Chapter 2

  Leviathan's exit from the battle was swift. Almost too swift to process. One moment, he was ravishing their frontline. The next, he was a blur vanishing over the skyline, launched by a single punch that expunged the water from the street before it came rushing back in. A torrential wall of seawater erupted in the distance, followed by a metallic groan of rupturing supports and the crash of concrete. A billboard toppled forward like a severed limb, folding against a submerged car.

  And then, he came back.

  Leviathan galloped on all fours, limbs a blur, clawed digits biting into the pavement with every stride. His form shimmered through the rain, half obscured by spray, but the damage was unmistakable. A deep crater marred his narrow chest, as if a giant thumb had pressed into soft clay. Blood streamed from the wound in thick, dark ribbons, swirling into the floodwater.

  Then he struck.

  His arm lashed sideways, and the caped man—that caped man, the one in the soggy yellow suit—was caught mid-step. The force of the impact hurled him through the side of a high-rise. Concrete shattered and glass erupted outward in waves. The man vanished into the collapsing building without so much as a shout.

  But his death had bought time.

  The battlefield, half-submerged and awash in chaos, shifted. Disoriented capes stumbled to their feet, while others scrambled for higher ground or formed impromptu squads. Waterlogged Wards were pulled back to their feet by squad leaders. What tinkers there were frantically adjusted drones and deployable equipment. Some brutes stood in defensive positions waiting for Leviathan to commit again.

  "A shame," Eidolon muttered, his voice low in his throat. He hovered a few feet above the ground, beside Alexandria who didn't reply, a grim expression on her face.

  Leviathan surged forward again. This time toward a cluster of capes near a half-flooded bus shelter. Saltwater followed him in a fan-shaped wave, fast. It crashed down like a fluid wall of concrete. The men and women there didn't see it coming.

  Alexandria did.

  She intercepted him mid-charge, striking like a silver bullet. The sound of their collision was heavy. The ground shook from the force and several of the capes who'd been saved stumbled into the deep water again. Leviathan's massive form skidded through debris and wreckage, flung end over end into an overpass. A moment later, more melee-focused capes surged in. The scramble that followed was a blur of armor, claws, fists, and raw kinetic power.

  Above them all, Eidolon hovered in the rain.

  For a moment, he hesitated. Rain slithered down the invisible barrier of his personal field, enough to stop a brute in their tracks

  It was a common misconception on television and forums that Eidolon was limited to only three powers at any given time. Some even claimed he had only three "slots" he could fill. In reality, Eidolon could wield fewer or even more than three abilities at the same time.

  For instance, he could wield four powers, but, if one of those four was what he considered serious, then two or even all of the rest would have to be minor by comparison, otherwise, his passenger, the source of his ability to call upon powers, couldn't manage it. Inversely, if he wanted more potency in a given power or power set, then he would have to choose to wield fewer powers at once.

  As it just so happened to work out, Eidolon found that wielding three serious powers struck the ideal balance, especially against the Endbringers, who could maim or kill him in seconds unprepared, which was likely the origin of the "slots" rumor.

  Despite these limitations, Eidolon had still found his situation ideal. And who wouldn't? He could wield almost any power he could think of and more, all at the low cost of not being able to use too many at the same time. Many wouldn't even consider that a cost to begin with. And for years, he agreed.

  No, the real bill would come collect later.

  If the stakes weren't so high and if he weren't in front of so many witnesses, he might have laughed at himself then and there before inevitably breaking down.

  The real limitation, he would come to find out, was that, like the old military trucks he dreamt of driving as a young man trying to make something of himself, his passenger burned too much fuel, much too quickly, and especially under heavy load, which, he couldn't help but smile ruefully, was the whole point of the blasted truck to begin with.

  Many years ago, in his prime, he could juggle mighty powers with casual ease.

  Of course I can, he'd thought.

  It came with the territory when you were one of the world's most powerful protectors, and the very skies were his domain.

  Now, as he let go of his barrier, and rain traced rivulets down the curve of his mirror like helmet before his eyes, Eidolon stood debating within himself. Should he prioritize speed? Or diminish his chances of surviving the next few minutes for sheer destructive power? Where was the kinetic redirection field? Where was the localized black hole generation? Where was the matter erasure? He searched, but even now, his passenger did not have the strength to reach.

  His passenger struggled to retrieve density manipulation instead. Strong? Yes. Enough to crush buildings or stop a charging brute. But in his prime, he would've dismissed it without a second thought. What he now considered "serious" were the scraps he used to pass over in favor of flashier, more expensive choices.

  What a fool I was, he thought bitterly.

  His passenger managed to return with a matter disintegration beam. Precise, surgical, and potent if it had time to dig in.

  Not bad.

  After a moment of consideration, he chose to keep his flight power, which was basic three dimensional movement.

  He was at a crossroads.

  Flight powers were some of the most common and easiest to wield of his abilities, so he felt he had just enough in him for one more serious ability or two relatively minor ones. His choice was made when he settled on omnidirectional motion sense, a low-tier precognitive reflex enhancer that let him register movement faster than his eyes ever could. He then tied things together with a modest boost to his physical speed. That brought his current load-out to four abilities. Range, reflexes, and speed, in harmony, would serve as his shield.

  It was a mediocre load-out, Eidolon conceded, and it said more about how strong he was in his prime that he could even consider it that as that very same power set today would mark him amongst the strongest of blasters, Legend or Purity notwithstanding.

  He gained altitude. Above him, Legend coordinated with a squad of ranged attackers from the Pacific Northwest. Glowing projectiles and streaks of light were lancing through the downpour as Eidolon drifted sideways, narrowly avoiding a tumbling slab of building with his reflexes as he maneuvered to cover the flank.

  He harried Leviathan from a distance, threading his attacks between friendly capes with the help of enhanced reflexes and speed. His disintegration beam carved deep, smoking channels through Leviathan's armor like flesh, but Eidolon kept his aim trained on the yawning crater in the monster's chest. The one torn open earlier by the bald man in the yellow. Damage like that was rare. Unheard of, even. He could count on one hand the times anyone had made Leviathan bleed that badly. Now, beneath the layers of cracked carapace and melted sinew, Eidolon could see a frame of something like bone, black and wiry.

  For a minute, they'd done a fantastic job of avoiding outright deathblows despite their mounting casualties, but a brute in armor had his leg tripped by the water from Leviathan's tail. He could see the following blow coming with his enhanced senses, but his beam was too narrow, not able to tear flesh fast enough. The Endbringer's claws were already descending like a guillotine to his enhanced sense.

  The claw halted in mid-arc, caught in a red-gloved hand.

  It caught Eidolon completely off guard, even with his enhanced senses. One moment, the space was empty, and in the next, a man stood in the gap, as if he had skipped frames in a video.

  Steam rose from his glove where friction had scorched the rubber. His yellow jumpsuit clung awkwardly to his thin frame. Standing on fractured pavement, shoulders relaxed, one hand clasped around Leviathan's massive forearm like it was nothing more than a rolled up newspaper. The beast's arm bulged, steel-hard muscle ballooning between the man's fingers where he gripped it.

  The monster's tail whipped in from the other side, a killing blow. The man didn't let go.

  Instead, with one easy motion, before the tail could connect, the man pivoted on his heel and yanked.

  Leviathan, nearly nine tons of violence and water, left the ground like the swing of a trebuchet.

  A second later, the impact slammed Leviathan into the side of a tall building. The structure gave way with a groan, collapsing in on itself in a plume of dust and steel. The ground trembled and water surged outward in churning waves.

  A collective silence fell across the battlefield.

  "Sorry," the man said. "You guys looked like you had it covered until then. Didn't wanna get in the way."

  The cape who'd been saved staggered to his feet, dazed, and was quickly directed toward the nearest aid station set up along the perimeter by the voice in his armband.

  Saitama scratched his cheek. "That guy's kinda fast," he said, glancing toward the plume of debris rising where Leviathan had landed.

  Left unspoken was the reality that the man wasn't just a top-tier brute, but also a mover of the highest class as well. To those who had never faced him in battle, Leviathan's towering thirty-foot frame suggested sluggishness; a lumbering giant whose size came at the cost of speed. To those who knew better, the Endbringer held the record for the fastest known speedster on the planet when in his element. On land, outside of that advantage, few capes in the world could outpace him, Eidolon and Legend among them.

  Eidolon descended slowly, his boots skimming the surface of the waist-deep floodwater. Ripples spread outward from where he touched down. His cape dragged in the spray behind him.

  Eidolon gave a single nod to the man.

  "Well done."

  The bald man turned his head, water dripping from the corner of his sleeve. His expression was blank.

  "No problem," he said.

  Eidolon floated a little closer.

  "With you and Alexandria on the front line," he said, "we might actually have a shot at containing this." A beat. "What's your name?"

  The man opened his mouth to answer—

  But another voice cut in.

  "Saitama, right?"

  Legend touched down beside them, light still pulsing faintly from his shoulders. The air around him shimmered with residual heat and ozone, the aftermath of his last barrage.

  "Oh, yeah." Saitama nodded. For a brief second, something like concern flickered across his face, a slight wrinkle of his brow, almost lost in the rain.

  "Actually, I've been meaning to ask—" he began, glancing between them, raising a hand.

  A metallic shriek tore through the sky, cutting across the rain and drowning out Saitama's words.

  An instant later, Dragon's newest combat rig dropped into the flooded street, slamming down with a splash. Water exploded outward in every direction, drenching nearby capes.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  The machine was a quadrupedal, bus-sized hulk of sleek black-and-silver plating. The rear thruster at it's back hissed as it powered down, venting steam in the cold air. Missile pods unfolded from each shoulder.

  Dragon's accented voice snapped through the loud speakers on the mech:

  "Something's wrong. I've lost contact with Leviathan on my probes. No pings."

  Saitama lowered his hand slowly. "Wait, that's it? But we were just getting started."

  Eidolon clicked his tongue, hovering higher. "Too much to hope he'd wait for us."

  Legend's tone sharpened, switching gears. "Reposition immediately. This changes things. We have another brute on the field who can withstand Leviathan. Dragon, I want recon. Find him fast, I don't want him using this as a chance to break farther into the city toward the aquifer grid or the shelters."

  Saitama formed a T with his hands. "Uh, time out," he said, voice cutting through the bustle of shouted orders.

  He gestured vaguely toward a cluster of nearby capes.

  Some were lean and slight: teenagers, clearly, going by their builds and the awkward way a few of them held themselves. He recognized a couple of them. Vista and Gallant were the names that came to mind. They were in posters, plastered over bus stops and vending machines, "heroes of tomorrow" or something like that. Another was named Argent or Agent or something of the sort, a brute if he recalled correctly. There were others, too, but he couldn't place their names at all.

  "Aren't they supposed to be in school or something?" Saitama asked, irritation coloring his voice. "This is kinda… a lot."

  He waved at the drowned streets, water still lapping at the half-submerged cars, and the dead and injured.

  Before anyone could answer, a harsh crackle cut through the air from the loud speakers on the giant mech.

  Dragon's voice returned, louder, more strained. "I've lost all contact with the buoys near the Protectorate HQ. Seismic surge detected. Significant ground displacement." A beat. "There's another wave incoming."

  The street froze. Heads turned as one toward the coastline. Someone backed up without realizing it, boots slipping in the water.

  Then came the sound.

  It started low. A slow, monstrous rumble that grew and grew.

  Eidolon shot into the air, trailing mist. His eyes swept the skyline, scanning beyond the cranes and office towers.

  And then he saw it. A wall of water. This wasn't a crest rolling gently in from the sea. This was a moving cliffside.

  Cars spun end over end in front of it like kicked cans. Trees cracked in half and were swallowed whole. The glass fa?ades of buildings exploded outward in great shimmering bursts, glittering in the darkness of the dawn.

  "Eidolon?" Alexandria's voice crackled over the comms. She was already airborne, cradling two bloodied, groaning capes. "Can you stop it?"

  "Maybe," he said, hesitantly. "But I'll need time."

  She nodded, then—

  "All movers," she barked, amplifying the command. "Pull evac priority! If they can't run, lift them. Teleporters, triage by injury and proximity to the impact. No wasted trips. Dragon, rally point!"

  "Uploading now," Dragon responded from her mechanized platform. "Rooftop, four blocks east. Tallest structure that has the highest chance of surviving intact. I'm launching signal flares."

  A pair of golden streamers ignited high above the skyline, flickering in the dusk.

  "Everyone move!"

  Capes surged into motion. Runners dashed through waterlogged streets. Fliers lifted the injured into the air. Teleporters blinked in and out of existence, taking two, three people at a time. The comms channels buzzed with frantic orders, overlapping voices, bursts of static, and screams.

  Over it all, louder with every heartbeat, came the deep roar of an onrushing tidal wave.

  Above the chaos, Eidolon hovered, eyes narrowed in concentration. A bead of sweat ran down his brow. His cape fluttered in the growing wind as he cycled through powers, rejecting each offering from his passenger.

  Disintegration beam—too risky. Gone.

  Super speed—useless without a pairing ability. Gone.

  Telekinesis—too weak at this scale. Discarded.

  His passenger offered up a suite of elemental options, but Eidolon dismissed them with bitter experience. Ice? Only if he was desperate. He still remembered the last time, how a tinker's frozen dam had turned to shrapnel under Leviathan's waves, killing more allies than it saved.

  Below, the street was alive with desperate preparation.

  Kaiser, one of the local villains, stood at the intersection, arms raised. Shards of steel burst from the asphalt, slotting together into jagged walls. At first, they were crude blades jutting every which way, but then he adjusted, slowing to form interlocking girders, thick beams reinforcing the barrier's spine. Another cape, a telekinetic, floated debris into place with raw, buzzing energy, shaping the wreckage into ad-hoc barricades and break waters. Armsmaster shot a grappling hook around several of the barricades, freezing the structures in time.

  Further down the road, brutes hauled abandoned cars sideways, stacking them into uneven barricades. A cape with plant control tried to grow a thicket of vines from cracks in the pavement, roots groping desperately for purchase in the concrete jungle. A tinker shouted for help, her drones sparking as they tried to fuse scrap into anchors. Time was too short.

  Eidolon's frustration mounted. His fingers twitched.

  Too slow. Too weak. Too niche.

  His passenger scraped the depths of the well, returning with a compromise: a kinetic barrier with a limited area. Mediocre all things considered. But maybe, just maybe, it would deflect enough of the energy to save whoever couldn't make it out below.

  He locked it in.

  The wave crested a block away, surging over a row of brownstones and swallowing storefronts in an instant. Entire traffic lights and signs were carried in its maw.

  Alexandria blurred across the street, her cape snapping behind her. She clutched three capes, one screaming, hauling them toward higher ground. The water chased her as she sped away.

  Eidolon raised his hand.

  His barrier unfurled in front of the line, translucent and shimmering, a domed wall. Below, dozens of capes still stood. Not enough had made it out.

  The tidal wave's impact was instant. The force punched the air from Eidolon's lungs from the feedback tied to the ability. His barrier held, barely, but cracks bloomed across it.

  He gritted his teeth, severed the reflex enhancer power, and accepted the next offering: a high-efficiency ability booster. The barrier pulsed, cracks vanishing, as the tidal wave tried to peel it apart.

  He couldn't hold it long. Not without letting others down elsewhere.

  Below, a flier screamed overhead as a blade of water caught them mid-air and hurled them against a building. His armband gave a tinny voice in response.

  Beyond the edge of the shield, something moved. A long, sinuous shape.

  Then glowing, asymmetrical eyes pierced the torrent.

  Leviathan.

  The Endbringer lunged forward like a missile, and the barrier shattered on impact. Steel bent. Roads tore. Then Eidolon's world inverted as the edges of the water reached him.

  He dropped the kinetic shield and begged his passenger for something—anything—else. It gave him some kind of invulnerability, milliseconds before the wave swallowed him whole.

  Eidolon's helmet rattled, the reinforced plating grinding against his temples. His hood snapped back with the sudden drag, and his cape was yanked away—caught and shredded on a jagged piece of twisted rebar jutting from the bent skeleton of a collapsed streetlight. His ears rang, a high-pitched whine layered over the dull roar of water and falling concrete.

  He tumbled in the current, spinning end over end. Murky debris scraped past, which included glass, steel, and chunks of red brick. He focused through the haze and activated his three-dimensional movement ability, stabilizing himself in the dense water. Not all invulnerability powers were made the same, but his had thankfully held.

  Scattered through the submerged streets, he glimpsed faint, flickering, glowing bubbles. Emergency barriers, half-powered shields, and personal forcefields that were still holding on. Inside, he could see silhouettes of capes huddled together.

  Then, he saw a deep green motion in the water.

  Eidolon's attention sharpened as he caught it again: a sleek, sinuous blur slicing in his field of vision faster than his eyes could directly follow, heading directly for the clusters of shielded survivors.

  A streak of yellow tore through the water. The trail that was left in the wake collapsed in itself. The brute and speedster from before, Saitama.

  With casual ease, he reached out, one hand closing around Leviathan's retreating tail. In an instant, the Endbringer's momentum snapped taut like a cable gone rigid. The monster's sleek, armored body bowed from the whiplash, the force sending shockwaves through the water. For a heartbeat, everything stilled. The current churned, but the beast did not move forward.

  Then Leviathan twisted, slashing backward with claws that had split destroyers in half, ripped concrete bunkers apart, and shredded tank columns like tinfoil.

  Eidolon winced, despite the invulnerability wrapped tight around his body. Even through the buffering, the sound cut sharp into his skull. He hovered in the dense murk, eyes narrowing behind his cracked visor.

  Leviathan's claws raked across Saitama's face. There was no blood. Not even a mark from what he could see.

  Not like the hundreds—thousands—who had already bled and died beneath those very same claws.

  Saitama blinked, cheeks puffed with the breath he still held.

  Leviathan thrashed again, slicing through the water and pelting the other brute in blows. Still, Saitama's grip on its tail didn't falter. If anything, it only tightened judging by the growing mist of ichor.

  The monster noticed it's own blood spreading and shifted tactics.

  Though the worst of the floodwater had begun to drain through shattered sewer lines and broken avenues, a fresh cloud of silt, shattered glass, and pulverized concrete erupted upward. The Endbringer's thrashing stirred it into a thick veil, obscuring everything. The world narrowed to darkness and flickering outlines. Visibility dropped to almost zero.

  Then Leviathan lunged sideways, coiling its massive form around the crumbling husk of a half-destroyed office tower. Its claws dug deep. Steel screeched. The beast braced its body, and then it began to slam its tail again and again against the concrete, using Saitama like a flail.

  Each impact vibrated through the street like an earthquake. Chunks of stone collapsed in slow motion and rebar bent and snapped. The flashes of yellow through the murk came again and again—Saitama, still in its grip. Annoyance flickered across the man's face, and with a sudden tug, he yanked hard.

  And then the building broke.

  Stone sheared. Steel tendons snapped. The entire structure collapsed inward like a dying lung, and Leviathan was torn free.

  Its massive, sinuous, body was flung helpless end over end in the water like a child's discarded toy.

  Even Alexandria, for all her raw might, couldn't have withstood that kind of close-quarters thrashing, especially not underwater. She would've been forced to disengage, retreat to air, or risk being dragged under and drowned like so many others. Eidolon had seen it before. Over and over again.

  Leviathan breached the surface, claws raking deep gouges into the sides of buildings as it tried to kill its own momentum. Showers of pulverized concrete pelted the waters along with the downpour of rain as it used the last of the speed to help it bound from fa?ade to fa?ade, escaping.

  But it was not alone.

  Alexandria streaked overhead, a blur of silver and shadow. Beside her, Dragon's suit roared through the air, thruster glowing. And behind them came the others. Legend with Laserdream, Lady Photon, and a half-dozen other aerial capes keeping formation and pelting the monster with beams of colored light or fast moving projectiles. One of Dragon's missiles joined the onslaught, destroying one of the sides of the buildings before Leviathan could use it as a spring board, and the beast fell into the streets below.

  Eidolon floated for a few seconds longer.

  Ten minutes, maybe less, he thought, before the ocean returned with another strike.

  Then he dove.

  The cold was really starting to bite. He slowed, scanned, and found the figure where the last of the flood still pooled.

  The bald man, legs half-buried in a tangle of rubble and drift, was upright, unmoving, but perfectly fine. As if Leviathan had never rag-dolled him. Eidolon seized him under the arms and heaved.

  Together, they rose into the air and arced to a relatively intact rooftop nearby, one already crowded with survivors.

  The moment their boots hit the rooftop, heads turned.

  Capes. Medics. Shell-shocked survivors. A handful of civilians who'd somehow endured the flood. All of them were soaked, bruised, streaked with blood and grime, faces hollowed by exhaustion. Their gazes locked onto the two figures now standing before them.

  Eidolon, ragged, his cape torn and visor cracked.

  And beside him, Saitama, bald, blank-faced, dripping rainwater like he'd just stepped out of a lukewarm shower fully dressed.

  Across the skyline, Myrddin stood with arms raised on another rooftop, his cloak flapping in the wind. He channeled his passenger's power upward and outward, collecting the remaining seawater into a glowing sphere.

  With a flick of his hands, the orb twisted, compressed, and then launched over the rooftops in a glistening arc, back toward the bay.

  Relief swept through the street below. Barriers flickered off with a quiet hum, one by one. Broken forcefields dimmed and vanished. The battered survivors finally drew a full breath. Teleporters soon brought in stretchers. Someone cheered faintly.

  Eidolon turned to Saitama.

  "You okay?" he asked.

  "Hm? Yeah," the bald man said, shrugging. He tilted his head, sticking a pinky in his ear and rotating it lazily. "Just got water in my ear. Hate that feeling."

  In his other hand, almost like an afterthought, Saitama still held the severed piece of Leviathan's tail.

  It hung limp and heavy. Steam curled from the stump where it had been torn free, and thick, oily ichor dripped down to the rooftop, mixing with the heavy rain in pools.

  Eidolon—no, David, the man beneath the mask—just stared.

  What… is this? He thought.

  After all these years—Behemoth in New York, the Simurgh over Ottawa, Leviathan in city after drowning city—he had seen many things. But never a man holding a piece of an Endbringer like it was a bag of groceries.

  "I heard lizards drop their tails when they're scared," Saitama said, holding up the massive appendage and turning it in his hand. He sounded mildly inconvenienced by the discovery. "Kinda smart, actually."

  Eidolon blinked, caught off-guard by the utter casualness. "I… don't think that's quite how Leviathan works."

  Saitama shrugged. "Could've fooled me."

  Then, without ceremony, he lobbed the tail section over his shoulder.

  It spun once in the air and dropped with a wet splat in the street below, knocking over a crooked parking sign with a hollow metallic clank.

  Eidolon exhaled slowly. His voice was dry, unlike the rest of him. "Come on. We can't let Leviathan get away."

  Saitama opened his mouth to reply—

  "Wait! Wait!"

  They turned as a teenage girl in purple limped into view from the stairwell door. Her blonde hair clung to her cheeks, and rain ran in streaks down her bruised face. She wasn't familiar, not to Eidolon, at least. Not a Wards member he could recall, and not one of the locals from Brockton Bay's roster.

  Her voice cracked as she shoved a hand into the air.

  "I have something to say! And this guy—" she stabbed a finger toward Saitama, "—doesn't have an armband, so I can't route a message!"

  Eidolon turned, scowling. Off in the distance, he could already hear the low, rhythmic thoom of distant detonations. Legend, Alexandria, the others were still buying time.

  "Then make it fast," he snapped. "We don't have—"

  "Okay, okay, sheesh!" the girl cut him off. Her eyes narrowed as she locked onto Saitama.

  She raised her hand again, and pointed.

  "You."

  Saitama blinked, then glanced over his shoulder, confused.

  "Me?"

  "Yes, you, baldy," the girl said, visibly frustrated. "I don't know what your problem is, or why your power keeps messing with mine, but stop holding back!"

  Author's Note: If you comment, please watch your language and do not use profanity.

  The part where Eidolon can wield two to four powers at the same time is canon.

  There are three main pieces of evidence that support this: his entry in his official character cast page, the in-depth version, states that he can hold two to four powers at the same time; Tecton, in Worm, stated that Eidolon could wield four powers, but only if the remaining two or three powers were "minor" ones; Finally, Eidolon, at one point during the Echidna fight, seemed to be using four on-screen powers at the same time.

  However, the part about him being able to sacrifice versatility for potency by choosing to wield only two powers was conjecture on my part. To be sure, Eidolon could choose to hold only two powers, but I don't know if this then allows him to go for stronger powers, or if it increases the potency of whatever power he is still holding onto, or if nothing changes at all. Given how it works when he wields four, it stands to reason that the inverse is true also.