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Yesterday, this was an ordinary twenty-first century city. Today it's a war zone, tomorrow it'll be walled off and abandoned.
A few collapsed buildings, shattered streets, and assorted craters. The place is mostly empty, with scattered groups of mostly humanoid monsters roaming and trying to escape the guarded fence around the city. The most instantly noticeable change is an ongoing wordless singing in the back of the mind of anyone present. By itself it's just a sound. An unpleasant sound, and almost but not quite predictable as if someone were trying to attack the listener's sanity without saying anything, but possible to ignore. But along with it, any time a listener closes their eyes they get flashes of memories. Not their worst memories, but whatever negative ones can stick with them unforgettably. It builds up associations between the feelings in those images and almost anything else. Sometimes there's a recognizable common thread and other times there isn't.
An angel fights off teams of opponents. She's fifteen feet tall, extremely winged, with more wings than is strictly necessary for an angel. Even some of her wings have wings. All of them are asymmetric and varyingly sized. A spherical halo of weaponry surrounds her, firing at her more distant enemies from across the battlefield. Her opponents cycle in and out: a golden man, a man surrounded by a bubble, a woman in a dark costume, all flying. Others make certain to stay away after taking their turn, on rare occasions spending too long hearing the angel's music. Those ones voluntarily self-destruct.
A small group of ordinary humans takes refuge in a house as far from the battle as they can reach. The song is quieter here, and, they hope, less potent. Some of them run away from and back to the house, occasionally calling for help. They haven't found any.
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whole_new_can
ertia
Fine, fine. She goes back to putting holes in him in various ways and healing on an alternating basis, occasionally breaking it up by forcing back rain and waves.
wormcan
Speaking of waves: wave.
It's less like an ordinary wave than a roaring wall of water, as if the sea had decided that it is going to be over here now. Defenders who can't protect themselves crowd around anyone who can protect them, with time being the limitation rather than who was trying to kill whom last week. Not everyone can make it to safety, and of course the monster himself tries to interfere with the more successful efforts.
It's less like an ordinary wave than a roaring wall of water, as if the sea had decided that it is going to be over here now. Defenders who can't protect themselves crowd around anyone who can protect them, with time being the limitation rather than who was trying to kill whom last week. Not everyone can make it to safety, and of course the monster himself tries to interfere with the more successful efforts.
ertia
Kithabel doesn't think she can speed up everybody, but she makes a guess at who's the most effective and concentrates on them. That wave: go away. Obliteration rather than contrary force, this time, just, bye, wave.
wormcan
That works. The front of the liquid wall just disappears. There's more water behind it to take its place, but Kithabel can always repeat the trick. And at the very least it bought time.
The outer ends of the wave, left untouched, break outside the battlefield. The water spreads in from the sides and some of the less prepared capes get swept away, but it's certainly better than being hit by the main force.
Of course, all the defenders are clumped together anyway. They're braced for being suddenly underwater, not for being suddenly under attack. Leviathan shatters a shield bubble and charges through the inhabitants, not staying to make sure they stay down before moving on to the next. This is predictable enough for some of his tougher opponents to try to intervene, but he knocks them aside and continues anyway.
The outer ends of the wave, left untouched, break outside the battlefield. The water spreads in from the sides and some of the less prepared capes get swept away, but it's certainly better than being hit by the main force.
Of course, all the defenders are clumped together anyway. They're braced for being suddenly underwater, not for being suddenly under attack. Leviathan shatters a shield bubble and charges through the inhabitants, not staying to make sure they stay down before moving on to the next. This is predictable enough for some of his tougher opponents to try to intervene, but he knocks them aside and continues anyway.
ertia
Fuck. Healing. Holes in Leviathan. She copies something somebody was shooting at him earlier that seemed to do some damage.
wormcan
Every little helps. No one can tell what he's fighting toward, or at least no guesses have been relayed through her communicator. The fight wears on, with more and more wounds appearing on Leviathan and more and more capes falling. Tidal waves get smaller and less frequent.
ertia
She's got enough of a rotation going that she doesn't feel the need to nip off and build a flying castle. She persists. This and that and the other thing and chasing every new idea as it comes.
wormcan
And then a plane of water leaps up from beneath her, joined by a plane coming down from above. Neither seems limited by gravity. They even curl inward to surround her. The top layer turns to ice and stops being actively pulled down, but she's still facing being crushed.
ertia
The first thing she thinks of is to go insubstantial. She can't breathe while she's doing that; but she doesn't strictly have to.
wormcan
The frozen wave from above never reaches her. It gets blasted upward by the column of water. Before the geyser falls back down, Leviathan launches himself through it. He flies past Kithabel, a clawed foot stretching harmlessly through her position. The cape in green starts dueling him, freezing his water echo as fast as it appears and striking at him with some less visible power.
ertia
Kithabel stays insubstantial and tries to reinforce whatever Green Dude is doing. This is not as directly effective as things she actually understands, but she hasn't done it yet, and its very vagueness means she can combine it with some healing alternating with rain interference, water deletion, and direct holes-in-Leviathan-making.
wormcan
The less visible power turns out to be time distortions, or something like it. Where a blast hits its target, Leviathan has to wrench himself out at the cost of a pound of flesh or wait valuable seconds for the small sphere to fade. A handful more valuable seconds, with Kithabel supporting.
There isn't much Leviathan can do to her while she's insubstantial. He has plenty of opportunities to strike her himself or with water, but those are all physical attacks. And he gets substantially fewer opportunities when more capes rejoin the fight. They're led by the woman in the dark costume who was in the front lines at Madison, and they can keep Leviathan as busy as Kithabel can.
What he can do is try to hurt Kithabel more creatively. Instead of blocking a hit he could easily absorb, he ducks immediately before a laser is fired. It misses Kithabel, but there's no shortage of potential friendly fire. Next, to test her insubstantiality against those time distortions...
There isn't much Leviathan can do to her while she's insubstantial. He has plenty of opportunities to strike her himself or with water, but those are all physical attacks. And he gets substantially fewer opportunities when more capes rejoin the fight. They're led by the woman in the dark costume who was in the front lines at Madison, and they can keep Leviathan as busy as Kithabel can.
What he can do is try to hurt Kithabel more creatively. Instead of blocking a hit he could easily absorb, he ducks immediately before a laser is fired. It misses Kithabel, but there's no shortage of potential friendly fire. Next, to test her insubstantiality against those time distortions...
ertia
Well, she doesn't want to find out. She can shore up her defensiveness - letting the rain fall - but mostly she just wants to get out of the way.
wormcan
And the person firing the relevant thing is perfectly capable of not doing it. He does know where Kithabel is, after all.
But the rain means that an increasing number of people don't. Leviathan just has to leap for the woman in the black and gray costume, and he'll end up in the air between Kithabel and a battery of blasters. She hangs on to him long enough that quite a few attacks hit, but quite a few don't. A volley of everything from radiation to railguns flies in Kithabel's general direction at their appropriate speeds.
But the rain means that an increasing number of people don't. Leviathan just has to leap for the woman in the black and gray costume, and he'll end up in the air between Kithabel and a battery of blasters. She hangs on to him long enough that quite a few attacks hit, but quite a few don't. A volley of everything from radiation to railguns flies in Kithabel's general direction at their appropriate speeds.
ertia
This seems like a good time to try teleporting again, because there's a little too much stuff to just fly out of the way of all of it even at her high speeds.
wormcan
The stuff isn't exactly aimed, or it was but not at her, but that's one way to deal with it.
After she escapes, Leviathan batters down the battery and resumes pretending he wasn't targeting her particularly.
After she escapes, Leviathan batters down the battery and resumes pretending he wasn't targeting her particularly.
ertia
Teleporting: got. It'll be short-range for now but that's all she needs at the moment. She bops around, doing everything she was already doing but that much faster. Like DRILLING HOLES IN THIS MONSTER.
wormcan
The remaining capes keep firing on Leviathan, sensing that he is being successfully whittled down.
He pulls himself out of another of those bubbles of slow motion, and checks the damages. There are chunks of monster missing, and more injuries being dealt all the time. He disappears beneath the waves, and the latest growing tidal wave quiets itself.
He pulls himself out of another of those bubbles of slow motion, and checks the damages. There are chunks of monster missing, and more injuries being dealt all the time. He disappears beneath the waves, and the latest growing tidal wave quiets itself.
ertia
When it is clear that he is going away, Kithabel sets about dealing with healing and flood damage on an alternating basis.
whole_new_can
There is a bit to wait. The monster stays in the shallow water for a while, eventually leaving while one last burst of water flies inward.
When they're both cleaning up the results of the flood, the cape in green flies up to her. "You fought well. Made more of a difference than anyone else, even me."
When they're both cleaning up the results of the flood, the cape in green flies up to her. "You fought well. Made more of a difference than anyone else, even me."
ertia
"Maybe next time I'll be able to actually kill one. Didn't take this time when I tried it." She slows down a little so it doesn't look like he's unwelcome to follow, but she keeps flying around, removing water and putting things back together. "I think I was helping you for a bit there but I'm not so good with effects I can't directly perceive."
whole_new_can
"You were; I noticed it hold him a bit longer for me and Legend to hit him more.
You think you might be able to kill an Endbringer three months from now?"
You think you might be able to kill an Endbringer three months from now?"
whole_new_can
"Enough that no one has been able to kill one or even seriously injure them. But if you're as powerful as I am and getting stronger, maybe you can eventually. And I think they know it, too. Leviathan was targeting you, at the end. He was at least paying attention, for one reason or another."
ertia
"...If they do that sort of thing I might have to sit out of Simurgh fights until I'm built up enough to shut out her singing, in case she can suddenly get louder or something." Go away, flood. Welcome back to the land of the living, random department store. Kithabel's clothes suffered some damage before she went insubstantial; she swaps them and then shoos more floodwater.