#8.3p1

[krixwell-liveblogs]

Bastion bellowed, “Do it!”

Leviathan lunged, crashed through one barrier, making it shatter like glass, only for another to appear immediately after.  He turned to head our way, was stopped by another.

Nice.

“Fucking do it!” Bastion called out, barely audible.

Oh, that’s not what you wanted them to do.

What was it, then?

The building above him bent and the midsection, unable to support the upper floors, crumbled.  The upper half of the building crashed down atop Leviathan and Bastion.

Oof.

Vista turned, wrapping her arms around the Ward next to her, burying her face in his shoulder.

This girl is twelve. And she’s fighting an Endbringer.

I hope the PRT has some good therapists on hand.

[krixwell-liveblogs]

Endbringer of Extermination 8.3

This was a good chapter, but damn was it bleak.

More than 42 people died in this chapter, and that’s only the ones whose announcements we got to hear. That includes Tattletale, one of my favorite characters, though I was prepared for that due to the overlap between Interlude 8 and this chapter.

I’m not gonna lie: This is not my idea of a good time. I know this is one of the Arcs where people decide if Worm is for them, and if the story as a whole continues being this kind of bleak without lighter points in between, it’s eventually going to start leaning more towards a no. That said, I’m not going to end the liveblog as long as I’m still invested enough to want to continue, which I still am.

(Don’t tell me if it gets brighter or stays this bleak. That’s a thing I’ll just have to see for myself.)

So. The plan is no longer to win, but to survive until Scion - who apparently never stopped saving the world for a moment to buy a damn phone - shows up. I guess we’ll see in the next chapter how that works out for the capes protecting Brockton Bay.

See you then.

[krixwell-liveblogs]

“Care!” Miss Militia cried out, “Fire in the hole!”

She fired a shot from her grenade launcher, grabbed another grenade with a blinking LED from her vest and loaded it into her gun.  Why?  She’d shown with the bazooka that she didn’t need to load ammunition, hadn’t she?

Hm. I actually thought of explosive ammo back when she did that, as a reason why she shouldn’t be using her psyche for ammo, but... bazookas use explosive ammo too, don’t they? I don’t think that’s why she’s suddenly reloading.

It’s much more likely that these aren’t regular grenades that can be produced by her power, but rather some sort of Tinkertech. The kind of explosives you’d expect from Bakuda, though perhaps not quite as advanced (depending on the Tinker’s specialty).

Then I realized why.  It wasn’t the kind of ammunition you found in normal guns.

eyyy

The first shot exploded into a mess of golden sticky ribbon, familiar, though it somehow escaped my memory where I’d seen it.

That... does sound familiar to me too.

The second exploded in midair, near Leviathan’s shoulder, leaving the tips of the scales and one gaping wound glinting like crystal.  As Leviathan moved to recoil, the edges of the crystal separated from his flesh and seeped with that dark ichor.

Nice hit!

[krixwell-liveblogs]

A stab of pain from my arm reminded me I was hurt.  Fuck, it hurt a lot.  It throbbed, and each throb seemed to be worse than the last.  I felt shaky as I used my good arm to stand.

Leviathan didn’t make noise.  I kept expecting a roar, or hiss, or something, but Leviathan was dead silent.  I somehow imagined a victorious howl as he broke through the barrier, crouched, and lunged into the crowd.

Ah, yeah... I guess that’s what happens when he doesn’t have a mouth.

He stopped, and I thought he was using his afterimage, halting so it could rush forward, but even the watery echo stopped a second after it appeared, only the very edges of it continuing forward to crash violently against the sides of the alley.

Huh.

For several long heartbeats, it was nearly quiet, but for the sound of rain, people’s noises of pain, mine included, and the sound of one of Kaiser’s iron columns ripping free of the wall and falling atop a pile of blades.

So, uh. You good there, Leviathan?

How’s your day?

Want some, uh, tea?

It took me a second to realize what had happened.  Leviathan hung frozen mid-pounce, and his emerging afterimage similarly stood there, frozen in time.

Oh shit, did he forget about the time bubble? Or does someone in the crowd have a time-- CLOCKBLOCKER

Clockblocker, you beautiful bastard! Good job!

In the midst of the afterimage was Clockblocker, half-immersed in water.

...well, that’s probably not the best place to be once the effect of this wears off. I think this might count as a heroic sacrifice.

Just, one with a delay.

[krixwell-liveblogs]

“Stay still!” I snarled at her.  When I pressed again, depressing the two buttons with my pinky finger and thumb, she held her arm firm.

I shouted into the armband, “Clockblocker down, CD-6!  Need a teleporter to get him free, stat!”

Ooh, a teleporter, good call. The water won’t be in the way if he doesn’t have to be classically moved through the space it’s in!

The time freezing effect of Clockblocker’s power lasted anywhere from thirty seconds to ten minutes.  How long had we spent, here, since Clockblocker had given us this momentary reprieve?  It was hard to judge the passage of time with the adrenaline, the frenetic pace of the ongoing battle.

In my case, it’s hard to judge the passage of time in general, but that’s my ADD.

Trickster appeared in the place of the blue moon Woman, tipped his hat at me.

Perfect! Now we just need something to put in Clockblocker’s place.

Also, Luna must be so confused. One moment, Taylor’s borrowing her communicator, and suddenly she’s somewhere else...

“Clockblocker, in there,” I pointed with my good hand.

Trickster frowned, looked around.

“I apologize for desecrating your body, brave hero,” he spoke, looking down at where the cape with the trumpet icon on his chest had flopped, dead.  “You do good work even in death.”

I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me that there are lots of non-living objects the size and mass of a human body lying around.

[krixwell-liveblogs]

“We’re not going to be able to go on with Plan A.”  The words hung in the air.

So what is Plan B?

“This brute is hurt, but we don’t have the resources to hold him down while we hurt him any more.  We’re too tightly packed, like this, and it’s too easy for him to take us down in droves.   Two or three more minutes of this, and there won’t be any of us left.”

So spread out?

Armsmaster turned, looked up at where Leviathan stood, frozen.  He pointed up at the Endbringer with his Halberd.  “We spread out.  The second this beast is free, he’s going to look for a way out, to run and heal up what we’ve done to him.   So we cut him off, we slow him down and keep him from getting to any areas where he can do real damage.

Sounds like a decent tactic.

“Eidolon is going to leave, do what he can to minimize the damage from the waves and ensure the rest of the city doesn’t get leveled while we’re fighting here.  The rest of us are going to slow Leviathan down best we can, take any opportunities we can to hurt the motherfucker. In just a second, we’re going to organize you guys, put the toughest and strongest closest to this bastard, space out the people who can hurt him, get the weakest ones positioned to pass on word if they see him slip past us.

Let’s hope you have time for all that.

“This is our plan B.  We stall, from here on out we prioritize survival over putting this abomination down, and we fucking pray that Scion notices there’s an Endbringer around and shows up before this city and everyone in it is a memory.”

Well. Not the most hopeful of plans, but since when was this a hopeful situation?

[krixwell-liveblogs]

“Listen!” the voice that cut through the shouts and the frantic chatter was authoritative, strong.

Ooh, now who’s this? Kaiser, maybe? Although I’d imagine Taylor would recognize his voice.

Armsmaster.

Ah. I should’ve read another line before pointing out the recognition thing, because this is where it would go if it were Kaiser too.

He had Myrddin, Eidolon and Chevalier just behind him.  People turned to listen, myself included.

A timeout like this is probably a rare occurrence in an Endbringer battle. Better use it for what it’s worth, especially since we don’t know how long it’ll last.

“He’s torn through our front line, he’s taken down some of our best, and he’s deliberately targeted and eliminated most of the capes who were in Bastion’s group.

The heavy hitters, right?

We have precious few left who can take a hit from this creature and survive it,

Oh right, the heavy hittables.

and we’re running low on those who can wall off another tidal wave or block his path.

The last one was bad enough with walling.

[krixwell-liveblogs]

Turning on the spot, Leviathan moved his claw, creating a wave with all of the water he’d generated since entering the alley, driving it into one of the two gathered groups.

Uh oh.

As those capes stumbled and fell back, Leviathan leaped over the time distortion bubble, landing at the front of the other group.  The group with some of the local wards (sic), Velocity, some of Empire Eighty-Eight, and out-of-town capes I couldn’t name.

Landing from a parabolic arc means a spray of water echo over top of him, right?

The group I was at the rear of.

Shit.

Someone stepped up to grab him mid-lunge – some woman I didn’t recognize, who Othala was touching.  She was granting this woman some form of invincibility that let her take a hit and not get knocked away by Leviathan.

Ooh, that’s a cool power.

Invincible though she might be, she couldn’t do anything to stop the afterimage from crashing against and around her, through our assembled ranks.

A lot of people are about to get wet.