Leviathan's body fell limp. Arsenal had done it, taken the last step in Operation Scylla. Phir Sē spoke into my ear, "It is as you predicted."Howling filled the city.Something else 'painted over' the cracks the Habakiri had torn into reality, changing the properties of the very dimension around us. Another layer of reality began to overlap with ours. The broken and flooded city shifted, debris turned into grass, trees sprouted from the ground.With them, heavy steps resounded all around. Canine monsters, the size of vans, appeared from behind the treeline. Fully coordinated this time - and larger than they'd been previously. As though the power feeding them had grown stronger.There was intelligence in their eyes. They did not immediately rampage, they waited. Took their time to look at us, to understand our positions and to adjust their own."The Nine are here. If you're not fully invulnerable to plagues you need to stay away from the dogs." I ordered over the comms.I watched as one suddenly reacted to something I could not hear or see. A signal?Its stance changed. Ready to leap. Alexandria reacted before me, throwing all of the thermobaric grenades she had left. I quickly followed her cue, unsheathing the Habakiri and slicing through the dogs closer to me. A set of powerful but localized explosions rocketed the forest, turning some of the dogs into ashes and burning away whatever plague Bonesaw had seeded into them - or so I hoped.Most of the dogs had avoided the worst of the damage, and quickly their skin shifted as Crawler's power took hold. Most worryingly, even those that had not been close to the explosion began to change. Had Bonesaw connected them all? If one adapted then they all would. The connection wasn't instantaneous, as the farthest dogs didn't immediately change. Rather, the adaptation spread like a slow rolling wave.The Habakiri was still primed and ready. I shot forward and overcharged its core, slashing at a group of dogs. They were slower than Leviathan, unable to react as dimensional cuts took chunks out of their bodies. Nothing remained of the ones I reached.Legend also sprang to action, using his lasers to knock back the dogs rather than injure them. He flew high up in the air, shooting with surgical precision at whatever group of dogs got too close to the fleeing capes.The same durability that let them survive Leviathan usually came at a cost - most of our healing powers barely worked on them. We needed to buy time for our frontline to recover. Or, better, we needed to pin down the key members of the Nine to end the battle.Alexandria dove down to kick and restrain one of the dogs, and as she did the Siberian was suddenly there in front of her, claws already swinging for her throat. Alexandria reacted just in time to avoid the attack, and Legend quickly shot one of his most powerful lasers in between the two, creating a visible shockwave. The Siberian did not budge, but Alexandria was still thrown back, putting space between them. Then, the Siberian looked towards me. Smiling. She spoke three words, sending both panic and confusion to all of the capes that could hear her."He is dead."Those words hung in the air.The Siberian disappeared without sound.Everything ground to a halt. Alexandria stopped in the air. Legend glared at the Siberian. Capes all around were confused at hearing her talk, further confused by trying to understand who she was referring to.Worse still, Alexandria did understand. And in doing so she hesitated for an instant longer, frozen at the realization.Even I was taken off-guard by the information. It made sense, it was what William had asked of me last time. Details regarding Jack's power.And now Jack Slash was dead.The Siberian reappeared behind Alexandria. Silent.A shockwave cracked the air as she leapt, jaws snapping shut around Alexandria's shoulder.I reacted a beat too late, slashing with the Habakiri to strike at the Siberian. She 'popped' out of existence. The capes all around watched as Alexandria fell to the ground clutching her shoulder, bleeding heavily. A chunk of it fell to the ground with a loud 'thud'. The sound of stone rather than flesh."No way…" one of the capes around us gasped.The invincible hero fell to her knees. The wound was deep. She gasped in pain as the blood pooled beneath. I rushed forward and applied what first aid I could, but I had no way to heal Alexandria's chronolocked body. She would die without medical assistance.Legend rushed as well, shouting to the air, "Door me!"The door did not open. Labyrinth's power at play. The neon-green capes were powerless as well, unable to breach whatever dimensional control Labyrinth had on the surroundings.But at the same time, the dimensional anchors we'd placed around the city activated. Pinning down the Nine's pocket dimension. Any gateway they opened, they would not be able to close.Both us and the Slaughterhouse Nine no longer had any way to escape."Get her to the headquarters, now," I ordered Legend. He caught Alexandria and shot upwards, a streak of light vanishing in the sky.Leviathan's body crashed against the ground as Arsenal pulled out his spear from the corpse, and the core of the Endbringer with it. A crack spread from the outer surface of the core. Reality seemed to bend around it, Labyrinth's power and the core's own functions creating a dangerous combination.Arsenal and I exchanged glances. The right side of his face was mangled - metallic bones jutting out of the red gore."We can't risk damaging the core any further. Get it out of the city." I ordered Arsenal. He silently nodded then turned around, pointing at a handful of capes. Fliers."You, you and you. Priority mission-""No, Colin," Dragon almost growled into the communication systems, "you're missing half of your face and your ribcage is folded inward. You leave with them.""...very well. Priority mission, come with me," Arsenal shouted out orders. The three capes immediately stood to attention and followed him. The hero who had just killed an Endbringer.In the distance, a roar echoed across the city, strong enough to shake the ground beneath and deafen those too close. A looming silhouette, larger than Behemoth, rose over the building at the edge of the city, inland. A canine monster, covered in dense gray muscles, tense. Spikes ran along its spine, shifting, spreading from the base of its head to the tip of the tail. From its open jaw, multi-colored gas poured out, mostly red. Where the gas touched the buildings, fires sparked.If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.It faced the headquarters.Seeing Alexandria fall down, and now the appearance of this new monstrosity. It broke the morale of the capes around me."No… Another one…" one of them muttered, falling to his knees and throwing away his mask. Another Endbringer.I knew better. Though it matched one in size, even at a glance its biology was different. Less refined. And…The way the gas spread from its mouth. The stretch marks along the grey muscular limbs… This was one of Bonesaw's abominations, enhanced by Rachel. Showing the powers of the two missing parahumans who had been assigned to work for Rachel by Coil. Long ago. One with the power to grow his own body, and the other…The monstrosity in the distance raised its head. It looked roughly in the direction of the incoming tidal wave from the coast. The whole city lay between the monstrosity and the coast. The beast hung its jaw open, gas pooling downward and igniting once it touched the ground. Then the monster roared, and the air itself began to burn.The sky turned red.
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Like a cleaver through meat, Brockton Bay was now carved in two: a scorched trail of fire was seared into the earth, water quickly rushing in from the surrounding flooded streets to smother the embers within.The monster had roared, summoning a line of fire that had struck the tidal wave in the distance. A large section of the wave had immediately evaporated, and with it the capes that had stood too close to the blast. The lucky ones immediately died, reduced to ashes. The unlucky ones drowned in flames. Screams flooded every open channel as people burned.I was already running towards the beast. Water splashed beneath my feet as I shot across the streets and neighbourhoods, faster and faster with every step.Another attack like that, towards the headquarters, could spell our defeat. We'd been lucky that the Nine had decided that they would be the ones to destroy the city, rather than allow Leviathan's final act to do the job.Dragon had the same idea as all of the undeployed Dragon-crafts flew towards the creature, beginning a barrage of attacks. Bullets, bombs, tinkertech and containment foam. The monster resisted most of it by sheer size alone, and what little damage got through healed just as fast.From one of the crafts, a large spherical device dropped onto the monster's head, exploding in a circular radius of nanothorns: everything above the monster's neck disappeared, leaving a bleeding stump. But within a second the head fully reformed, with red nanothorns covering the skin. Dragon followed it up with a blast of flames, which burnt away the nanothorns and left the monster exposed to more attacks. She switched to harassment tactics, rather than trying to bring the monster down. And it seemed to be working.Legend joined the fray, shooting a laser that flew into the monster's open maw and down his gullet, exploding somewhere in the stomach. The monster knelt down in sudden pain, then barked at the air. With less intensity than the previous roar.The sound turned into a blast of kinetic force, grazing Legend as he moved to dodge it. It was too large even for Legend to fully dodge. He quickly recovered and redoubled his efforts.In the sky around the Dragon-crafts, multiple tears appeared. Small, detectable only by the technology we'd stolen and researched from Toybox. Enough to give whoever was on the other side a reach into the city.One of the crafts plummeted to the ground, suddenly carved in two. A striped woman stood among the debris, disappearing and reappearing over another of Dragon's suits. The Siberian repeated this process, each time bringing down a Dragon-craft. "Blackwall," a voice spoke into my comms. A girl, voice teetering on crying.Panacea.I stopped in my tracks.She wasn't supposed to have access to this line. A quick check told me that neither Dragon nor Arsenal had done it. "I'm showing myself. You should know where I am. Be quick, please?" I could feel her trembling through her voice. Panacea… Amy was scared, but also… There was resolution in her tone. Confidence. Anxiety.She was offering herself as bait."Dragon!" I yelled into the air and into the comms at the same time. One of the Dragon-crafts tried to get away from the monster, but the Siberian appeared and quickly destroyed it. The tears in the sky began to spread even more, the Siberian kept disappearing and reappearing wherever she wished. She began to target flying capes, and a general warning not to fly was sent through the comms.I was on my own. That was fine.I would suffice.My mind went into overdrive as the world slowed down, losing its color. From me to Panacea there was a direct linear path without innocents or other capes in the way. As though someone had arranged the stage just for that. Had the Nine done that? No.Contessa.Murderous fury moved me. The crystal over my skin changed. Shifting into a pitch metallic-black color, resonating in a red light.I left a trail of fire as I moved. I outran the shockwave following me.The world turned into a blur as Shatterbird's power and my own implants allowed me to move faster than I ever did before, even against Leviathan. Buildings parted like gentle water, melting and breaking where I touched them. Debris and rock followed me, carried by the shockwaves.The air became molasses, harder to move through. I slowed down.When I landed, the ground shook beneath me, rippling like a wave, creating a crater of smoldering rock and glass. Shatterbird's power ripped the glass and sand from around me, forming into a thousand needles, all pointed at the two figures before me.Panacea's expression was terrified. Tears running down her face. But, like before, there was the subtlest hint of determination in her eyes. She had not been forced to do this. At least, that's what she thought.A metallic hand was closed around her by the throat, gripping tightly. The hand extended and connected to a tall figure, made of bone and sinew. The helmet was shaped like a canine's skull, but the teeth had been replaced with sharp metallic implements with veins running through them, filled with a variety of liquids, a display of unnatural plagues ready to be unleashed. Beneath the empty sockets of the skull were two human eyes, blue. The girl within the armor was smiling in glee, her blonde hair perfectly curled in ringlets."You'd be really good at tag, Blackwall!" Bonesaw cackled.