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Ellie in Worm
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About time. They're in the window, which means it could be any point in the next couple weeks.

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Any hunches on where or when?

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Endbringer prediction mostly just means people with brightly colored web sites talking about the prophecies of Edward Kelley and how the last three attacks spell out a word in ancient Enochian and the next one is unavoidably going to be the speaker's home town. Maybe someone somewhere has some real ones, but definitely not that they publicize.

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Hmm. Her own precogs are useless here.

Maybe just keep a watch on the Protectorate and try to follow them when they leave.

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It'll involve hanging out here, or at least some city with a serious team, for possibly weeks. But now that she can hide easily and doesn't need to eat or even sleep, it's entirely a question of boredom.

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She can kill some time thinking of inventive ways to murder Jack.

And trying to put together a coherent narrative about those entities she keeps seeing when she collects a power.

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It's not obvious if there is a coherent narrative. Probably.

 

Eventually she sees heroes start rushing to the Protectorate base. More than zero villains, too. It's probably that.

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Time to go.

One of the Burnscar variants had an interesting twist: to travel to the vicinity of fire, instead of appearing within it. Assuming the transport runs on some sort of combustion engine, she ought be able to use that to follow.

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She'll still need to disappear from fire, but she has more capes who can create it than she can use. If she tries to appear inside the transport, she'd get noticed right away. The other option would be appearing near it and repeatedly falling, with the drawback that she doesn't know the destination.

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Probably easier to follow. Hopefully it's not farther than she can manage.

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Miami. Leviathan, from the weather. The capes disembark and head to the official rendezvous.

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She splits, and sends a body to follow. Her shades are defensively oriented, insofar as others can recognize them.

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A cape in a dark costume with a literal cape stares at her through a visor. Alexandria.

"You. Leviathan is due any minute. We do not have time for this. Stay back and collect only the dead, and we'll let you leave afterward."

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"We were going to offer our help, but as you like."

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She goes back to briefing the capes while there's still time. Front-line capes, blasters, support and rescue, et assorted ceteras. Most people have some idea where they're supposed to be. The general theme is holding Leviathan back and doing damage while waiting for Scion to arrive; they're prepared but they're also on top of a giant aquifer. Leviathan has the high ground. Metaphorically.

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Should be interesting.

She goes to find a relatively central vantage.

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Everyone avoids her. No one shoots. The foreign capes are less in shock, but take the Protectorate's word for it that the truce does not extend this far. (The reasons spread by osmosis.)

 

Waves start coming faster and larger, and then with almost no warning Leviathan himself. Thirty feet tall with a tail longer than that, four eyes on a lopsided face, and a top-heavy shape. Then he starts moving, too quickly to get a very good view. He charges straight into the front line.

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Possibly she could put her Shaker 12 to use in mitigating the effects of his high ground, but she was asked to stay back. Maybe if he breaks for a shelter she'll attempt to divert him. For now: observation and collection.

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Labyrinth probably couldn't do much about an aquifer beneath four counties anyway.

 

The first shades to collect are the ones from the front line. Capes who thought they could take a hit from Leviathan and were wrong, or who got hit harder than expected or just got unlucky. They are at least collectively slowing him down and letting the blasters get out some good shots.

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Their ill fortune is her good luck. Fear not brave warriors, for in death you will find such purpose as you never knew in life etc, etc.

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The first time Leviathan really breaks through, the shades come in faster than a trickle.

—two creatures leaving a planet, dense with information—
—sending its cells one by one to recipients of an unrecognizable alien race—
—crashing near the western coast of Africa—
—flying distances that would be mind-boggling if their minds weren't harder to boggle—
—watching the recipients of the cells, taking notes—

It's all out of order, and a lot of it repeats. Most flashes only involve one, but never more than two and she's had a fair number of visions by now.

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There is a story here. One she can almost see-

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The capes drive the monster back, and the deaths stop. It's probably very heroic from their point of view but really who cares.

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She can use the break to ensure her own position is relatively secure. Not in danger of waves or similar.

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It's not the most defended; that's being used as the battlefield hospital, but it's out of the way and relatively safe.

Most of the deaths at any given time are coming from injured capes that no one rescued in time. So they're getting less correlated with where the action is and trickling in one at a time. (Most of the action is people like Alexandria trading blows with the Endbringer. Irrelevant for her purposes.)

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