May 15th, 2011, Sunday, 12:37 PM.

They started with Bakuda's bombs.

The group of capes that were making the decisions had grown even larger, as more joined the group, both heroes and villains alike. The group had moved away from us and were talking quietly among themselves while leaving Miss Militia to relay my orders.

I wasn't really included in the decision making, I was just the guy with the wires, and when they told me to jump, I made sure to do a flip. They were exactly twelve of Bakuda's bombs left in total, and apparently nobody had any idea what each of them would actually do, other than explode.

This made me incredibly nervous, if there was an electrical bomb of some kind in there I was going to be very pissed off.

Leviathan hadn't relaxed at all, and the horrifyingly large waves were still coming strong, almost one every four minutes when I asked Miss Militia for an estimate. The ones running the whole shebang, Legend, and Alexandria, had sent most of the capes with defensive powers off to help Eidolon mitigate the waves.

I just closed my eyes while doing my absolute best to ignore everything other than the wires and Leviathan. I moved the first bomb quickly through the wires and over to the creature, waiting just outside of its range until the last second, as Miss Militia counted down the timer.

"Three, two, one." Miss Militia counted down, watching the bracelet on her arm.

I moved the first bomb right up against its arm and I felt it explode through the sudden loss of a massive chunk of my wires, and something heavy appeared directly in the middle of the bomb's effect. Leviathan stopped struggling for a beat before it started thrashing even harder than before. Whatever the bomb had done to it had fallen off to the side, and I slowly pushed the object through the wires to the top of the cage.

A large cracked half-sphere made of what must have been glass appeared. I lifted it into the air and carried it towards us slowly. There was a strange darker but still translucent patch within the sphere-shaped almost like a long and disproportioned arm.

"It worked." Miss Militia said relieved.

"Is that its arm?" Kayden said astonished.

Leviathans arm had been entirely turned to glass, the bomb had worked. I stared at it amazed, could we actually kill this thing? Maybe we should break Bakuda out of jail and make her build like two hundred of these things. The next two bombs were already being moved into position with my wires, and I made sure to bring them in at Leviathan's left side, where its arm was now missing.

It would make it harder for the creature to try to destroy them.

"Three, two, one." Miss Militia counted down.

I moved the second bomb towards Leviathan's leg, and it exploded, melting a large section of my wires, but apparently doing no damage to the creature at all. Leviathan tried to use the sudden space to leap up into the air, but I smashed it back down with a prepared pillar and recaptured it with some effort. Miss Militia was staring at me seriously, waiting for confirmation.

"Nothing, it just melted a bunch of my wires," I said cheerfully.

Miss Militia relayed the information through the bracelet and started the next count down. Bombs three and four were ineffective, number three froze everything around it, but only managed to do surface damage to the creature's skin. Number four didn't hurt it at all, and I'm not actually sure what it did.

The fifth bomb made Leviathan's shoulder swell up into a massive ball of bulging flesh and stretched my wires bizarrely around it. I let the wires vanished and recaptured it again, its arm was seemingly still working at full effectiveness.

"Its shoulder swelled up, some kind of strange warping effect," I explained happily.

"Does its arm still work?" Kayden asked quietly.

Miss Militia glanced at her clearly wanting to know the answer as well.

"It's working perfectly fine, despite the shoulder being weirdly shaped," I said curiously.

The sixth bomb did something bizarre to my wires around Leviathan's left leg and hip, slowing down my connection to them and gradually worsening the longer they stayed inside the effect. It seemed to take almost fifteen seconds before I lost connection with the wires inside. Leviathan's leg and its tail remained rooted in place, and it thrashed its upper body around savagely along with its remaining leg, its single mishappened arm still digging through my wires.

"Whatever that last one did, its paralyzed Leviathans left leg and tail," I said strangely, trying to figure out what was happening. "I can't move any more wires nears its leg anymore, it's like a solid orb is in the way."

"Is it trapped?" Miss Militia asked seriously.

I tried moving wires away from its upper body to see what happened, Leviathan didn't move from its place in the air, and I couldn't tell what it was doing without touching it. I scratched the back of my head trying to figure out what had happened.

"It's stuck in mid-air, whatever the orb is its floating on its own," I said helplessly.

Miss Militia relayed it through the bracelet, before starting her countdown once more. I moved the seventh, eighth and ninth into range and started bringing them up against its remaining arm, one after another. None of them did anything remotely as damaging as the others, the ninth was bright enough to see even though the wire field, some kind of massively bright flash bang.

The tenth bomb started dragging all of the surrounding wires inside of it, along with most of Leviathans remaining arm, the solid orb around its leg remained perfectly still. The effect seemed to grow stronger for almost thirty seconds before it suddenly vanished, sheering off the creatures right arm at the shoulder. I covered it in wires again, but most of the fight had seemed to have gone out of the creature now. It had nothing left except its right leg to fight off the wires, its left leg and tail were stuck in whatever the orb was, and its arms were entirely gone.

"It sucked in a lot of my wires and took off its arm at the shoulder." I said cheerfully, making a wire replica of its current condition in front of us. "No arms, wonky shoulder, stuck leg and tail."

I made the replica flail its right leg around and Miss Militia relayed its condition, before counting down again. The eleventh bomb vibrated my wires hard enough to disintegrate them but did nothing to Leviathan, and the twelfth one was another ice bomb, which again did little to nothing.

"Ice bomb again, no effect." I said easily.

Bakuda might have been a shitty person, but damn if she didn't know how to make some effective stuff. That was all of the bombs used up now, whatever the next step of the master plan to get rid of Leviathan was, I had no idea. Miss Militia headed back over to the big group again and left me with Kayden and Othala.

The waves were still coming relentlessly, and they were still continuing to grow larger with each one. Eidolon had moved out over the ocean now and was doing his best to disrupt the waves before they even reached the shore. A massive line of forcefields were covering most of the beach in front of the Downtown. The huge glacier that Eidolon had made was still bravely holding up.

"I should be getting paid for this," I said distractedly.

"Technically we are getting paid, just not for this," Kayden said amused and my eyes went wide.

Coil.

It had managed to slip my mind with everything that was going on, Skitter said he had kidnapped a girl. I stuffed my hand into my pocket and found it empty, I had dropped my phone back in the building, it would be long gone now. I turned to stare at Kayden for a second, before hesitating.

Fuck it.

"Minion, I need you to find me a cape called Skitter, one of the Undersiders." I said urgently, "Female, tall, uses bugs, do you know her?"

Kayden turned to stare at me for a moment, probably wondering about the sudden change in tone, she waited a moment and then suddenly took off into the air, not even bothering to ask why. I watched as she stayed low enough to see everyone who was still standing on the pillars and stared doing a lap around them.

"Um," Othala said quietly.

I blinked, having forgotten that she was there, her hand had been there long enough that it had fallen into the background.

"This is the worst backrub I've ever had," I said outraged. "You'll have to do better than this if you want to be in the Full Frontals."

"It's not a backrub!" Othala defended, "and I'm already on a team."

I remembered seeing her name on the news, as one of the capes that had been unmasked, she was married to Victor if I remembered correctly. I'd honestly forgotten what her name had been though.

"Yeah but the Empire sucks ass," I said honestly, and I felt her hand twitch against my back. "My team is where all the cool kids are."

Othala seemed to be a loss for words.

"The Empire doesn't suck ass," Othala said belatedly.

May 15th, 2011, Sunday, 12:53 PM.

When Purity returned with Skitter and Tattletale several minutes later, I had managed to drag Othala down to my level.

"Does too!" I said gleefully while making a loud slurping noise.

"It does not!" Othala said angrily.

Othala was currently trying to pinch the skin of my back between her fingernails, somehow forgetting that she was making me invulnerable. Kayden put her hand on my shoulder to try and bring some order back to things. Skitter was standing just behind her, staring at me quietly while Tattletale was standing next to her with her arms crossed. Othala tensed up behind me when she spotted the two, and I realized belatedly that she thought that the Undersiders were responsible for unmasking the Empire.

"Minion!" I ordered, trying to distract her. "Tell Othala how many asses the Empire sucks on the daily."

"You're back to your old self at least," Kayden said dryly, before looking over my shoulder. "The Empire is a sinking ship at this point."

I wasn't back to my old self at all, I was just doing my best to fake it. I was going to go straight home and cry myself to sleep if my apartment was still standing as soon as this was finally over.

The Protectorate had moved onto using Sundancer's power on the now immobile Endbringer. My wires had immediately melted in a massive sphere around the miniature sun, there was a massive cloud of steam rising up into the air from the rain, and Leviathans water generation. I lost all sense of what was happening around the creature without my wires. It made me nervous not being able to see it anymore, so I moved some of the wires out of the way to give myself a clear view of the action.

"Told you!" I taunted, and Othala made an angry noise in her throat.

I turned to look at Skitter and she tensed.

"I'm going to need the tea about Dinah, girlfriend," I said cheerfully, before snapping my fingers sassily. "When did she get kidnapped, where is she now and why would Coil do it at all?"

Skitter didn't seem to hesitate at all.

"Dinah was kidnapped from her home almost a month ago, I only just found out recently." Skitter said quietly while watching Leviathan. "Coil keeps her in his base somewhere, I'm not sure about the exact location, and the reason why is that she's a precognitive."

"You know that it was Coil that unmasked the Empire," Tattletale said suddenly, and I glanced over at her.

Othala's hand moved again at the reminder and she murmured something under her breath that I didn't catch. Kayden was still playing catch up but had most of the pieces by now, I probably should have explained it before I sent her off.

"Obviously," I said snootily. "Who is Dinah related to?"

That was the only question I really needed answered at this point. I was almost entirely certain that Coil had done what they were accusing him of. It was too random, too obscene, and too strange for them to have just made it up. They would have come up with something more believable if that was the case.

"She's the mayor's niece," Tattletale said easily.

That's where I had seen the name. Roy Christner, the Mayor of Brockton Bay. He had been one of the suspects in the investigation for the Rail Tracer, and I had been checking on all of the relatives who fell into the age group for being a possible cape. Rory Christner had been one of them, and Dinah Alcott had been another.

"When did you find out about this?" I asked pointedly, noticing that 'recently' wasn't an informative answer.

Sundancer's sun had grown large now, bigger than a car at least. It mostly swallowed Leviathan's chest and head. The creature's skin was glowing bright red and molten bits of skin were dripping down the perfectly still silver orb that encapsulated its leg. The orb itself looked like a suspended ball of my wires, almost as if it had been touched by Clockblocker's power.

"I found out yesterday." Skitter said quietly. "We were working on renegotiating with Coil after we took the blame for the unmasking situation."

Skitter turned to look at Tattletale, who hesitated, seemingly trying to steel herself.

"I've known he kidnapped her since a month ago." Tattletale admitted, "I didn't know he was keeping her drugged until yesterday."

I fell silent after that, retreating into my head to figure out what I was going to do. Kayden was looking more tense now and was watching me carefully. I kept my eyes on leviathan as I thought, watching as less and less material was melting off it by the second. The heat was becoming less effective the deeper down it penetrated, but they hadn't yet given up on it, the sun was moved slowly down its body towards its remaining leg and Leviathan started going crazy again.

I couldn't work for Coil anymore, not if this were the kind of thing he had been doing behind closed doors. I had always known he was a villain and that hadn't bothered me at all, I knew that I was considered a villain by most of the heroes despite declaring myself as a mercenary, but this kind of thing went beyond general villainy into the territory of monsters. I had thought that when he had unmasked the empire that would be right on the edge of his limit. But apparently it was just where it started, what else had he been doing that I didn't know about?

Coil was also now aware that I knew about it because I had called him and then fucking Leviathan had ganked us before I had gotten anywhere. Coil would be ready for me now, not that I really cared about that at all. I would need to be careful of everyone around me though, there were plenty of people that had come to fight Leviathan that had worked for or currently worked for Coil, any of them could try for an assassination. Would Coil break the Endbringer truce?

I didn't think he would have before, but now I had no idea what he was willing to do.

Despite currently being invulnerable thanks to Othala, I suddenly felt like I was a sitting duck up here. I started building an armored suit of shield-wires around Othala, I would need to keep her from dying.

"Goddammit, Coil," I said resignedly and Tattletale suddenly looked relieved.

I was probably being paranoid, but it was better to be safe than dead.

"Hey!" Othala said nervously. "What are you doing?"

"I just realized that someone could shoot either of us in the head, but only one of us is invulnerable," I said cheerfully.

I had already begun crafting wire walls around us, only leaving a clear view of Leviathan. Skitter had taken a large step backward at the first sign of more wires popping up, and I could hear a buzzing noise coming from her. I eyed her suspiciously, she better not be planning on any dick biting.

"Why do you sound so happy about that?" Othala said worriedly, but I ignored her.

"What are we doing about Coil?" Kayden said seriously, moving to stand beside Othala.

"Once we're done here we are going to go find Coil and kick his ass," I said resignedly.

"You believe us?" Skitter said strangely, looking around at the structure now covering us all. "Just like that?"

Why did she sound so surprised? Who would be okay with kidnapping and drugging a child?

"Coil was already on notice anyway," I said sullenly, "I told him if he fucked up again I would be coming to kick his ass."

Sundancer's sun suddenly winked out of existence, revealing Leviathan.

"Skedaddle, Skedoodle, Leviathan is now a noodle," I said dryly.

Leviathan almost looked like a stick figure, at least compared to its previous size, now that most of its muscle and bulk had been melted off. It was once again thrashing about, with its leg and tail still stuck in the orb, the loss of mass seemingly having no real effect on its movements. The ground rumbled savagely, another wave perhaps, but I did my best to ignore it.

Leviathan's right leg was bulging slightly around the thigh as if something were inside. The other capes no doubt had noticed the same thing because Legend started layering the hell out of it to no success. I sent some more wires forward to try and hold the leg still, but it was a struggle. I had to squish its thin, clawed foot in between two pillars just to get it to stay still enough to start building up another weave of thicker cables around its leg, leaving the bulging spot uncovered.

"Purity, you should go have a whack at it as well," I suggested like it was a pinata and not a giant world-ending monster.

Kayden hesitated for a moment before flying over to the group assaulting its leg. I watched as the group made room for her and Kayden charged up a massive blast that disintegrated most of the wires around its thigh but did seemingly no damage to it. Narwhal must have been amongst the group as well because a torrent of pink shards suddenly flashed down and shattered on its leg.

They clearly didn't have anyone who could breach the remains of its hide, we needed someone stronger. I started making a massive wire construct in the sky because clearly no one else was going to go get the guy. I added a giant wire arrow pointing downwards at the Endbringer.

"Tee-tee's." I said cheerfully, "You've been working for Coil for a while right?"

Tattletale looked annoyed at the name but answered anyway.

"Yes," Tattletale said carefully.

"Does Coil know everyone's identities or just the Empire's?" I asked curiously.

It was a question that had been burning in my mind for a while now, was I about to get unmasked?

"Coil paid someone to start investigating the Empire almost four years ago." Tattletale said simply, "I'm sure he knows a few of the cape identities, if you are specifically asking if he knows yours, then I don't know."

I was distracted for a second when Eidolon arrived in a flash of light, some kind of teleportation? He was seemingly speaking to the group of capes, before he floated down towards Leviathan, stopping next to its restrained leg. I couldn't really see what he was doing, he was too far away, and his back was facing towards us. There was a green light that was growing stronger by the second until it was almost as bright as the miniature sun that had been there not five minutes ago.

I could feel my wires just vanish in a meter-wide patch around its leg, not enough for it to pull its leg free, but it was definitely trying. Almost three minutes passed before Leviathan suddenly stopping fighting against the wires and I tightened them as much as I could in case it was a trick, but It wasn't. Leviathan's thin body crumbled to dust, leaving nothing but Eidolon and a floating metal orb behind.

Eidolon had managed the unthinkable, Leviathan was dead.

May 15th, 2011, Sunday, 1:13 PM.

I started letting the wires inside the cage vanish slowly, making sure that none of the buildings fell over with their sudden disappearance. A surprisingly amount had survived relatively intact, albeit with surface damage to the windows and exterior, and of the ones Leviathan had gone through during its rampage were completely totaled. I let the outer pillars of the cage begin to slowly lower to the ground, along with the walls of the small bunker I had created around us.

"Tomorrow," I said easily, "I'll need one of you to show me where Coil's base is."

"Okay." Skitter said seriously.

Tattletale was still staring at the ground of capes surrounding Eidolon, while Skitter looked like she wasn't happy about waiting another day, but I honestly didn't give a fuck. I needed to get away from all of this or I was going to break down.

"Boss," Kayden said quietly.

"Can you find Squealer and bring her back to 'the place.'" I said brightly, making sure to add finger quotes for emphasis.

Kayden stared at me hesitantly for a long moment and I hoped she understood that I meant my apartment and not some random 'the place'. I distantly noted that some of the capes were moving towards us and decided now was a good a time as any to get the hell out of here.

"Well on that note," I said cheerfully and clapped my hands once. "I'm going to go cry myself to sleep."

I spun away from the three of them and headed for the edge of the pillar, which had almost reached the ground by now. I took off into the air a moment before the shin-high water could touch me and took a better look at the area.

The first thing I noticed as I cut across the city was the enormous hole that definitely hadn't been in the middle of Brockton Bay this morning. It was as if a massive section of the city had simply fallen down into some kind of sinkhole and it was now filled with a massive amount of water. It honestly looked like a lake had suddenly appeared, and I absolutely hated it.

The second thing I noticed was that my apartment building was missing.

May 15th, 2011, Sunday, 1:29 PM.

I sat on the roof of the nearest intact building and stared at the remnants of my apartment. It was nothing more than a pile of concrete, twisted metal, and a sprinkling of shattered glass.

Oh, I couldn't forget all of the water.

"Fuck you, water lizard," I muttered quietly. "I hope Skitter gave you the Lung treatment before the end."

Why did this keep on happening? Was there even insurance claims for Endbringer destruction? There had been for Parahuman destruction.

Maybe I could tell them that Alexandria did it?

At least none of the Full Frontals had died this time, that was all that really mattered in the end. I could always buy another apartment, as long as I could come up with the money, but people were irreplaceable.

The thought of people who I couldn't replace just manage to bring all of it back to the surface again. I had thought I was making progress in putting everything behind me, but that had clearly been wishful thinking and I couldn't help but feel that I was backsliding.

No apartment, no Coil to fall back on, and now everybody knew what a badass I was. That last bit sounds like a positive, and it kind of was in a way. I had wanted that almost since I had gotten my powers, but I knew that fame was a fickle bitch, and I couldn't help but think it was going to cause me a great deal of problems in the very near future.