"Sounds like fun."

Before any actual cape business, the PRT has to take care of some setup. The costume, of course. It's finished in short order, complete with gold and gems. (Smaller quantities than Coil supplied.) Aside from that, there's further power and basic combat training, and of course PR. Don't threaten people, don't swear in public, don't give away important information, don't conspicuously display destructive might unless the point is to display destructive might, the point is never to display destructive might, and so on. It boils down to "talk less, smile more" being a safe option to start out with.
Eventually she's cleared as ready for duty.

Her new Steelwing, wherever it came from, is a lot sleeker and smaller than she would have liked. Not much space to store gear inside. It's still bloody fast and maneuverable, at least. She adds her own gold things to the inside of the costume and starts charging them up with mana.

The first charge of Dauntless's power gets put into a particular amulet, one with a large citrine set into the middle. So does the second. It'll probably be a while before this has any useful effects.

Her official unveiling speech was mostly written by someone else, but she manages to deliver it with reasonable amounts of sincerity.

As it turns out, superheroing is boring. The heroes are fast, but they aren't usually being called somewhere at any given time. A lot of the time, they're just patrolling the less safe parts of the city keeping their eyes open just in case and ready to be directed elsewhere if a call comes in. (Gren picks up details about the city: this part is considered Merchant territory, that part is contested between E88 and the ABB, and so on.) For the moment, they're sending her with groups that aren't expected to deal with anything more dangerous than unpowered criminals.

Dauntless has yet to get accustomed to the staring.

Boring is fine. All those fights she got in during her first week here were starting to wear her down. She can relax, for a certain value of relaxing. In her downtime she reads up on this planet's history, gets used to some of the fiction, occasionally posts on that forum, plays internet poker with virtual money.

She doesn't actually need to stare at Dauntless to keep his power up anymore. She does figure out that she can pour extra mana into his power to generate charges faster - fourteen to sixteen hours if she does nothing else with a particular day's mana supply. She makes sure her stored mana is full before doing that, though.

After two weeks, the thing is starting to become noticeably better at holding mana. It retains it without excess effort, doesn't leak out slowly like it used to, and lets her call on more at once without feeling strained.

But after two weeks, the Endbringer attack is imminent. Yvette still thinks Brockton Bay will be the site of the attack. The UDF has gathered a large list of Witches who would like to volunteer for the defense, flyer and brute and blaster all, plus a wide variety of specials and no less than eight healers. They work out transport and temporary lodging with the Protectorate.

The PRT is happy to have them. And even happier to have the warning. Endbringer attacks aren't predictable with a lot of precision...normally. A few questions to Yvette and they narrow down the date to May fifteenth. Calendars are marked. Many civilians decide it's a good time to take a vacation, and unlike with most Endbringer attacks they have time to take possessions and pets instead of just rushing for a shelter.

In the weeks remaining until the attack, presumed to be Leviathan, the city gets gradually emptier. Cape crime goes down steeply, since everyone including the various villain factions expects to be on the same side very soon. (Non-cape crime continues as ever, at least proportionately to the number of people present.) And as the scheduled day approaches, heroes start arriving, including the biggest of guns.

Gren spends most of the days leading up to the attack taking scrupulous and detailed notes on all the fantastic and wildly varied powers available. Most of them she can't copy to a useful extent. Some she can.

Battery is interesting and potentially useful. Working with Mouse Protector's power improves her ability to teleport. Brandish meshes well with Knight's crystal spear. She can't copy Cache's ability to store away living things, but he makes her pocket dimension easier to access.

Bastion, Lady Photon, Glory Girl, Laserdream and Shielder are not very mana-efficient on their own, but after a few hours of work she combines the whole lot into one smooth and elegant force-field and laser power. Parian isn't too useful in direct terms, but her clothamancy is a nice break from all the simple, brutal powers that tend to show up in this world.

But Eidolon is completely uncopiable... And getting weaker. She can smell the telltale decay, the subtle degrading feeling that all Witches have. Food for thought.

Eidolon doesn't comment. If she doesn't volunteer the fact that she knows, it might not be obvious whether he has even noticed the decrease.

For once everyone involved is fully briefed. Normally minutes of pre-battle speech is a lot, and here there is plenty of time to inform the newcomers. Leviathan is scary: powerful, strong, and smarter than he looks. When he's in the water he's faster than any speedster they have on record, according to a cape with no known upper limit. Those who aren't familiar with Leviathan can find video footage of him in action.
His hydrokinetic powers operate on a larger scale than almost any other powers; Brockton Bay can expect periodic tidal waves and catastrophic damage to or from the aquifer beneath the city.

Visibility will be poor. Armbands get distributed; when activated they'll keep track of capes' identities and positions. Everyone knows where to report, based on whether they can take a hit and get back up, blast from a distance, merely search and rescue downed capes, and so on.

The time to covertly talk to Eidolon about how he's getting weaker is definitely after the intense battle, when it won't shake his focus.

Most of the Witches (and there are a lot of them, almost a hundred) plan to do a few minutes of blasting, then move to search-and-rescue or ferrying less mobile capes around. They fly machines similar to Gren's, carry lots of jewelry, and few of them are wearing masks. Only three Witches are confident enough in their durability to tank on the front lines.

When the time comes, Chatterbox establishes and holds a link with as many people as possible. If something happens to the armbands and she hasn't been knocked out, they might still be able to communicate.

The hour approaches, with as many people as possible ready and waiting to beat back Leviathan.

They've even had time to set up defenses in advance. Bombs captured from Bakuda and repurposed by other tinkers. Brightly colored strings that will hopefully be easily visible for safety after Clockblocker turns them into impenetrable traps. Any cape that could benefit from preparation time has something set up along the shore line.

The clock ticks down, but the skies aren't darkening with storm clouds.

They wait. And wait. Everyone gets increasingly nervous.

At some point, "Dragon, how sure are we that it's Leviathan, and not Behemoth or the Simurgh? And why are we sure of that?"

"Priority one alert! IT'S BEHEMOTH! NOT LEVIATHAN! Sector CE-7!"

Witches turn almost as one and make the flying equivalent of a sprint for that area.

Sector CE-7 is currently turning into a crater. The creature climbs out, either accompanied by or causing an earthquake, and a few of the nearest capes get burned up from the inside.

The Witches are fast and airborne. They're among the first there. While Dragon's voice confirms that Leviathan has turned and left, the flying artillery capes start firing into Behemoth's skin of obsidian and magma. The subset of front line capes who think they're still front line capes against the new opponent rush toward him. Shoreline defenses are abandoned. Eidolon hangs back, presumably changing out his powers.

These Witches are clearly used to working together, and using their mobility. They ball into tightly packed formations and swoop in to hit Behemoth ten or twenty at a time, from unexpected directions. Most of them use the generic whitish blast, but there are some more exotic blaster specials in there. They prefer to dodge incoming attacks, but flare shields just long enough to block whatever attack comes at them when they can't. It's a shame these shields aren't always strong enough - a couple of them go down, surprised by the sheer force of the first blast of lightning.

After the first couple of barrages most of the Witches pull back, conserving their strength. About half of them are perfectly happy to play courier, carrying blasters into airborne firing positions, evacuating the wounded, or just keeping track of Behemoth's position, reporting what it's doing next. The rest continue their hit-and-run barrages, but Dragon's program should know that they can only keep it up for a few minutes at most.

Gren herself somehow manages to pour enough mana into the combined Knight/Brandish power that the glowing weapon extends almost forty feet as she swings it out. It cuts a swath into one of Behemoth's legs, a chunk the size of a motorcycle. But it cost a lot of mana, a solid tenth of her reserves, and she has to retreat and get healed by one of the visiting Witches afterwards.

(Yvette has decided it's a good idea to tell Tattletale that she's a precog, and discuss tactics.)

Behemoth's leg heals. Not immediately, but fast enough that it visibly makes progress. That injury quickly becomes the most targeted area.

Most of Behemoth's lightning is targeting Witches, if only because that's most of the people in line of sight. But few of them (aside from Gren and presumably Knight) can deal much direct damage. As more capes get to the front, Behemoth is surrounded by barrages of projectiles and the tougher Brutes. Tinkers came prepared for Leviathan, and very few are shielded against radiation. Alexandria flies into Behemoth, and bounces off with exactly the same speed, as if she had been reflected from a mirror. Behemoth starts moving. Slowly, more lumbering than walking, and pausing regularly to zap people or knock over a building. He's moving in apparently random directions, but gradually heads west.


Tattletale's reaction is mostly irritation that they had a precog who can predict Endbringers and only now let her start asking questions, but she immediately starts asking for reactions to "the plan I'm thinking of now" and narrowing down possibilities.

Knight can't extend her weapon nearly as far, and she doesn't dare get close enough to hit Behemoth, blasting from afar instead. There's danger-seeking and then there's suicidal. She's rather annoyed to be fighting an enemy that will kill her just by existing in melee range.

Yvette did not know Tattletale existed until she tried to find the best person-to-plan-things-with, so don't go blaming her! ...After a couple of minutes, one of Tattletale's plans results in significantly less Doom than all the others before it.

Gren makes another pass with her Knight/Brandish combo, aiming for the same spot. She gets closer this time, pulling on Alexandria's invulnurability, so as not to waste huge amounts of mana extending the weapon so far.

Even last time, forty feet was well within the instant death radius. But this is far less expensive than her shields and regeneration.

And tougher, too. She is apparently an interesting enough opponent for Behemoth to bother taking a swipe at. Without checking to see if he hit her he goes back to fighting the rest. One of Legend's beams hits him from above and then erupts from his claws, breaking through force fields and felling a group of capes.

Tattletale jumps on Yvette's steelwing, not bothering to ask first, and points the way to a short girl wearing a doll-like mask. The doll girl is inflating what look like giant stuffed animals and sending them to fight (or at least protect capes from) Behemoth.

There is no rule that cape powers have to make sense.

Gren teleports out of the way of the swipe, appearing some two thousand feet above. She's invulnerable, but her Steelwing isn't, after all. She's back in the fray after thirty seconds to calm down and descend.

"Can't keep doing this forever," she tells her armband, "I've got maybe eight, maybe ten more passes in me." Most of the rest of the Witches are tiring out, too. (A few more have died.) Only about two dozen are still blasting away, most are instead focusing on shields and moving people around.

Yvette doesn't bother asking questions. Not in the middle of a battle. She streams over to Parian. More Witches are ready and waiting if her master plan needs other people moved around.

The Witches are a large force, but the capes are experienced too. They step up. Behemoth is wracked with explosions, most of which he casually shrugs off. During sustained barrage he starts falling over, only to launch a blast of something downward and let the opposite reaction right him. He claps his hands together. The thunderclap rocks the air the fliers are flying in, and some of them lose their stability. Then the lightning resumes.

Tattletale is very much in favor of having people do her bidding. Her own team is only marginally effective here; at least Grue can offer some protection against the monster's radiation. She sends some Witches to collect two parahumans, using her armband to notify them. She and Parian fly off toward the fourth while Behemoth is busy hammering through one of Eidolon's violet force fields.

Tattletale outlines her plan. The doll girl, a man in bulky armor and a square mask, a girl in a deep purple costume with a visor, and Clockblocker.

Behemoth's current tactic is ordinary temperature. Well outside his ordinary kill radius capes are fleeing or dying, armor is melting, and (to those without enhanced perception) the monster himself appears to gimble in the wabe. Anything nearby that wasn't already on fire is now on fire.

Tattletale asks Yvette to say when, and on her word threads launch toward Behemoth almost as fast as a speeding bullet. They curve around him. Some freeze in place. Others bite into his flesh, charged by the same power that made them heatproof. Behemoth roars, not the weaponized roar that liquefies anyone standing too close but an ordinary roar. He starts concentrating lightning at the group that caught him.

Large chunks of Witch-generated ice (which quickly become steam) dull the thermal attack in at least one direction. Only one Witch is still fighting Behemoth directly. She's glowing in a rapidly shifting rainbow of color, which probably has something to do with how she's not dead. All the steelwings exposed are getting pretty badly damaged. Lots of Witches abandon theirs and seek sufficiently sticklike debris to flee on.

When Behemoth strikes back, Citrine Mage aka Grendyne teleports in front of the little group and puts up the widest, toughest shield she can manage. Not very impresive compared to Eidolon, especially with so much mana already spent, but there's something to be said for response time. The other Witches start dodging and weaving with their passengers, only holding still long enough to let them launch a new set of strings every once in a while.

Without Yvette telling them exactly when to fire, some of the close combatants get hit in the crossfire. Parian's control is good, but she can't be looking everywhere at once. These are Brutes capable of going toe to toe with Behemoth and getting back up, and now some of them have puncture wounds.

But it's a very effective weapon. Behemoth slides himself along the frozen threads, as close to the source as he can go until one launched from a different angle bars his way. Legend and Eidolon are blasting him from above, trying to bash him into the frozen threads. Alexandria hangs back and rescues the injured, not trusting even her invulnerability against whatever the cape in purple is doing.

After stopping, Behemoth opens his maw and inhales. Much more air rushes toward him than he could plausibly be sucking in, and the effect is that anything not tied down gets pulled toward him. This includes combatants.