To his senses, the world was a flowing picture of lines. Not a continuous image, like the one that his 'fake' eyes perceived, but rather a complex system of numbers and vectors. The moisture in the air moved ever so slightly, and even the particles too small for him to control still relayed a torrent of sensory inputs to him.His younger sibling had taken precautions, given him instructions, plans to follow. He disregarded some - recognizing them for the manipulation attempts they were - and acted upon others.The creature in front of him, the interloper, had gained access to a Shard that had been part of his own creation. The ability to store away an almost endless reservoir of water, to summon again. But unlike him, she had gained access to the unlimited expression of that Shard. The ability to dimensionally overlap that water with her own body, making her impossibly dense and heavy.Leviathan also recognized the danger that her weapons posed. Something that could breach his core.And as he recognized the danger, so did his internal programming. The chains put on him by his creator loosened, giving him access to his full repertoire of power.The invincible human and the interloper shot forward towards Leviathan, moving in perfect sync and easily surpassing the speed of sound. He lurched forward, but did not move his body. Instead two echoes of water appeared from his body and clashed against the enemies. The invincible hero straightened out her arm and struck against the first echo. The impact detonated a shockwave, water exploding around her. She continued on her trajectory, reaching Leviathan and hooking her fingers in the open wound on his neck, pulling on it to try and tear his head off.The interloper had less luck, for Leviathan had sprung a trap on her. When she met the echo headfirst and began to absorb the water, Leviathan reached for the water below the ground. Mixing it with the debris and dirt, he created a bubble of water that kept the ground stable. With a thought, he expanded it violently, creating an explosion of debris that shot upward. A weave of rock and debris slammed into the interloper, cracking against her crystal and slowing her down.Just enough.Leviathan reached for the invincible hero still digging into his neck. She had not noticed that the interloper had lagged behind, and so she didn't react in time as Leviathan's tail - what remained of it - wrapped around her leg. He whipped her away, smashing her into the ground, before slamming his claw into her face. Water poured out of his green skin and crushed the invincible hero. While she was not hurt by the constant stream of water, there was no space for air to reach her lungs. Suffocation was the only way to kill the invincible hero. That, the younger siblings had told him.Sensing irregularities in the air, Leviathan moved back, shaping the water echo into a whirlpool that blocked a volley of lasers and guns raining from above. The water turned into steam, some of the shots managed to get through and struck his skin.The interloper had regained her footing, but she did not continue pursuing Leviathan. Rather, she jumped down and reached for the invincible hero, pulling her away from the water.In the distance, Leviathan felt as the creator continued to struggle against the tidal waves. But finally Leviathan revealed the first of the limitations that he was finally free of.His range.Following the moisture in the air, the smallest movement of sweat on the skin of the meatbags all around the settlement, he found their headquarters. Their center of operation.Across the whole of Brockton Bay he felt the multiple shelters and tunnels, reinforced structures meant to resist his attacks. Some were partially hidden in ways that Leviathan could not decipher - dimensional pockets. He could still feel the people inside: the sweat accumulating on their skin, the blood flowing in their veins. But only one structure stood among the rest as being filled with Shard-wielders. Destroy that, and the rest would follow."HE IS AFTER THE HEADQUARTERS, EVACUATE," a male voice screamed over the air. Leviathan did not understand the words, only felt the vibration in the air. Something in his actions had seemed to alert the humans.Unfortunate. It would take another two minutes for the accumulated water to be damaging enough to destroy their center of operation.The interloper and the invincible hero both became anxious at the sound of the voice, and both shot forward again. This time they left some spaces in between, making sure that Leviathan wouldn't be able to apply the same tactic twice.And he didn't.He smashed his tail to the ground, willing the water accumulating below to rise all at the same time. A moment they were breathing air, and the next they were underwater. The perfect environment for him.Leviathan rushed forward. His tail whipped against the invincible hero, slamming her against the ground once again. Both of his claws reached for the interloper.Water around her turned to steam as she kept up with his movement, if only for an instant. One of the claws began to dig into the side of her leg, but she dodged the one aimed at her head. She immediately answered with a sharp strike against Leviathan's chest, breaking skin and various layers of his body.His claws sank deeper into the interloper's leg, grabbing onto her. But she was too heavy for him to move.Instead, she firmly placed a foot against the ground, then once again struck Leviathan in the chest. This time with much greater strength. She shrugged off the water's drag, driving her fist into his chest another time - with much more strength. He was flung backwards. He willed the water to follow him, creating a large sphere that floated with him.The interloper grabbed the invincible hero and flung her outside of the water, rescuing her once again. Then she snapped her fingers, sending a soundwave to the outside world. Leviathan's control over the water was not fine enough to stop it, but he still willed the water to resist the spread of the sound.Through the moisture in the air, he felt multiple tons of sand and glass rise from the ground and fly forward, towards him. The glass took the shape of spears, while the sand swirled in spiral patterns, drilling into the water.A swing of his claw sent a strong current against a chunk of the incoming spears, but there were too many, and from too many directions. They pierced Leviathan's flesh, though just barely. The moment they intersected with his body, the interloper's control over the glass ceased. She was still limited by the Shard rules in the same way as he.But most importantly, with the scattering of sand and glass now filling the water enclosure, the interloper created multiple footholds to launch from.She was still too slow.As she launched forward, Leviathan slammed his claw down on her back, sending her crashing to the ground. Then he started his relentless assault, clawing with both of his forelimbs at the ground, slashing through the interloper's back as she struggled to stand up against the tide of water and attacks.The invincible hero grabbed something from her belt and threw it into the water.Light blinded Leviathan, followed by heat slamming onto his skin.The water all around flash-evaporated. Leviathan managed to brace himself just in time, but the explosion still threw him far away from the interloper. The glass and sand still stuck to him melted away. His skin turned a bright orange as the heat burnt his surface layer.The invincible hero tapped on her armband and spoke loudly, "Deploying explosives, stand clear!"Then she pulled out another set of those same devices, throwing them at Leviathan. He rushed to the side, aiming to avoid them. A soundwave exploded from the interloper. The devices turned in the air, shooting towards him and exploding while he was still within their radius. The explosions stripped multiple layers of skin from his back and right side.Each detonation was extremely intense, but also localized. The work of a Shard. Or maybe the interloper?As the invincible hero threw another of the devices, Leviathan took two sidesteps and sent a water echo forward. The water surrounded the devices and weakened the explosion just enough. Then he took another step and sent another echo shooting towards the invincible hero, who in response swung her leg.Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.The interloper did not stay idle. She stood and unsheathed the dangerous blade and rushed forward. Wounds still covered her body.Leviathan prepared to dodge, when a laser projectile smashed against his remaining leg and knocked him off balance. The light hero had recovered from the wounds. Too fast. The work of another Shard healing him.The interloper reached him. The blade vibrated at a frequency known to Leviathan, one step removed from the power of Sting.The meatbags were not fighting to repel him, or to push him away. No, they were attempting to truly kill him. And they had the means.Another chain within Leviathan broke. Another limitation undone, as he realized the true scope of the danger he was in.Water flooded out of Leviathan.The interloper did not stop.The space in between the two of them cracked as small cuts appeared all around. Produced by the blade. From each break in reality, a red mist swarmed through. The cracks spread even further, reaching Leviathan, and then surrounding him.A field of razor-thin dimensional gates now surrounded him, moving in a whirling pattern to reduce his movements. Where the cuts grazed his surface layers, his skin simply disappeared.The water that he had begun producing was simply drained away.Leviathan desperately swung his claw to stop the interloper. She did not dodge, allowing the claw to smash against her left shoulder, ripping into her crystalline flesh.The blade met Leviathan's chest. Green mist spread from the point of contact as the interloper continued to push the tip of the blade through, reaching denser and denser layers.Standing still would mean death. Leviathan shot backwards. Large chunks of his skin disappeared as the field of dimensional traps cut into him. The last of his neck gave way. His head began to fall.Before it could hit the ground, Leviathan was already meters away. Speeding up his retreat.The interloper tried to follow, but she was not fast enough.In the distance, water continued to drill away at the base of the meatbags' shelter. A few more seconds and the foundation would be compromised. A few more seconds, and another tide would hit the coast, one so large that even his creator would risk drowning in the face of it.The tide rose beyond the coast like a shadow growing across a wall: it blotted out the little daylight that managed to get through the dark clouds. Leviathan felt meatbags falling to their knees, losing hope. Shard-wielders near the coast continued to fight against his control, but not even his creator had the tools to avoid what was coming.But all of it didn't matter in the face of the danger the interloper posed.Leviathan let go of all of his other control and focused on the interloper, on the water around her. A torrent was produced by his body, one that was meant to overwhelm the interloper's defensive Shard. And it did, as she was pushed back, the cracks on her skin growing wider. The pressure tore her left arm off at the shoulder.A barrage of attacks tore into Leviathan - a fist from the invincible hero, a blast of heat from the light hero, bullets and energy lasers from the many more Shard-wielders that appeared all around the battlefield. Brought there by Shards capable of teleportation.Leviathan quickly realized that while these other humans were dangerous, none had the capability to truly kill him. Only the interloper and his creator.Something suddenly felt strange to Leviathan's senses. Without his head he was blind, relying only on his ability to feel moisture. But nothing could fully avoid the moisture in the air. And yet… There was a patch of ground, just behind him, where something felt strange. Out of place.He noticed too late. He felt the danger coming. He redoubled his effort in damaging the city, doing one last act of defiance as he commanded the water.
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Without his physical eyes, Leviathan could not fully perceive Arsenal. The Tinker's black crystal armor had made him difficult to see for the Shards. Not impossible, not a blind spot. Paradoxically, Leviathan would have noticed a blind spot.No, his armor merely made him harder to pin down. As though he melded with the air around him. It tricked the Shards' senses, especially Leviathan's, working against his 'water-perception'.So Leviathan reacted just one millisecond later than he would have, when Arsenal rushed forward with his newly made spear. The spiral pattern over it imitated the Habakiri's own: red metal and black glass. The sister weapon of the Habakiri. Arsenal had decided to call it Rhongomyniad.The red and black of the weapon vibrated in unison, piercing through dimensional layers to aim at the back of the creature. But even if surprised, Leviathan was fast. One millisecond meant little for a beast that could easily surpass the speed of sound.Arsenal had one more trick.Last time they fought, Arsenal… Armsmaster had failed. He had sacrificed the lives of too many people. Betrayed the principles of the PRT. Of Hero, and others like him who had inspired a younger Colin.His most notable failure was in his combat algorithm. Fundamentally imperfect, as it did not take into account Leviathan's own body composition. Had he collaborated with the villains - with Tattletale, beforehand, then he would have been able to adjust for it. Tune it.Maybe, with the villains' cooperation, he would have been able to set the perfect stage for the fight much sooner. Many other capes would have survived. In the distance Arsenal could still see the time-locked bubble that kept Dauntless prisoner.He would not make the same mistake again."He's going to jump to the left!" Tattletale's voice told him, a beat before Leviathan jumped. Arsenal did not react to this information, but Dragon did, inputting it into the combat algorithm, which in turn updated the information shown within his helmet.Rhongomyniad, the spear of slaying, pierced his back, breaking through hundreds of layers of crystalline skin, each denser than the other. Reality itself struggled to resist against the dimensional forces that fought within Leviathan's body. Until the tip of the spear reached the densest point - a galaxy's worth of mass, condensed into a spherical core. Only then did the Rhongomyniad slowed down, the black glass struggling against the space-warping properties of the Endbringer's biology. A thousand algorithms sprung into action, adapting the vibration to try and breach the core.Arsenal grit his teeth and dug his heels, lifting Leviathan's body in the air. The Endbringer lost control of his water, reduced to trying to desperately strike at Arsenal with his inhuman limbs. A claw struck Arsenal's helmet, tearing off a section of his face and his right eye with it. Leviathan's tail slammed into his leg, then his chest. He heard bones break, his ribcage crushed inward, only his power armor kept his heart beating and his legs standing.He took a step forward, through the pain.Then, a crack.Leviathan froze, his body still held in the air by Rhongomyniad. Colour drained from his skin as his arms fell limp by the side.There was a beat of silence as the capes all around the battlefield watched, incredulous, at the sight. Leviathan, impaled on a spear. Unmoving. Then, starting from his tail, the Endbringer's body began to fall apart, like brittle rock turned to dust by the wind.An Endbringer. Dead.For the first time in many, many years, the capes allowed themselves to feel hope. This would send ripples all throughout the world. Convince the few skeptics that there was a way to fight against the upcoming End.It was still far from over. In the distance, the largest wave Leviathan had ever summoned grew taller and taller as the shadow of it grew over Brockton Bay. Instructions continued to be shouted in the communication systems, capes trying to coordinate a defense against the Endbringer's final tide."It is as you predicted," a male voice cut through all the others, given priority by Dragon's system. Phir Sē.Arsenal spun his spear, ready to jump into action again, even as blood pooled in his helmet.The world shifted all around. The debris turned into grass and wood.Howling filled the city.