement needed.
The camera shook as he used his power, and an unseen cameraman had to catch it before it fell. A faint glowing line appeared on the ground, a perfect circle. The light gradually intensified, reaching higher, and the space within the circle seemed to darken in equal measure.
It moved, the circle roaming, the glowing lines adjusting to scale obstacles and account for higher ground and dips in the terrain.
When it intersected a building, the effect became clear. Barely visible with the camera’s range, they were nonetheless a blur, moving within the circle’s perimeter.
“They’re trapped,” Golem said. “He’s manipulating time in there and they’re trapped.”
Golem was right. How many days were they experiencing in there, with only the food they had on hand? Was water reaching them? There didn’t seem to be power.
“Oh god,” Cuff said. “Why isn’t anyone stopping him?”
“There’s no heroes on scene,” Tecton said. “Japan doesn’t have many dedicated heroes anymore.”
It took six or seven seconds for the blurring of their movements to slow. In another second, it stopped altogether.
He left his power where it was. The glass on the building’s exterior cracked. Cracks ran along and through the other material, in the street and at the edges of the structure. It leaned, then toppled, and the destruction was contained inside the effect.
Wanton spoke, almost hesitant. “Is that—doesn’t that remind anyone of—”
“Yes,” Grace said. “The barrier, the time manipulation. It’s similar.”
Similar to what we did.
All in all, the Endbringer was there for a minute. The effect moved on, and it left a ruined husk of a building behind. Though there was no sun shining, the stone and terrain had been sun bleached, worn by elements, eroded.
The Endbringer extended his hands out to either side, and two more glowing circles appeared. Like the first circle had, they flared with light. Like the first, they moved, drifting counterclockwise around him. It was a slow, lazy rotation, slower than a moving car but faster than someone could hope to run.
He advanced with floating steps, and the circles maintained a perfect, steady distance away from him and from each other, orbiting him like the shadows cast by three invisible moons. Here and there, people and cars were caught inside. He wasn’t a full city block down the street before one circle had a crowd trapped within, half-filling the base of it, another circle perhaps a quarter of the way full.
He moved through a less populated area, and he left trails of skeletons in his wake, in odd fractal patterns that followed the circles’ movements.
He chose what entered and he chose what left. An attack form that couldn’t be defended against, only avoided.
“Movers will be important,” I said. “Maybe shakers too, if we can find a way to stop him or his circles from progressing. His threat level depends on how fast and how much he can move those time-stop areas.”
There was no reply from the others.
I glanced at Cuff, and I saw that she was hugging Grace. She was silent, but tears were running down her face. Grace was more resolute, but her eyes were wet.
The timing, it was wrong.
Strategy, figuring out a battle plan, it was crucial here. The first attacks were often some of the worst for cape casualties, if not necessarily the overall damage done. Too many lives would be lost in finding out his general capabilities.
But it didn’t matter.
I reached out and took Cuff’s hand, holding it. A glance in the other direction showed me Golem. I took his hand too.
This was the key thing in this moment. Not the future, what came next. Support, morale and being a team in the now.
Silent, we watched as the heroes engaged. Eidolon and Legend joined the Japanese heroes in fighting the unnamed Endbringer, keeping a safe distance.
One circle disappeared, and the Endbringer reached out. Defending capes were too slow to escape the perimeter before the effect took hold, a new third circle forming. Eidolon tried hitting the effect with three different powers, but it didn’t break.
“No, no, no…” Cuff whispered.
In a minute, the capes were dead.
Our phones beeped, and I felt a moment’s despair. We’d have to fight this thing.
Ship is outside if you want it, Chicago Wards. Attendence not mandatory.
Temp. codename is Khonsu.
“I’m…” Cuff said, staring down at the phone. “I’m staying.”
“Okay,” I said.
“You’re going?” she asked.
I nodded.
She nodded back, swallowed hard, before she turned her eyes back to the screen. In that moment, the Endbringer, Khonsu, reversed the direction the circles were drifting, extending the distance they were orbiting around him in the same movement.
Capes who’d been trying to time their advance to close the distance to Khonsu were caught. Four trapped and doomed to die a slow death, a fifth caught between a building and the orb’s perimeter as the circle continued its rotation. When the circle had left the building behind, there was only a bloody smear where the fifth cape had been. Skeletons for the rest.
Now he stood still, weathering attacks with the same durability the other Endbringers had. Damage to his flesh exposed silver, and damage to the belly or other silver parts showed ebon black. The onionlike layers Tattletale had described, plain to see.
I tore my eyes from the screen, marching towards the emergency doors.
So much was wrong with this.
It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t right. Fucked on so many levels.
A woma
n was sobbing in the hallway as we passed. A group of twenty-somethings in dress shirts sprinted down the hallway, carrying bags.
The dragon-craft was waiting for us outside, ramp doors open.
Odd, to see the sky so bright, when the battlefield was shrouded in night.
We stepped inside, entering the center of the craft. I found a seat by a monitor, with a laptop ready and waiting for use, login screen displayed. The monitor was showing the battlefield, roving over the dead, the buildings that had collapsed under the weight of years. Oddly, the cameraman wasn’t focusing on Khonsu or the defending heroes. A few heroes were fleeing, but most weren’t in view.
“We’re ready,” Tecton called out. “Ship?”
The craft hadn’t taken off.
My growing sense of dread was confirmed as the image on the monitors changed.
Even with those circles being as devastating as they are, it wasn’t enough. There wasn’t the same broad scale, the promise of lingering devastation.
No. There was something more to Khonsu.
The monitors showed him in a different city. A caption on the bottom of the screen showed the words ‘Cape Verde’.
He’d teleported halfway around the planet.
All of the problems with getting to Endbringer fights on time, with mobilizing and dealing with the fact that half of our best teleporters and movers had been slain in past battles… he was capitalizing on that weakness.
My phone vibrated to alert me to a new text. I didn’t need to read it to guess what it said. I read it anyways.
Stand by.
“No,” I whispered to myself.
The heroes were engaging, now. Legend and Eidolon had caught up. Khonsu had situated himself near some kind of military installation, and they’d wasted no time in readying for a fight. Missiles and shells exploded around him. The columns of frozen time that rotated around him caught many, and they exploded within the delineated structures.
For long minutes, he fought. I watched, my eyes fixed on the screen, to see his behavior, to look for the cue.
He waded into and through the arranged military squadrons with their parahuman supplementary forces. He was as tough as Behemoth or Leviathan. No attack delivered more than scratches or nicks.
Five minutes, six, as he leisurely tore through the forces he’d caught off guard. Eidolon ducked between two of the pillars of altered time and delivered a punch that sent the Endbringer tumbling. The orbiting columns were pulled behind Khonsu as he moved, and Eidolon came only a hair from being caught.
Alexandria and other capes joined the attack. Too few. Everyone else retreated.
Khonsu didn’t pursue. He remained where he was, arms extended out to either side, palms down.
Then he disappeared in a massive, tightly contained explosion. Trucks and sections of fence were thrown into the air by the movement.
Long seconds passed. Then my phone vibrated. Another text.
Cannot deploy until we have a way to pin him down.
Stand by until further notice.
I struck the laptop that sat in front of me. One hinge holding it in place snapped. I shoved it hard, and it fell to the floor of the craft.
“Fuck!” I shouted. “Fuck it!”
I kicked the fallen laptop, and it went skidding across the floor, down the ramp and into the parking lot. My foot stung with the impacts.
The other Wards were gathered, sitting or standing around the craft that was taking us nowhere. There was no way to approach if he’d teleport by the time we arrived. We’d never catch up to him. The others were as quiet and still as I’d been violent, haunted, scared.
Nobody talked. Nobody volunteered ideas, because we didn’t have any.
I wasn’t sure any of us knew how to fight this one. Nobody in the Chicago Wards did. Nobody elsewhere. Speaking, commenting on the situation, it would only remind us of what we were facing.
Above all else, I wasn’t sure I wanted to think about the detail we hadn’t spoken aloud. The thing, above everything else, that made this so fucked up. In the nine years that we’d been fighting Behemoth, Leviathan and Simurgh, they’d never attacked this close together.
Even if we found a way to beat this Khonsu, to mount a defense and stop him from picking us apart, settlement by settlement, darker possibilities loomed.
Two attacks, two months apart. Had their schedule changed? Would the next attack come in a mere two months, or would it be more unpredictable than that?
No, I thought, with a dawning horror. No, it was worse than that. The Endbringer’s schedule of attack had always depended on the number of Endbringers in the rotation.
If they were keeping to their usual rules, it promised a fifth, waiting in the wings.
Scarab 25.5
Three days.
Nearly three days and we hadn’t managed to kill him.
A new target every thirty minutes, give or take. Ten to twenty minutes for the defending forces to get their shit together. The remainder of that time was our capes trying to hurt him. Chipping away at him.
Sometimes we made headway.
Sometimes he crushed the bulk of the defending forces and then stood still, drawing those rotating columns of altered time to himself. Not covering himself, but allowing the altered time effects to graze the outer edges of his body. He’d heal, regenerating as much as half of the damage we’d done.
He hit major cities and small ones. Villages, even, when he needed some elbow room to regenerate. He’d hit a weapons stockpile in Russia, and nuclear weapons had been accelerated in time, the casings wearing down in that odd entropic, eroding effect that accompanied the time accelerations. A nuclear detonation. Heroes were still trying to minimize the damage.
He was teleporting less often than he had at first, and there were a number of heroes who were appearing regularly on the scene. Legend, Alexandria, Eidolon, they were stepping up, though they’d started taking breaks, shifts. Legend would skip one, then participate in the next two. Alexandria would do two on, then two off.
They were tired, weary. Everyone was. How could you rest when he could appear where you were? Six or eight hours of sleep meant he’d be changing location twelve to sixteen times, if not more. And at the same time, that fatigue, it made it easier to make mistakes, and he wasn’t an opponent that let mistakes slide.
Tecton approached me, setting his hands on my shoulders.
“What?” I asked.
“You need to rest. The others have managed it.”
“I’ve napped.”
“Sleep. You’re swaying on your feet.”
I wanted to protest. My eyes fell on the others, and I could see how affected they were. Scared, tired, helpless. They were arranged around the Chicago headquarters, perpetually in costume, with no idea what to do with themselves. Thirty minutes, and then that intense period of tension, waiting, wondering as it took the media or the PRT time to grasp just where he’d gone, to report the information. If we were lucky, we got video footage, and we didn’t have to wonder if Khonsu had caught any of the big guns.
In a way, I’d grown used to being a little different from my peers, here. I could be blasé about things that had them freaking out, confident. I could put myself in the bad guy’s shoes because I’d been one, once.
Except here, I was no different. Three days in, unable to sleep for more than an hour or two at a time, feeling my heart plummet into my stomach every time Khonsu teleported, I was on the same page as the others.
“I only ever wanted to do something to help,” I said.
“I know,” Tecton said.
“Even at the beginning, even when I was undercover in the Undersiders, I wanted to stop the bad guys. A lot of it was selfish, me wanting to escape, but I still wanted to work for the greater good.”
“Yeah,” Tecton said. He let his gauntlets fall from my shoulders. I turned around to look at him. Our man of iron, his face hidden beneath his helmet. He was standing firm, giving no indication of how affected he
was. It let him be strong, or appear to be strong, for our sakes.
“And then I decided to be a villain full-time, but my motivations were still sort of good, even if I wasn’t. I knew the Undersiders needed help. That there was something wrong with a lot of them, something missing in them. And being a part of all of that, it was a way to help Coil, when I thought his plan was something good.”
“You’re not a bad person, Taylor.”
“I’m not… being good or bad was never a thing for me. Not really. It was all about the actions I was taking and why, instead. I became a warlord and I took care of people. I helped seize the city from Coil and we started implementing changes. Again and again, I’ve escalated in terms of the kind of power I wield.”
“Do you think you’re more powerful now? With the Wards?” He sounded almost surprised.
“I… think so. Yeah. Maybe my hands are tied, I can’t be as direct or ruthless as I would otherwise be, but I can reach out to the villains and I can reach out to the heroes, and I can affect a kind of change. I have resources. Tools and information I might not otherwise have.”
“Makes sense,” he said, his voice soft. “Taylor, you need to sleep. I can hear it in your voice.”
“I just… why is it that I get more powerful over time, and yet I feel more and more helpless?”
“You ask too much of yourself,” Tecton said. “You could have all of the power in the world, and you’d still feel like you should do more.”
“If he hits Brockton Bay—”
“Your father and friends will be okay. Hell, our strike squad that we used against Behemoth was made up of Brockton Bay residents, wasn’t it?”
“If I have to watch people I care about getting hurt while I’m helpless to do anything, I’ll lose it.”
“It wouldn’t be constructive to lose it,” Tecton said. “And you’re more likely to lose it if you’re tired. Go sleep.”
I didn’t reply. Instead, I trudged off to the quarters that had been set aside for me. Roughly pie-shaped, with the door at the tip, it sat at the edge of the ‘hub’. I had a bedroom upstairs, more personal, more of a home, but I didn’t want to be that far away. I didn’t want to lapse into being Taylor Hebert, even in a moment of rest. Better to keep thinking, keep considering options.