May 15th, 2011, Sunday, 12:17 PM.

I didn't get the chance to hear Coil's response because a horrifying amount of water started pouring into the building through the now shattered windows and my phone fell to the floor forgotten. I felt a spike of adrenaline overtake me and I took a terrified step backwards.

The room was a scene of chaos, everybody was trying to get as far away from the window as possible. Forcefields of every colour and shape flickered into existence at the windows, trying to stem the flow of water to no avail. The corner of the ceiling started to buckle, and I lashed out with wires almost without registering what I was doing. Another set of forcefields appeared there a second before my mesh of shield-wires grew into existence to help support its weight, it was barely enough to stop the roof from caving in on us.

The water was knee-deep in the room already, and I immediately started tearing apart the wall of the building opposite the wave. I sent out thousands of additional wires to loop around everybody in range, but the instant I started moving them out of the building I suddenly found myself somewhere else.

There was water everywhere.

It was horrifying, we were on a road now, closer to my apartment building and at a higher ground. The massive wave that had struck Brockton Bay was rushing back into the ocean, the rain was pouring down from the sky adding to the mess and I abruptly became aware of more than just the frantic thudding of my heart in my chest.

I was still holding dozens of people off the ground with wires, and they were all struggling to get out of my grasp. There were even more of those not caught in my wires standing all around me, coughing and spluttering in the shallow water, the ones I had been about to leave behind, I felt sick.

"Urchin." Skitter said urgently, as I dropped her to the ground next to Tattletale. "Stop!"

Some of them had already recovered and were already moving on to do their jobs, dragging people up to the tops of the nearby buildings. I lifted up into the air away from them all, unable to focus on anything other than the water.

I moved higher into the air, to get as far away from the water as I could manage, and the higher vantage point allowed me to see more of the damage that the wave had caused to the city. The boardwalk had been completely torn apart, what did remain was solidly underwater, cars had been tipped over and dragged around from the force.

I fought desperately to keep my head above the water, fighting against the broken seatbelt but it wouldn't budge.

Leviathan stood amongst the rubble, and it looked exactly like the pictures online. It seemed even bigger in person, even floating so high above the city did nothing to diminish its sheer size. Even through the furious rain, I could see its asymmetrical head darting around, trying to take in everything at once before it finally settled its gaze directly on the capes still standing ready at the base of the buildings.

Water was pouring in through the shattered windshield, and dad was missing entirely.

I could see a bright spark of light flickering up into the sky in the distance, the sight cut through the fog of my mind for a moment briefly brought me out of the panic. Kayden was still alive, and she had been with Squealer, who must have been alive as well.

Leviathan moved suddenly, one moment hypnotically swaying in place, and then suddenly it was moving towards the capes at a blistering pace. It was the fastest thing I had ever seen, it almost looked as if it was running atop the shallow water and its sheer size made the feat look even more ludicrous. A Leviathan shaped column of water was left in his wake, sloshing to the ground surging up the sides of buildings, and crashing forward at great speeds, adding even more water to the flooded streets.

I barely finished the thought before the massive creature had smashed into the group of capes with ridiculous force. I already knew, just from that charge alone, that I wouldn't be able to catch it while it was moving, it was far too fast.

If I took a shot at it from here, I would need to attack dozens of meters in front of it, just to have a chance of hitting it while in motion but I couldn't see all of the capes as easily with all of the rain, I would likely end up injuring or killing them if I just started bombarding the thing with skyscraper-sized pillars.

I would have to hem it in, close off every direction it hoped to move in, and then bury it in mountain of cables to have a hope of restraining it. Could I stop its movements with a thousand cables wound around its limbs and body? What about a million? There was only one way to find out.

I started sending thousands of tiny wires across the sky in every direction, straight outwards in a line and then angling them straight down to the streets far below, stabbing them deep into the tarmac, doing my best to keep them evenly spaced, and creating an invisible wire cage for tens of blocks around where the fighting had centered. I did my best to keep the wires in the middle of the streets, and away from the buildings, I doubt I managed it without error, it was too difficult to see from this distance in the rain.

I already knew I would end up causing severe damage to the city, I would just have to hope that they didn't try and make me pay for it.

As I carefully moved the wires into position I watched the fighting far below me. What had to of been Legend's lasers were branching out all over the place and smashing into Leviathans hide, a massive spray of water burst up into the air to block their advance, but they just went around it. Leviathan's skin was glowing bright red from the heat, and I saw a blinding flash of light smash into its torso, sending it stumbling back a step, possibly one of Kayden's attacks.

I started increasing the thickness of the wires all at once, they rapidly increased in size until each was as large around as a house, they slowly sealed themselves together into a massive rectangular wall of pillars, standing twice as tall as the buildings trapped inside the massive cage.

I started generating more wires, this time from all of the pillars themselves, small but easily visible things that started moving inwards at a snail's pace, like a massive wall of moving metal. I manipulated them around obstacles, and past people, inching closer to the fighting.

I felt several people appear on top of one of the pillars before another much larger group appeared suddenly near one of the corners, the teleporter that had saved us from the building perhaps.

I visually checked on Leviathan's position again, just in time to watch him take a short sharp leap forward before coming to an instant stop, and a wave of water shot forward at horrific speed. My stomach twisted again at the sudden appearance of so much water from absolutely nowhere before something impacted it and the water exploded in every direction.

Leviathan suddenly rocked backward on his feet before he was slammed into the road with a crack that I could hear even from up here. The road must have shattered below it because the water level dropped abruptly around it before surging up again a moment later.

I kept on slowly tightening the net around the thing, dragging anything that was still moving up into the air and onto the pillars as I slowly filled the cage with wire. The massive wave of metal was still blocks away from the fighting, like a hundred million writhing snakes tangling their way ever inwards and filling the streets with metal.

I could feel more and more people appearing on my wall by the second, through my own actions and the actions of the capes with Mover ratings.

My attention was dragged back to the Endbringer a moment later when Dragons massive mech suddenly opened fire on it. Explosions rocked the area around the creature before Dragon started hitting it with what looked like a large cone of liquid fire. Leviathan immediately struck out at the mech several times through the attack, sending chunks of her thick metal amour careening through the air to smash into the walls and buildings.

A massive explosion suddenly erupted right where they had been fighting, sending Leviathan reeling backward away from the force, but I couldn't see Dragon through the smoke any longer. Several streaks of bright pink light cut across a street and into stabbed Leviathans hide, somehow sharp enough to penetrate its skin and burying deep inside it, even more, followed after a moment, seemingly focused around its legs.

A large grey blur smashed into Leviathans torso before the Endbringer was smashed flat on its back once more, another hail of pink streaks rained down on him from above pinning it in place.

A large motion in the direction of the beach caught my eye and I turned bodily to look at it. I stared in horror as another massive wave surged towards the city, about half as tall as my pillars.

The car was underwater now, and the water was murky with blood.

I immediately started making another series of pillars in front of my cage, a massive wedge pointed towards the ocean. It was only half as tall as the wave when it hit, but it managed to direct most of the water around my field. I could feel the wedge buckling under the force, tearing the pillars out of the ground with its unrelenting force, and I started generating even more wire pillars to reinforce the structure. The water was pushed around the edges of the cage, I watched as the unprotected roads and buildings outside the cage vanished and crumbled beneath the vast amount of water.

Mum was dead, impaled on what was left of the windshield, and then there was wire all around me.

I couldn't help it, my breakfast forced its way up and out of my throat. I spent the next thirty seconds throwing up violently, barely having the presence of mind to pull my mask away from my mouth.

When I was finally about to pull myself together and refocus on the Endbringer, I saw one of the taller buildings suddenly warp strangely, the middle of it sucked in almost like an hourglass, before bending sideways and crashing down on top of Leviathan with a massive sound of screeching metal and shattering glass that reached all the way up to me. There were only a couple of blocks directly around the fallen building that wasn't filled with wire now.

I was almost ready now, I just needed the last capes to get out of the way.

Leviathan made the choice for me, realizing it was now completely surrounded by walls of walls hundreds of meters high that stretched much higher than the buildings around it. It had nowhere left to run, so instead, it dashed straight into my wires, intending to break straight through them and escape. Leviathan moved much faster than I had seen it move before and made it about two hundred meters into the mess before it ran into one of the many pillars I had created inside the zone.

Leviathan managed to dig halfway into it before it lost most of its momentum, it turned around cutting back the other way only to run straight into another pillar. Leviathan spun in a circle as the wires solidified into massive pillars around him, leaving him trapped inside with nowhere to run. It stared up at me with its asymmetrical face and I stared straight back at it from above as I filled the space above his head with more pillars, sealing it inside.

Leviathan immediately tried to dig himself free, but he was completely subsumed in my wires now. I weaved them together into cables and drew them tight around its ill-proportioned body, Leviathan immediately broke most of them with its struggles, but I just generated more from every direction until he was completely covered in millions of woven wires. I started turning the entire area around it into a solid mass of weaved cables and massive pillars.

I let myself drop down to the nearest outer pillar and concentrated solely on keeping him contained. The creature thrashed furiously, and when a person suddenly stepped up beside me completely silent, my heart just about jumped out of my chest.

"Fuck!" I hissed terrified and angry, barely stopping myself from smashing the cape flat onto the pillar. "Wear a fucking bell!"

"You are the one doing this?" Alexandria said calmly. "Do you have it contained?"

I didn't respond immediately, trying to force down the adrenaline that had flashed through me at her sudden appearance, and refocusing on the Endbringer still doing its best to claw its way free, but I just readjusted the wires to keep it roughly in the middle of my field. I kept having to make some space between the cables for the water it was constantly generating to pass through, and it kept trying to take advantage of the space.

"Yes," I said with false cheer. "Who knew Leviathan was such a rope-bunny?"

Alexandria made no comment on my attempt at levity, still staring straight at the last place she had seen Leviathan. Sorry lady but ignoring me has never worked for anyone else and it wouldn't work here either, I had a reputation to uphold.

"How long can you hold it?" Alexandria said evenly.

I did another water drain and tighten cycle around it while increasing the size of the solid box I was building around it, made from strangely interwoven pillars. I wasn't letting this fucking thing out until we had a way to deal with it.

"How long do you need, sweety?" I said idly, "I can go all night."

Alexandria turned bodily to stare at me, and I couldn't see her expression through her black glass mask, but she was either impressed at my wit or simply pissed off, either way, I'm sure I would find out soon. Somebody landed behind us, this time with plenty of noise to announce them, I could hear multiple voices further back and to the side as well.

"Alexandria, what's the situation?" A male's voice said as he came to stand with us.

I spared a glance over at him before going back to focusing on keeping the thrashing Endbringer in the middle of the wire prison, it was Legend, the leader of the Protectorate.

"This unknown cape has Leviathan contained for the moment, but we can't keep it here forever, the waves will keep coming," Alexandria said firmly, her voice changing minutely as she spoke to her teammate.

"This unknown cape has a name lady," I said without feeling. "and its Urchin."

Legend moved so that he was properly in my line of sight, looking professional but grim.

"Urchin, then." Alexandria acknowledged easily, before addressing Legend. "Eidolon is still building defenses against the waves, calling him in now will be an issue."

Legend nodded grimly, before bringing his hand up in front of him and pressing a button on his bracelet. That Metal Man had tried to give me one just like, what felt like days ago now, even though it couldn't have been more than half an hour at most, focusing on so many wires at once was doing strange things to my internal clock.

"Dragon put me through to everyone." Legend said calmly, and the screen on the bracelet lit up. "If you think you can do something to either substantially damage or hinder Leviathan, make your way to my location, everyone else on search and rescue."

Legend lowered his hand and the screen faded back to grey. Alexandria leaned over to his shoulder and they had a short exchange that I couldn't make out before they both fell silent. Leviathan still had made exactly zero progress on escaping as I continued to generate more material as it destroyed it and kept on adding it to the mass around it doing my best to keep him trapped firmly in the center.

"I can't actually damage it at all, who do we have that can actually hurt it?" I asked distractedly, "and maybe we should get Armsmaster over here?"

"He is already on his way." Alexandria said calmly, "Why Armsmaster? What are you thinking exactly?"

I hadn't been thinking at all really, I just needed something to distract myself from Leviathan and all of fucking water that was now smashing into the massive wall of ice that Eidolon had created along the boardwalk to protect the city. Eidolon was definitely one of the good ones, I would have to invite him out for coffee with Dragon and Narwhal.

"I could really do with a back massage, is all." I said wryly, "I've heard that he's pretty good with those arms of his."

Legend turned away for a moment, and I absolutely knew even without seeing, that he was hiding a smile. The sounds of additional people approached from behind us, the sound of feet splashing water around on top of the pillar made me twitch. Legend and Alexandria both headed over to whoever it was immediately, I tried listening as they addressed the people who had showed up but couldn't make out the words through the rain.

Instead, I just focused on the mass of rage that had just kicked it up a notch amongst the wires and did my best to replace and thicken the wires faster than it could destroy them, didn't this fucking thing ever get tired?

I eventually heard a voice that was vaguely familiar, someone I must have heard in passing somewhere before, but I couldn't put a face to it, and after a moment I heard another voice that was definitely Kayden, she was approaching and talking quietly.

"Boss," Kayden said tiredly, as she came to stand beside me.

Kayden illuminated the area with her power and seeing that at least one member of the Full Frontals was still alive felt like a weight had lifted from my shoulders.

"Bright Eyes," I said relieved, "is our third member still alive?"

There was someone standing directly behind me now, I could hear them breathing quietly. I tensed up as whoever it was placed their hand on my back and a strange feeling encompassed me, I was halfway through burying the person in wire before Kayden placed her hand on my shoulder.

"Calm down, it's just Othala," Kayden said quietly, "Legend wants her keeping you defended."

I slowly breathed out, riding the spike of adrenaline down to nothing again, I really needed to get the fuck away from all of this water, it was messing with my head badly, and that's not even mentioning all of these people who kept on sneaking up on me. I don't think my heart could take it much longer.

"Sorry," I said evenly, to the girl behind me. "I'm a little jumpy today, haven't the foggiest idea why."

The hand returned to my back, and the lingering feeling of strangeness strengthened once more.

"Mm." Othala said nervously, "It doesn't have anything to do with the Endbringer?"

"Nah," I said dryly. "That was just the excuse that I gave to Legend so you would put your hands on me again."

Othala laughed and I visibly turned my attention back to Kayden, still feeling off my game.

"Squealer was fine the last time I saw her, she was with the rest of the support group," Kayden said belatedly, picking up where she had left off before the interruption. "I didn't know you could do something like this."

I spent a long moment reinforcing the cage again as Leviathan spun suddenly in his bindings. I tightened my hold again, you're not going anywhere you watery fuck. Squealer was still most likely fine, so that was good, none of us had died yet, I could only hope that our good fortune continued. I used my anger at the creature to try and pull myself together again, finally managing to find something to say.

"There is a lot you don't know about me," I said mysteriously, "my precious minion."

Kayden huffed.

"That explains basically nothing," Kayden said annoyed.

I just laughed mysteriously.

"Minion?" Othala murmured.

"Interested, are you?" I said immediately, "You'll have to quit all that silly racism nonsense of course, but I suppose I could let you into my harem."

Othala muttered the word in disbelief.

"Harem?" Kayden said amused, "Is that the same one you tried to get Dragon to join? How did that go again?"

I felt the vicious sting of betrayal rip through me at the words, I couldn't believe that she would roast me in front of the potential recruit, the sheer balls on this woman.

"I cannot believe you have done this," I said deadpanned. "I'm kicking you out of the harem."

Kayden scoffed before we were interrupted once more by the return of Legend, but this time he was accompanied by several others, Alexandria, Armsmaster, and Miss Militia. Armsmaster was completely covered in his sleek-looking blue armor, except for his mouth, and he had two different halberds strapped in a diagonal cross to his back. Miss Militia looked much the same as I remembered her, only much soggier.

"Urchin." Miss Militia said softly, "This is very impressive."

"Thanks," I said pleasantly, happy to see her still alive. "Can you guys kill this fucking thing, or am I going to be standing here until I die of old age?"

I directed the question at all of them, hoping that they had something.

"We are going to try," Armsmaster said seriously.

Good enough for me.

"We will need access to it, a pathway or a hole will be fine," Alexandria said steadily. "Is it possible?"

Alexandria's voice still remained as unaffected as before, but I was still determined to get a rise out of her, it had become a challenge at this point, and she still refused to even look at me.

"Sure, a hole sounds doable, it's going to be a really tight fit though," I said cheerfully, "Think you can handle it, Alex?"

Kayden let out a sharp exhalation of breath, somehow not expecting it despite knowing exactly what I'm like, and there was a beat of silence in which everyone else processed just what I said. Alexandria turned slowly to stare at me, and I took advantage of the stunned silence to speak up again.

"Leviathan is seriously thrashing around in there, and its strong enough to dig through the metal of my wires, even the larger pillars given enough time, but I'm able to generate more material faster than it can destroy it," I said more seriously, studying her face. "I seem to be able to keep it juggled right in the middle of that mess for now."

I pointed at exactly where I had dragged Leviathan, and they all turned to look at the writhing plane of wires in that area, but it didn't look any different from anywhere else. I paused for a moment to take a breath before continuing.

"I can keep a thin tunnel open to it if that is what you want but its moving and twisting around a lot, specifically its tail," I explained, "It's also still constantly making more water around itself in case you didn't already know."

I fell silent after the explanation and refocused on Leviathan as they started to talk amongst themselves again and Alexandria finally looked away. I could actually hear most of the conversation this time, and they were discussing several ideas, I listened quietly for several minutes.

The best ideas for damaging Leviathan that they seemed to agree on were Eidolon, Armsmaster's Nano-thorns, whatever the hell that was, Bakuda's leftover bombs, and a woman called Sundancer. But the strategies alluded to were much more varied, including holding out until Scion arrived, trying to take Leviathan to Scion somehow, trying to throw the creature into space, and a bunch of other more outlandish things.

"What does Sundancer do?" I asked generally, "Something fire-related?"

I knew that was one of the Travelers, I had seen the name before, but I couldn't remember what her power actually did.

"Sundancer creates a miniature sun," Armsmaster answered evenly.

I thought about that for a moment, why would you choose such a literal name? Just tell everyone exactly what you can do, surely that won't ever come back to bite you on the ass. I supposed that depending on what her range with the Sun was, we might be able to drop it straight down directly on top of Leviathan, but if it was really hot enough to hurt the creature, it would melt any of my wires that were in range. Leviathan would still have nowhere to go, being that there would still be hundreds of meters of writhing wires in every direction, but he would have space to move around until I could refill it. I suggested the idea and the problems I'd identified to them a moment later, better out than in.

I just hoped that they decided soon because I was starting to feel sick again.