Countless Joyful Dawns Chapter 31 - Leviathan II (Patreon)

Wave vs people? Let them get hit, restore the injuries.

Building collapsing on people? The math very rapidly changed, where preventing the injury was worth far more than healing after. The sheer potential for crush injuries tilted the scales hard. 

“Everyone out!” I bellowed, joining my voice to dozens of others ordering evacuations. Fortunately, a number of people had their heads screwed on firmly, and went through the nearest wall instead of allowing everyone to get bottlenecked at the door.

I flashed over to the wall that the water was pouring through, and thanks to [The World Around Me], quickly identified the load-bearing pillar most at risk of failing. I physically held it in place as the room emptied, mentally groaning at how many other people were staying behind to help everyone else evacuate. 

Alright, alright, with all the shit I gave the locals, I had to admit - here and now, they absolutely had their heart in the right place. Tiles fell off the ceiling and the floodwaters started rising as the last people exited the building. I popped out myself, and pushed down the minor feeling of disappointment when the entire thing didn’t collapse. 

Most of the heroes - because today, here and now, everyone was a hero - were wading through the shin-deep water to rally at a large intersection. The rest of them were flying, or had other ways to not be wading. All the while, the rain poured down, pounding on us in great sheets of water. Legend was bellowing, attempting to wrangle us into some semblance of order.

“Those of you who can take a hit from Leviathan, with Alexandria!” He said, pointing to the floating woman who had her arms crossed. “Those of you who think you can hurt him, with me! The rest of you are on search and rescue!”

Everyone started to shuffle to their respective group. Glory Girl picked up Panacea and took off towards what I assumed would be triage, and a few others also got rides from the Movers in that direction. Clearly a fourth group. Some logic said I should join them, but no. I was used to being on the front lines. If it proved too dangerous or if I was ineffective, I’d reevaluate my position and what I was doing. Being on the ground was a poor idea though, and I floated up and slightly behind Legend. He knew what he was doing in these fights, and his power was similar enough to my abilities and fighting style. A good introduction. 

The armbands dinged.

“Tidal wave incoming.” Dragon’s voice was oddly monotone.

Everyone’s head snapped towards the shoreline. We couldn’t see the bay from where we were, but quickly, even through the driving rain, we could see the wall of water that was incoming.

I flew up higher, and I could see who was experienced, and who thought it was ‘just water’. I knew, from both knowledge and bitter experience, that trying to fight a mass of water was a sucker’s bet, not without skills or classes dedicated to it. The people on the ground tried to run, jumping behind people that were throwing up shields or otherwise trying to find some cover in an open city.

Spoiler alert: There was no cover, just different levels of suck.

The tidal wave hit like the fist of an angry god. Cars were flipped and brought along with the wave, parking meters were ripped out of the ground, and streetlights were bent. Anyone directly caught in the wave was smacked around, and I would’ve anticipated some level of losses without my healing. There was already a hero crushed under a car, and I’d fly down there in about 11 seconds to free him. 

Priorities. 

Because He was here. Leviathan. He had come in with the tidal wave, landing among the defenders. 

He might have gotten an elvenoid classification on Pallos. Might. Two legs, two arms, a head. Saurians had tails, as did any number of other elvenoids.

But it was a big might.

Leviathan stood on all fours, like a gorilla, and was 30 feet tall. His tail was another thirty feet long, and it swished back and forth behind him. His skin was the same blue-green as the ocean, and he had four eyes on his face, with no other marks. No nose, mouth, or ears. The eyes were asymmetrical - three on the left, one on the right, and it was like they all shared a single eyeball, a glowing green orb that seemed to shift and move, visible from multiple eyes at once. Like a far-back lantern with slits. His forearms were far longer than his legs, and they were grotesquely muscled. His ‘hands’ and feet ended in vicious claws.

Last was his ‘water echo’. Water poured off him in sheets, and whenever he moved, an ‘echo’ of his movement would follow, effectively letting him double-tap every move, all while adding volumes of water he controlled to the environment. Simply fighting him to a standstill would result in the local terrain being utterly destroyed, a winning move when he was in a hostile city. 

It reminded me of Depths, an old Sentinel friend of mine whose name was on the wall. She walked into cities single-handedly and drowned them with a very similar skill, but only the size of a person and not a fraction as tough as Leviathan was.

Speaking of tough -

I flew through the air towards Leviathan, getting as close as I dared to the gigantic monster. I waited three seconds to find the best angle of attack, then took it.

Radiance and Water didn’t mix well. It wasn’t a hard counter to Radiance like Mirror was, more of a soft counter. Water tended to deflect and diffuse Radiance, and all the heat in the magical beam got dumped into the high energy capacity water, strongly blunting my blows. I did my best not to fight underwater as a result. I was effectively a creature of air and fire, like Auri. 

Leviathan had water pouring off him in great sheets, hence waiting for a moment where there was slightly less water pouring off his face as he went forward.

I unloaded with my classic attack. A tight beam of Radiance, with as much power as I could pack into as small of a space as possible, right towards his eye. Either I’d burn through his head, cooking his brain and instantly killing him, or I’d blind him. Regardless, the orbital socket tended to be one of the thinnest parts of the skull, making it an ideal spot to shoot. 

I put in a quarter of my mana into the attack, holding the beam steady for a few seconds before turning it off. Black ichor started to leak from his eye, and I mentally revised Leviathan’s power up. Way up. I hadn’t even cauterized his wounds, let alone blinded him or even killed him.

Given my current power… he might be one of the strongest creatures I’d ever fought.

Then the monster was on me.

There was always a brief moment of suboptimal activity, as I sped my perception up to as quickly as it could go. Pure superspeed and perception in a world where others couldn’t go as quickly was a special type of hell, one I was glad I didn’t have to experience. 

He scurried towards me, fast enough that natives might disbelieve his speed, but I’d spent my entire life living around superpowered creatures. His speed was expected.

The way he tensed, and which muscles flexed, versus the way he moved was all wrong though. I chalked it up to ‘smoke and mirrors’, either faking, miming, or otherwise deceiving how he moved, and ignored the cues he was trying to send. 

While I’d just said he was fast, I was practically speed incarnate. I had been [Beloved of the Wind], and the best blow was one I never took. Dodging his swipes was simplicity itself, and the water echo behind him was nothing new. I’d seen thousands of warriors double, triple, or otherwise multiply their blows. The only unusual thing was the sheer quantity of mass being thrown around as well. I would expect his mana pool to be rapidly drained, except he had endless water to throw around to try and drown the city. Which was his assumed goal. Fighting everyone to a draw resulted in his victory.

Which… was weird.

I spent three thoughts keeping track of Leviathan and dodging his clumsy blows, eight more on various aspects of the fight, and my actual body went to throw a car pinning a cape. Damage had been tried, damage hadn’t worked, and it was back to my usual role in such a fight - stay back, stay out of harm’s way, keep everyone alive. Find opportunities and exploit them. Help others. 

It was much nicer helping others than trying to hurt them. 

Going back to how Leviathan was weird.

I’d pumped in more than enough power to put the rest of the superheroes here to shame. I knew how powerful I was, barring unusual teleportation and other odd effects I knew how powerful they were. 

I’d probably done hours of their combined, uninterrupted might of damage to Leviathan in my single blow, and he’d barely flinched. What the fuck was he made out of, and why did he ever retreat, with the heroes having ‘won’? I wasn’t trying to put them down, I just knew how powerful I was. It wasn’t making sense to me. 

All I could do was my best… and think as hard as I could about the problem. See if I could figure out the trick, the smoke or the mirror that caused the problem. Maybe, instead of damage like people thought, he was more on a timer? The more he was fighting people, the less damage he was doing, but he’d exhaust himself in a predefined length of time? If he wasn’t fighting, AKA not getting injured, he’d have more mana - or whatever resource he was using - to pour rain and waves on a place?

The logic made sense to me.

It wasn’t just me on the field. Lasers flew, guns fired, and the bravest of the brave physically slammed themselves into Leviathan. Shields flickered, bombs went off, and a stuffed giraffe the size of Leviathan tried to grapple the monster.

You go, Parian!

Leviathan gave as good as he got, but I didn’t let myself get smug. Fliers dodged his tail, only to get cut in half by his water echo. Brutes were too slow or not tough enough, and got cut in half by his claws. A car went through a building, hitting something structural. The entire thing slowly crumbled, and I must’ve looked like the biggest asshole in the world.

I zipped up to where a number of capes were panicking, trying to ‘surf’ down on the roof. There weren’t so many that I could just scoop them up, my portal was still, and I couldn’t let them fall into the collapsing building. If it didn’t outright kill them - too much steel and concrete going through the brain would be lethal, like I said - then they’d be crushed, and turn into a rapid drain on my mana. 

I grabbed a long pole from my [Manor], made sure it was reinforced with my skills, and ‘swept’ them all off the roof, condemning them to a 30-meter fall.

“Asshole!” One of them yelled at me. The rest of them just screamed all the way down. A typical first reaction to being exposed to the crazy stunts possible with my healing backing them up. A series of splats heralded them raining from the sky, joining the relentless, pounding rain, and one of them landed on another hero, breaking her collarbone at least, and creating all sorts of other injuries.

Instead of chalk outlines - utterly impossible in this weather - all of them stood back up, and brushed themselves off.

The biggest injury here was to clothing and modesty, and it’s part of why I disliked working with civilians on kaiju battles. They were running, grabbing whatever thing, waterlogged clothing was nearby and trying to cover themselves up instead of continuing to throw themselves into the fray and fight. 

Then there came the magical moment where nobody needed help. Nobody needed rescuing. I debated heading over to the triage and medical center, and seeing if I could give them a pointer or two, but no. That could wait until after the fight. 

Instead, I activated one of my least-used skills. Virtually everything either died to my [Radiance Beams], one of my partners, or was pure Mirror, and I couldn’t touch. Leviathan fell into a very neat category here, where Radiance was useful, but I couldn’t quite kill him, my mana was full, and I didn’t need to be helping others right this second.

I launched myself high into the sky, and flipped my flying skill to show off wings. Six glorious, gigantic wings, those of a Seraphim’s, while I lit myself up with Radiance and activated my halo. My light was blinding, fighting through the torrential rainfall and darkness to show a beacon of defiance and hope. A strong message that we would win, that no lives would fall.

That the Dawn had arrived.

With a flick of my wrist and a distinct snap-hiss - I just loved the sound effect - I activated [The Morning Blades], creating an ethereal sword of burning light.

Then I plunged down onto Leviathan like a divine comet, like the retribution of the gods.

“She has a lightsaber as well!?” One of the Wards said. Except it was distorted, in slow motion, as I continued to view the world at full speed.

My runes glowed as I dove, slipping me through the air and preventing a window-shattering sonic boom. I hit Leviathan like the fist of an angry god, plunging the sword deep into the nape of his neck. I wrenched it out and hit him again and again, carving long, shallow grooves down his back that all bled black ichor. He tried to grab me, but I effortlessly dodged. The only thing that eventually forced me off is when a wall fell over onto a hero. I disengaged, flipped the wall off with my foot, and was immediately back in the action, trying to sever one of his limbs. 

Tidal waves regularly came in, washing away most of the defenders and ruining the city. One wave was bad enough, but multiple? Whoof.

Well, look on the bright side, maybe I could level the entire place after and rebuild a city from scratch. Wouldn’t be the first time, but the sheer amount of modern materials, construction techniques, and different equipment would make it one heck of a challenge. 

We had not caused a significant scratch on Leviathan yet. My initial strike was still the deepest, biggest blow, and he just walked that off. Everything else was much shallower. 

Well, if nothing else, it bled, and if it bled, it could die. 

Buildings collapsed, bridges were demolished, and parking meters flew through the sky like children throwing up a handful of twigs. Capes were smashed, grabbed, drowned and had all manner of problems.

But my boast held.

Nobody died. 

Throughout the entire battle I blazed with light, marking Leviathan as he tried to reposition, and reminding everyone that I was still here. I was holding back Black Crow - excuse me, the Grim Reaper - and not a single soul would be taken from me today. 

It was a high-effort endeavor. Idiots had decided to shelter in place instead of evacuate. I constantly had to break off my engagement with Leviathan to deal with it. In the name of an emergency and expediency, I just did it, secure in the knowledge that any problems I was causing was preventing far greater harm. Like surgery, or slapping a child’s hand out of a fire. I didn’t bother being polite, I didn’t bother being nice, the city had 350,000 people and Leviathan was right there.

His massive tail started to swing, and I could already see what would happen. There was a low rise apartment building in the way, with two people who had refused to evacuate. An old lady, and a man who was glued to his computer.

I swear, if he was shitposting on the internet while Leviathan was right there…

In the grand scheme of ‘tank it or heal it’, going through a wall was significantly less mana than teleporting through it. By several orders of magnitude. We were in a struggle for our lives, and I wasn’t going to waste a drop of life-saving mana on the building, not when it was about to get demolished by Endbringer Co. 

Avoiding the structural supports, I went through the brick wall, leaving a perfect Elaine-shaped imprint. Before the bricks could fly even a quarter of the way through the room, I’d already grabbed the old lady and defenestrated her. Feet-first, I wasn’t trying to kill her. Then I went down and over, and tackled the man through a closed window.

From their point of view, they were probably worrying about the raging battle one moment, and suddenly in freefall the next, getting frozen by sheets of rain. I swooped back into the fight as they started to fall with a scream. I could barely hear the twin splats as they hit the ground, and the frantic babbling about ‘a miracle’ was swallowed up by the relentless drumming of raindrops hitting everything. The very same scene repeated itself countless times. I tried to save as many pets as I could, but the cold, hard truth of the matter was I simply determined the nature of their death. A collapsing building? The floodwaters? Hypothermia? Drowning? Starvation as the city turned into a hellscape? Eeny meeny miny moe, the choice was brutal. And it was a choice, even if I chose to do nothing.

The cold calculus of triage, and knowing there would be an after. Only so many resources, only so much food. It broke my heart, and knowing I was the last one to see them, that I was the last person they ever saw, was a special type of agony.

Their memories, too, would be eternally preserved. Not in stone and words, but in memory. Mine was perfect, pristine, every memory, every tail wag, forever preserved in high detail.

Broadly, I allowed them to swiftly die. Better a quick end than a long, lingering, slow death. Better to be removed than to stretch resources, or be allowed to turn feral and fight people. I did pay special attention to service animals, but that was all.

Even that line was hard. Every pet gave comfort to their owners, every animal provided emotional support. Who was I to judge?

I was [The Elaine], and the power and position made me the only one who could judge in the moment.

I fought. Not wildly, not with abandon, not with every fiber of my being. Coldly, calmly, methodically. It wasn’t flashy, but it was how we would win. How I would survive to fight the next calamity, and the next, and the one after that. No wild last stands, no sacrificial defiant strikes. 

I was leaving all those to the heroes next to me. 

My good luck couldn’t last forever. Leviathan stepped on a cape that was getting too cocky, and my armband crackled to life.

Strapping Lad Deceased, CJ-11.

I debated furiously stabbing the button and reminding everyone how to live, but I’d need to slow down too much for that. It would take far too much time just to speak the words, compared to how much I could do at maximum acceleration and perception.

Fortunately for me, someone else spoke up and chastised the others.

“Don’t get stepped on! Dawn’s healing can’t fix it.”

The worst part about super-accelerated perception is how long everything felt. It literally felt like I’d been fighting for an entire day and night, when in practice it was probably closer to 20 minutes - and the battle looked nowhere close to done. The waves were getting bigger, the defenders were exhausted, and Leviathan barely seemed to notice we were doing anything to him. I broke contact to rescue more civilians, unceremoniously chucking them out of their bed, then hovered for a second, twirling my wrist to reposition my sword.

Which is when a portal opened next to me. Inky darkness ripped open space right where I was hovering, and an all-too-familiar beak peeked through.

Followed a moment later by the rest of Auri.

My friend, my bonded companion, my kindred soul. The tiny phoenix was shaped like a hummingbird, with the colors, appetite, and attitude to match. It was clear that I hadn’t been the only one trying to find a portal home - they had been working on their end to get a portal back to me.

“Brrpt? BRPT!!” She complained, shuddering as the gallons of rainfall tried to extinguish her ever-present flames.

I was briefly tempted to just leave. Hop into the portal with Auri and go home, leaving Brockton Bay to its fate. But I had made a promise. I had sworn the [Oath]. I was going to stay until everyone was safe. 

“Auri! Kaiju battle! Burn all the water!”

“BRPT!” A maniacal gleam lit Auri’s eye, and she exploded in flames.

Fire versus water. A classic battle. One that Auri handily won locally - she was an extremely high-level phoenix, with all the study, backing, and power that implied - but Leviathan was practically the whole ocean. There was no winning globally.

Just a complete absence of water in around 4 city blocks.

“Where-” I started to ask about Iona, before the portal greatly expanded. Fenrir flew through it a moment later, with Iona riding on his back.

“Kill the kaiju!” I immediately threw a weak [Radiance Beam] at Leviathan, clearly signaling what I was talking about. Iona put one hand down on Fenrir’s back and basically did a handstand on him, giving me the room needed between the two of them for me to teleport their heavy-duty fighting armor onto them. Encased in thick adamantium plate armor, I didn’t think Leviathan could get through it. There were also some weak breathing-related enchantments, to prevent the classic kill of ‘just drown the knight’. 

Fenrir’s armor wasn’t adamantium - I’m not sure that much of the precious metal existed on all of Pallos - but being as large as he was, the thickness was measured in inches on some parts of his gear. Plus his skills reinforced it. Plus his naturally tough scaled hide was stronger than most armor. Plus his vitality.

“Auri! Night!” Iona shouted, flipping back onto Fenrir and holding her hand up. I teleported her best glaive and gauntlet into her hand. The knight and her wyvern then dived into battle, with only a last “I love you!” shouted by Iona as she dove in.

“I love you too!” I yelled back, allowing myself the moment of weakness in the heat of battle.

Auri vanished back through the portal as Fenrir hit Leviathan in a titanic crash. The earth shook, the street cratered, and a nearby building collapsed just from the vibrations. Fenrir raked his steel-clad toes across Leviathan’s back, then twisted his neck, opened his mouth, and breathed out a point-blank [Ice Beam]. 

When Auri had left, her [Domain of Fire] had left with her. The entire sky had seemed to pause, before gallons of water resumed pouring down on us. 

Ice met water, and for a moment, Ice won. Leviathan was coated in thick layers of the stuff, but continued to generate water off his skin, nevermind that he wasn’t moving anymore. Fenrir continued to pile on the Ice, entombing Leviathan and turning him into a larger and larger iceberg.

But the water continued to build up, and when the Ice finally broke, it was like an entire legion of artillery mages had fired all at once. It exploded under the enormous pressure, and chunks of ice larger than the biggest trucks went flying at supersonic speeds.

Through Brockton Bay, and the defenders.

The situation was about as bad as possible, and I was instantly forced to make dozens and dozens of decisions and calls in only a fraction of a second. 

This. This was why I didn’t slow down my perception in the heat of battle.

The pouring rain made it extra difficult.

I snapped up dozens of tiny disks of pure darkness, my annihilation shields, between the non-brute defender’s heads and the incoming Ice. The rain hit it and was instantly deleted, taking a small but measurable toll on my mana - and by natural extension, just how much Ice I could delete.

In a rippling staccato, the Ice hit the defenders. High, low, to the left, behind, in front - nobody was spared. Holes were carved into the Ice, just large enough for a head to fit through, which was enough to save nearly everybody as the Ice was painted pink in gore. Some people were decapitated, while others had necks and spines strong enough to bring their head along with their pulped - and immediately restored - bodies. 

Iona immediately descended on Leviathan, one of the only fighters still standing and capable. Her glaive carved deep into his flesh, and she effortlessly dodged his blows, standing on the choppy waves from the unrelenting tidal waves. 

Goddesses, she was beautiful to watch.

“Brrrpt!” Auri heralded her return, and the world began to burn. Water, Leviathan, rubble - all was kindling before the majestic phoenix.

Then a squad of Rangers hopped through the portal, and I briefly side-eyed them. They were in no way qualified to stand on this battlefield - at the same time, most of the defenders weren’t either. Well, I’d take what I could get, and eight professionals beat the heck out of a dozen unorganized civilians. They assumed a formation around the portal, and shot up darkness, cloth, and steel, making a tent around the otherworldly door. One of them went back into the portal.

Then Night stepped out of the portal, with his hands clasped behind his back. Arachne followed a moment later, her eyes promising murder as Clotho rapidly spun webs on her shoulder.

“Dawn.” Night said, surveying the city. “Report.”

“Different dimension. Similar to my old home. Kaiju battle, appears unkillable. System partly works. No notifications displayed. Native language English. Treaty with the locals. Power level tends to be mortal, with random Classers having impossibly powerful skills, like mass long-range teleportation. Full power, unable to leave more than a scratch.”

Night just hummed as Arachne filled the block, then the city, with great columns of thread, rapidly expanding her reach and presence.

“Vitality defense?” He asked.

“No vitality-extending skills, not present on weapons or armor.” I promptly reported.

“Clarification. Vitality defense on the natives.” He asked.

I froze.

“I’m a dumbass.” I cried out.

No vitality defense. No vitality defense! I had noted it when I first came, and I’d been teleporting the hell out of equipment. But Night was entirely right - there was no vitality defense on people either.

Arachne’s threads started to wrap around people, and I held out my left hand. She wrapped her threads around my hand like a glove, and I flexed it. We’d spent hours and hours training on this, but we’d never directly worked together in the field. I’d never been in a situation where I needed Arachne to guide me. The four of us were usually enough for any problem, and things that needed killing even more? Well, that was usually a different team. We were the medical team. 

“This is Arachne,” the woman said, vibrating the strings in a way to mimic speech. “Assuming direct control. Please state your Class, level, and abilities.”

Some people tore free of her threads, and only a few cooperated. But slowly, one at a time, over the course of thirty seconds or so, she got a read on people and what they could do. Like the world’s largest puppet show, she controlled the defenders, moving them in perfect harmony and coordination, making them greater than the sum of their parts.

Thread squeezed around my hand, telling me what she wanted me to do. Iona and Fenrir also got their own directions, with only Auri being exempted.

Fire and spider silk did not mix. 

I was still on the vitality defense thing. Forget tricking Crawler, I could’ve sliced him in half with my shields. The locals had a Manton Limit, which did something very similar with their own abilities, and I’d failed to challenge a fundamental assumption that had followed me since the day I’d been reborn. 

“Fear not.” Night said, languidly walking on the air towards Leviathan. “It is a mistake most make. I am confident that, with time, you would have sorted out the issue yourself and realized the potential. The next time this happens, I believe you will challenge your base assumptions sooner, and properly test. Observe.”

Night’s slow steps had somehow brought him close to Leviathan. He took one hand, clenched his fingers into claws, and swiped upwards.

“Die.” Night said.

Leviathan died.

He simply fell apart into tens of thousands of tiny chunks. The rain didn’t immediately stop, but there was a heartbeat of pure disbelief. 

I was familiar with it myself. In the throes of a life and death fight, and a third party just came in and instantly ended it? Yeah, I spent those moments blinking and not believing what had just happened either, trying to adjust my worldview to the new situation.

Then the cheering started. The same cathartic release of fear and terror, just a different setting. I’d make a joke about how there wasn’t something in the water this time, but no, there was everything in the water. The only question was what wasn’t in the water.

I didn’t have eyes for that. All I had eyes and attention for was my family. Iona, my wife. Auri and Fenrir. Even to Night and Susan.

They were here. I had a way back.

I was home. And soon, I’d be back on the proper planet as well.

I surveyed the city, just a little sad to see it go. But there would be more cities in the future. A fork in the river would become a village, then a town, then a great city, before it, too, would crumble away, leaving the cycle to start anew. Hundreds of towns, hundreds of cities, and I remembered them all, as I would remember Brockton Bay. Granted, my last sight of it was a little waterlogged, but that was fine.

“Iona!” I cried out, hugging my wife as tightly as I could when she flew back up.

“Elaine, love. You’re here. You’re safe.” She said, openly crying as she clutched me tight.

“As promising as this reunion is, I would suggest that we not tarry.” Night said. “We do not know if interference will cause the portal to destabilize before its predicted time. A tearful reunion amidst friends and family can wait until we are in a secure location, with excellent food. I further believe that Dawn will have quite the tale for us, one best told on Pallos.”

I nodded. Night made sense. As much as I wanted one last trip to the PRT to pick up more confoam, the locals probably needed it more.

Alexandria flew over, waving her hands desperately.

“Wait!” She said. “Please don’t go!”

Susan turned to her and lifted an eyebrow.

“Why not?” She said.

Alexandria started talking very fast.

“There’s a threat that’ll destroy not only our Earth, but every other Earth that’s ever existed. It’s threatening you as well. You can best help us prevent the end of trillions of lives by staying here, and prevent humanity from going extinct.”

Susan started to answer, but I held up my hand. Auri fluttered up and landed on my shoulder.

“I’ve got this.” I said, speaking just as quickly, looking up at the sky.

It would’ve worked better if it wasn’t for the heavy cloud cover. A golden man - Scion - was drifting by, looking at the devastation.

“I came from an Earth once, long, long ago, before arriving on Pallos.” I said. “My entire childhood, I was looking up at the sky. Hoping, wondering, searching. Trying to find a familiar constellation, or to see a familiar star. Eventually, I let it go. There were no familiar stars. There were no known constellations. Pallos is not a variant of Earth. Earth might fall. All earths might go extinct. But humanity? Humanity has already reached the stars. We’re already scattered across the vast cosmos. Rest in the knowledge that, if you fail, humans will not go extinct.”

“Are you sure you couldn’t do the same thing to that gentleman over there?” Alexandria asked Night, nodding to Scion.

Night sized Scion up.

“No.” He said. “I wish you the best of luck with your endeavors. Now, this has been lovely, but let us make haste.”

He stepped through the portal, with Susan and the Rangers following behind him a moment later.

I took one last look at Brockton Bay.

“Problem?” Iona asked.

“Well… it’s flooded, but at least it’s not on fire this time.” I said. Auri had burnt and dried out chunks of the city, but it was the entire ocean, and my little pyromaniac of a friend had some self control.

Then a gas station exploded. Flames roared up, and the oil floated on top of the water, resisting basic attempts at extinguishing them.

Iona laughed and clapped me on the back.

“Let’s get home before your peculiar brand of problem solving can ‘fix’ anything else.”

“Brrrpt.” Auri nodded sagely.

I sighed, and slipped my hand into hers.

“Let’s.” I agreed.

We flew through the portal, all together at last.

====

AN: And with that, we're done! Chapter dump of Aurora to get you all interested in it will start Monday, November 9th. I'm not sure if I'm going to drop all the chapters at the same time, space them out by a few minutes, a few hours, or more. Gotta think of what'll be the most interesting, but not confusing...

Maybe one mega post with a bunch of chapters together, next to all the chapters one by one?

Hmmm, I'll ponder it.