49

Excavator 1

We were enjoying a calm, relaxing flight when, only an hour in, the captain made an announcement.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we regret to inform you that, due to major event at our destination, our flight has been diverted. We will be landing at Pittsburgh International." I could feel the plane make a sharp banking turn.

Pittsburgh was pretty far away from Boston, which made it all the stranger. If a plane was being diverted, wasn't it usually to another, more local airport? New York was close by, as well as Philadelphia… plenty of airports far closer to our destination instead of making us stop at Pittsburgh, of all places.

I, like many other people were asking the staff for details. They either didn't know themselves, or they had been instructed to give everyone a generic answer. The closest thing I got to an actual answer was when I overheard them telling someone else, "I don't know, but it seems like the entire eastern seaboard might be closed..."

The entire eastern seaboard closed off? That could mean only one of two things. Either there was a freak hurricane that suddenly popped up in the last few hours... or an Endbringer. Specifically, Leviathan, who could destroy entire coastlines if he really got going, and often brought massive waves and rainstorms with him.

I didn't get confirmation until we were descending into Pittsburgh. My phone started ringing when we got back into range of the cell network, even before the plane touched the ground.

"Hello?"

"Oh, thank goodness. Taylor, Leviathan's advancing on Brockton Bay right now! He's bound to hit the city in twenty minutes!" came Lisa's voice.

Brockton Bay? Why the heck was Leviathan attacking my crappy little hometown? Not that I wanted more people to die, but didn't the Endbringers usually hit more important places, like New York or Boston or Washington? Places that would actually affect the world?

Some people thought the Endbringers had no plan, that they were essentially mindless monsters. They were still difficult to predict, because they didn't hit completely randomly, but they didn't seem particularly strategic either. It was almost like they had a list of good targets and fished them out of a hat.

Behemoth's first appearance had been in Iran, attacking one of the worlds' largest oilfields and pipelines. Iran was undoubtedly one of the largest oil producers in the world; and such a disaster had caused a second, slightly smaller oil crisis similar to the one that happened in the 70's. His following attacks had hit major population and economic centers of the world, or places where his destruction could trigger a chain reaction of natural disasters. When Leviathan struck, it was just as devastating. Striking major ports and nearly shutting down all naval traffic in the world nearly destroyed the world economy, even more than Behemoth had. His ability to create tsunamis and use water to erode land at greatly accelerated speeds made his damage potential even worse than Behemoth sometimes. The Simurgh seemed to be the odd one out, but people later realized she often ended up Mastering people – important people. Sometimes they were politicians or businessmen. Even if there wasn't someone particularly important lost, it was just assumed that the Simurgh targeted someone potentially great due to her precognition.

So… why Brockton Bay? What did my dinky little hometown have? Leviathan had already destroyed Brockton Bay long ago without setting foot there. The collapse of the international shipping industry spelled absolute disaster for the city, practically causing half the economy to disappear. Criminals and gangs filled the void instead. Already it wasn't much of a town left; was Leviathan just coming to finish the job?

"You're sure it's Brockton Bay?" I asked. Boston was close by, it would make sense for Leviathan to target there instead. They had some renowned universities and institutes, and a lot of important research happened there.

"Yes, we only just got the Endbringer Prediction program back online. We're tracking Leviathan now, he's heading in an almost straight line. Dragon's deploying drones and support units as fast as she can get them online, but we're still stuck on an airplane too. She won't have full control and support until we actually get back to Vancouver."

I turned to Panacea and Narwhal. "Leviathan's hitting Brockton. We need to get off this plane if we're going to save people," I told her.

Her breath hitched when the words hit her, but she firmed up and nodded.

Narwhal was the one who knew what to do immediately. "We should head to the PRT Central Northeast. I hope they're still doing transport runs."

"Strider should be picking up from the CNE headquarters in thirty minutes, if you can make it there in time. If not, I can still send one of Dragon's transports to meet you after," Lisa told us. "Call me just before you get there."

"If all else fails, I'll fly you there myself," Narwhal said.

The landing was agonizingly long. Considering it was an emergency situation where all the flights heading into the airports in the area were being diverted, that was a lot of extra planes trying to land. . Like, every single flight from Europe heading towards New York was being rerouted. The unexpected change in weather and huge influx of air traffic caused more delays. All things considered, the airport and crew did admirably, but I was itching to get off the plane.

I was practically glued to my phone while we waited, watching for updates. We pleaded with the captain to let us off earlier, since we were capes, but procedures had to be followed. The plane itself was still taxiing along the runways looking for a spot to park. Eventually, when we got off, we practically ran through the airport as fast as security would let us.

It was clear that there were no taxis or other transport to get us to the PRT CNE headquarters. Instead of waiting for the damn luggage handlers to get my things out, I simply had them crawl out of my suitcase and find their way to us. Panacea didn't bother picking up her things at all; she'd come back and search the lost and found later. I added the extra bots to the bulk of my costume and Narwhal picked us up, flying to the PRT building.

In the end, we completely missed the mark on Strider; we were well over twenty minutes late after all was said and done. Thankfully, Lisa had anticipated the delays at the airport. She called us to let us know the new plan.

"Dragon's sending a transport ship to you now. Get to the roof," she told us. "She's also going to be late to the fight, she's doing her best to send suits to Brockton Bay directly."

"Don't worry about it," I told her. "Just get us to Brockton Bay."

When we were escorted to the landing pad, there were a few other stragglers who wanted to join the fight. I was grateful they were volunteering to save my hometown. We huddled together under a narrow awning waiting for the transport, hiding from the rain. We heard the sonic boom of Dragon's transport arrival before its lights became visible through the rain clouds. It landed vertically on the roof, and within minutes we were all in the air again, flying at supersonic speeds towards Brockton Bay.

As we reached Brockton Bay, it was strangely unfamiliar. I had never seen it from the air before – we always had to drive down to Boston to take a plane. But even worse, the power was out. Much of the city was dark and flooded, streetlights weren't working, and all I could see were silhouettes of familiar buildings from light reflected off the water. Flashes of light from capes and weaponry occasionally gave brief glimpses of visibility. Legend himself was probably the brightest light source over the Bay, and his lasers pointed the way to the Endbringer.

Dragon dropped us a fair distance west of Captain's Hill, where they had set up the forward command post and triage area. Everything was running on backup generators, with floodlights covering the area. Narwhal immediately took off for the command tent to figure out how she could help fight the Endbringer. Meanwhile, the two of us were ushered to the medical tent.

"Panacea! Eunoia! Thank goodness you're here!"

"When you didn't show up after the fighting started we feared the worst-"

"Hey, it's you two! Nice meeting you again!"

A blur of faces started ushering us where we were needed.

"Glory Girl! Where is she?" Panacea asked. "Is my family alright?"

"Your team is fine, except Shielder. I'll take you to him," someone told her.

"Shielder? How is he doing?" Panacea shouted. She quickly rushed to her cousin, who was being looked after by his father. Thankfully, it wasn't too bad. A few broken bones. He was in a lot of pain, but nothing that Amy couldn't handle. He had been trying to save several capes, but Leviathan had simply overwhelmed his shields and smacked him down. He was lucky to be alive, though he was rescued by the very capes he was saving.

Neither Panacea nor I had the time to chat. As expected, there were many capes to treat. Far more than I could help with the bots I had on hand. I needed to pull more of them towards me. As I reconnected to the network of bots in town, I was able to quickly get a survey of the damage to the town. A nighttime Endbringer attack was bad enough, the rain and flooding just made things worse.

The capes had already been fighting for an hour. Not only was the city flooded with seawater, even the sewers had been backed up. The water was dirty and some of the capes would suffer nasty infections if they weren't treated quickly.

I could see the Triumvirate present, blasting and smashing away at the monster. I recognized some of the heavy-hitting local capes; Dauntless's signature lightning and Vista's space-warping effects were hard to miss. The capes seemed to be more disorganized since Dragon had arrived later than she usually did, but there were enough experienced capes that they had mounted a decent defense. Unfortunately, this time there were no armbands to help manage and communicate with each other.

While I had buried many of them underground and in the sewers for long-term storage, many of the bots within the city had been washed out to sea by Leviathan's initial wave. If only we had arrived a few hours earlier on the previous flight, I could have changed so much.

Then again, maybe the Endbringers had planned it that way. Sometimes people wondered if Endbringers were smarter and had a grand plan. Even aside from the weird cults like the Fallen, some people still considered the Endbringers an act of god, or gods themselves. People always tried to find some kind of meaning in the destruction. Maybe Leviathan attacked because Dragon wasn't available to help. Then again, maybe we should count ourselves lucky that he didn't hit us two weeks earlier.

I didn't look too deeply into it. Leviathan was here. I was here. He was destroying my hometown and I would do what I could to stop him. It was better that I was jumping into an Endbringer battle in the middle, instead of not at all. Even if half of my arsenal in Brockton was gone, I had reserves. Before I left for Vancouver, I had bots covering half of New Hampshire and bits of Maine and Massachusetts. I had resources to spare, and only a small percentage of my total number had been swept away. I just needed to bring more of them here.

I didn't have a plan to attack Leviathan. My main concern was trying to find my dad and my friends. I couldn't see much with my bots, but at the very least I could tell that Dad was still in Concord. Safe. Relatively safe, at least. Leviathan had completely sunk Kyushu and Newfoundland before, so if he really wanted to sinking the entire state of New Hampshire was not outside his ability. But it was rare that he went that far. I wondered if I should phone him to let him know… but I didn't want to worry him. Heck, if he knew I was back already he might just do something dumb like rush over here.

The Docks and the Boardwalk had been completely flooded, some parts entirely wiped out. Without Dragon, and the disorganization within the local PRT, meant that the people had less warning to evacuate. Still, it looked like most people had managed to get out. But not everyone. There were still many dead bodies that my bots came across, trapped inside buildings, dead from drowning or hypothermia.

Until I got more bots into the city, I couldn't help them. I started forming multiple copies of Abyssal and Roamer everywhere I had bots and had them run towards the city at maximum speed. All the bots I had in a tri-state area were now flooding towards Brockton Bay.

Meanwhile, I used the few bots I had on me to start doing medical procedures. Panacea had already started. While Behemoth had mostly caused burn injuries, Leviathan actually did a lot of blunt trauma. Even more than drowning – but I guess that was for the capes that made it to the medical tent, not the population in general. Those that actually drowned weren't brought here.

As for the actual fighters, Leviathan took them out in a very basic way. Despite his mastery over water, what was more threatening was his speed. His punches, kicks, tail whips, and water echo simply slammed capes with massive amounts of blunt force. Just about anyone short of Alexandria's Brute-ness went down in one hit. That meant a lot of broken bones and concussions, and some infections from the dirty water.

Things I could treat. Heck, my bots might even be able to pump water out of partially-flooded lungs for some people. With my improved bots and practice, I was feeling far more confident about helping these people than Behemoth's victims.

"Incoming wave!" shouted a flying cape from the fight. He flew across everyone, repeating himself over and over. A few heroes kept attempting to fight while several others stopped hitting Leviathan and ran east towards the sea. Others attempted to evacuate themselves, but the medical tent was already the highest ground there was. Without good coordination or communication between them, the warning was not as effective as it could have been. In the ensuing moments, a few of the more aggressive front line fighters suddenly found themselves with less support and were severely injured. Some were killed instantly.

Had it been like this for the past hour?

A large group of my bots were now flooding into the city. Two hundred copies of Abyssal riding Roamer streamed in, dispersing themselves as they arrived. I had my bots swim through the flooded city, searching for anyone who might still be alive. I didn't know how to fight Leviathan, but at the very least I could do search and rescue better than anyone else. In the dark, murky depths, few capes would be seen underwater. My bots didn't exactly see either, but they could feel them out.

Capes which fell into the water unconscious were now instantly lifted back up and carried away from the fight by my bots. Plenty of people had died before we managed to get here, but I was determined to make sure as few others would as possible.

I was expecting the wave to arrive earlier, given the cape's warning. Was it a false alarm? Maybe just premature – when it came to Leviathan, there was no question about whether there would be a city-wiping wave or not. Only when it would come.

I couldn't see anything outside. The bright lights of the triage tent blinded me against the dark skies and the horizon. I tried to sense the water movement with my bots, but their range was only about a quarter mile out to sea. I assumed the flying cape could see better than I could. Up on Captain's Hill, we were all hoping the medical and logistic tents were on high enough ground to survive the oncoming attack.

I soon noticed the swell. My bots lifted up. Higher, and higher, and higher. This wasn't a wave that I had ever seen before. There was no crest or curl that I imagined from all those surfer images. It was more like a tide, one that kept on rising and rising, up over the roofs of the Boardwalk shops. It looked like the entire sea was coming at us. I had no idea how wide it was, but every single bot along the coastline sensed it, which was over a hundred miles across. While we were set up to protect one city, the wave must have been wide enough to hit multiple cities all along the coast. There was no way all the heroes assembled could stop it all.

We watched, a nearly-hopeless effort of blocking a tiny portion of the massive wave that struck the entire coast. Thankfully a few more capes had decided to focus on protecting Captain's Hill as well, and the water was diverted around us. I couldn't say the same for the rest of the city. What had already been flooded was now outright submerged. Even worse, every road and highway leading to Brockton Bay had been struck by the tsunami. Brockton Bay would not be getting any support by land from the nearby cities, at least not by the roadways.

It was loud, but at the same time, unnervingly calm. There was just water. Lots of water. Receding water. No lasers, no explosions, no guns, no fighting. Everyone was on edge, waiting, hoping that the Endbringer had decided it was enough. Nobody knew where he was, but everyone's eyes were scanning the sea.

Before the waters from the tidal wave fully receded, Leviathan came sprinting from the water. He struck one group of capes before they could respond. He immediately turned to another team, whose Blasters and Brutes were more ready. Instead of striking them, he changed direction so quickly that the water sticking to his body flew off, continuing forward.

That was more than just momentum. That was his infamous water echo. More than just some drops of water that had been flicked off of him, the water retained his shape – and his power. It slammed into the second team while Leviathan began to attack a third.

I felt helpless even as my bots did their best to rescue the capes, but the powerful waves were hindering my bots just as much as the other capes. I had gotten used to my bots being the small ones, overwhelming the targets with sheer numbers and sneaking into critical areas with precision and secrecy. Now, I felt outnumbered as every single water molecule was working against me, and even my bots had nowhere to hide.

Glory Girl had already come in once. Panacea prioritized her, naturally, but they didn't have time to chat. Just a quick hug before she had to continue healing the massive number of other injured capes. We were starting to catch up to the backlog, and the number of capes waiting on treatment were actually going down. Healing capes in general were rare, so the two of us was actually a substantial addition.

I, of course, was finding myself to be more effective than in the Behemoth fight. Back then, I couldn't really do much more than clean wounds. Radiation and electrical burns weren't something I could treat. But concussions and direct physical trauma I could deal with – and even better, I could deal with them en route.

Of the many capes I found down on the battlefield, their injuries were mostly treated by the time they actually reached the medical tent, enough for the other healing capes like Bangeriffic or Inner Peace could finish the job off. That way, Panacea wasn't going to be overwhelmed.

Since Dragon was still unprepared, caught off-guard and out of her base, the entire battle had to be done without her aid. Medically, that meant there was less organization, and fewer people knew who had been downed, response times were slower. I tried to make up for it for now, at least until Dragon could get here, using my bots to keep track of who had gone down and organize healing based on who was still inbound to the medical tent. A lot of the prioritization was still based on Panacea. There were still some that only she could treat, and there were plenty of capes to manage.

Leviathan was fast and tricky, often ambushing capes. It was especially bad when Dragon wasn't around to help coordinate with her armband communicators. While Behemoth was powerful and extremely lethal, at the very least he was somewhat predictable. More than that, Behemoth tended to kill outright. That actually meant fewer capes ended up coming to the medical tent for treatment. Leviathan was the opposite; it was hard for Brutes to take the front lines and support capes to take the rear, because it was hard to know which direction he would strike from. A lot of capes who had no ability to take a hit were getting struck down.

We needed every advantage we could get before we could mount a new offensive against Leviathan. Casualties in the first hour had been higher than average for Leviathan fights. I was hoping to turn that around. Even though many of my bots had washed out to sea, the rest of the bots I had further inland were arriving. I had several orders of magnitude more bots than I had for the Behemoth battle. Instead of some rudimentary search-and-rescue with a few copies of Abyssal, I was now able to fully treat many capes on the field.

And now we were making a difference. Panacea was able to save even the ones whose organs had been turned to mush. I was able to reinforce broken bones and gently cradle the heavily injured with my bots as soon as they went down, and bring them to the tent. With the two of us around, the survival rate was noticeably higher. Capes did manage to realize this. Morale was going up.

In fact, by now I was starting to have an excess of bots. The more bots I had, the more I could do. I wasn't just limited to rescuing and treating people after they were injured. I could break up the surface tension of the water so impacts didn't hurt as much. I could even prevent people from drowning in the first place by lifting people to the surface. Prevention was better than the cure, wasn't that the old saying?

Speaking of prevention, I didn't want Shielder or Glory Girl to get hurt again. The two of them were the most at risk; most of the rest of the team had some kind of Blaster ability that could keep out of range. Funny how the two on my team known for their shields and invulnerability had the highest chance of getting hurt. Although a coating of bots wasn't strong enough to completely block Leviathan's attacks, it would hopefully let them survive long enough to be brought to Panacea if necessary.

I couldn't armor every cape with my bots – mainly because I didn't know how their powers worked. But for my own team, and some other capes whose power I understood, I could help them out. I didn't have time to explain it to everyone, so I just had bots cover their bodies a little bit at a time. Given that most capes were being soaked in both rain and seawater, most people didn't notice.

A constellation of lights in the sky accompanied by sonic booms heralded the arrival of Dragon's reinforcements. Her transport ships had been doing a lot of work ferrying more capes and supplies constantly, but the ones arriving now were her full combat-ready models. Errant arrived with her.

In just the short time while Panacea and I had been there, we were already making headway into the casualty count. The reserves were bolstered and with communication bands being passed around, we were finally ready for a more coordinated strike.

With more than twenty heavily-armed, ten-foot-tall dragon robots standing around, people were feeling a lot more confident. More reinforcements had arrived. While the Triumvirate and other high-class capes engaged Leviathan to buy us a little extra time, a quick and simple plan was hashed out.

The first simply involved distributing the armbands so that people could coordinate better. We needed it especially with Leviathan, who had a tendency to disappear under the water. Despite his thirty-foot frame, he could easily duck down and swim in areas as shallow as a few feet. And with his hydrokinesis, he didn't even produce waves when he did. We needed to actually find him before we could attack him, after all.

We didn't have time to gather everyone to actually explain the plan, but that was where Dragon came in. As the armbands were distributed, each cape received personalized instructions for their role in the attack. I guess I technically had the ability to do that too, but obviously people trusted Dragon more than me.

Then capes were divided into a few teams. Movers were given a search pattern to follow, divided among both fliers and fast runners. After them came a team of "trappers" who had abilities that could slow Leviathan down. The third team were the heaviest hitters. Their job was self-explanatory, though they would also receive updates from Dragon regarding timing their attacks so there wouldn't be too much friendly fire. Lastly, there was a team of support capes, mainly Brutes, hydrokinetic Shakers, Trumps, and Movers who could transport others. The basic plan boiled down to "find him, stop him, hit him."

When I received my armband, Dragon spoke to me immediately.

"Eunoia, how extensive is your bot coverage of the city?"

"Complete coverage, and getting better by the minute," I told her.

"You're primarily on the search and support roles. But I'd like to add you to the offensive team as well. Can you multitask enough for that?"

"It won't be a problem, except I don't have enough of my Nanothorn-style bots," I told her.

"I've collected all the ones you made inside my workshop. They should be arriving with one of the transports."

I could sense the bots come into my range, falling down from the sky. Dragon had dispensed it as part of an airdrop. The parachutes were too slow for my tastes, so I had my bots cut through the sides and escape. They came flooding out, riding the wind until I clumped them all together into a denser mass. I decided to make them all into a single, fast-moving version of the Roamer so it could catch up to Leviathan.

"I got your delivery. Thanks, Dragon," I told her.

"Leviathan spotted, sector G12!"

It was time to strike back at the monster invading my hometown.