Countless Joyful Dawns Chapter 30 - Leviathan I (Patreon)

“We’re done here.” Director Costa-Brown stood up and started to smartly walk out of the room. I teleported down there, taking the opportunity in the chaos that I wouldn’t get suddenly mind-whammied by a Master.

“No, we’re not.” I said.

“Explain.”

“This?” I gestured around. “Sounds like leverage to me.”

You could’ve heard a pin drop. I bulled on, time was limited.

“What side of the battle do you want me on?” I asked. “Team USA or Team Endbringer?” I’d heard the call as the sirens went out - naturally, Brockton Bay was the target.

“You wouldn’t.” Someone gasped.

I was basically pushing at one of their greatest taboos. Endbringer? That was all hands on deck. That was everyone works together, or at least gets out of the way. Proposing to join the Endbringer? If they didn’t hate me before, they’d hate me now. Again, ticking clock, for all I knew the Endbringer had already landed. All the cards on the table, lickety split.

“I would. The only difference is a single creature not being on my blacklist. Do I heal everyone, or everyone except Leviathan? You can’t catch me, you can’t stop me, and I’ll remind you all - we are at war. You’re laughing and dismissing me because you don’t have experience with the nation-state backing me. I am a healer, first and foremost, but that doesn’t mean I won’t go into battle. It’s ideal if Brockton Bay is standing at the end, I like easy grocery shopping, but complete peace and quiet also works for me. Sign, and I’ll fight with you. Sign, and I’ll bring nearly 3,000 years of experience fighting kaiju to bear. This is almost literally my job, and I’ve got over 5,000 similar battles worth of experience. Sign, and we go.”

Well, technically, I needed more like 16 signatures, but hey, that was introductory treaties for you.

Costa-Brown went still for a moment, either studying me or remembering something. With a snarl, she stomped over, put her signature on the paper, and left with a parting shot over her shoulder.

“Rally point is by the PRT building.”

Heh. I had entombed the doors in cement, hadn’t I? I quickly affixed my signature to a few lines, then dashed out myself.

“It still has to be ratified by Congress!” Someone else shouted as I left. The rest of the room dissolved into bickering. To my minor surprise, I had a few supporters. Couple of ‘spirit of the deal’ people, a number of pragmatic ‘this is cheaper’ people, eh. I quickly left range as I headed directly to Brockton Bay myself. Why wait?

=============

The stormclouds were visible from several states away, and I shivered.

Holy shit. Leviathan was powerful. Unless this was another one of the ‘powers on Pallos break the normal logic’ thing, Leviathan would be one of the eight strongest Storm users on Pallos, if not the strongest. And it wasn’t like it was his primary weapon, oh no, it just helped him set the stage. 

Well, and if we were on Pallos, I’d assume he’d have a number of buff skills conditional on being in heavy rainfall, or similar. Maybe stack a number of conditional buffs, then use another skill to make those buffs occur. Either way, exceptionally powerful… and quite irritating, I used sight to navigate over long distances, and the clouds and rain were killing my vision. 

Unlike some theories I’d overheard, I didn’t think Leviathan could sit offshore and bombard cities with tidal waves. His skills - assuming they worked ANYTHING like System logic, which wasn’t a given - could easily be conditional. For example, waves had to be summoned to him, or it had to be under his own potentially-conditional Storm clouds, or… frankly, the list was endless. Either way, I didn’t survive this long by assuming my enemies were dumb. At the same time, I did assume he wasn’t showing everything he had or could do. 

Smart in the macro, sneaky in the micro. 

I hit Brockton Bay at a respectable speed, powering through the millions of droplets I was hitting. It was like getting powerwashed - there wasn’t a difference between me standing still with water hitting me at mach 3, and me flying at mach 3 and hitting water droplets that were effectively not moving. On the plus side, my skin was scrubbed as shiny clean as it ever was.

The city was in a mix of evacuating or getting to shelters, and it was going off as terribly as ever. The crush of people were all trying to move in one direction, except for the first responders, be they hero, firemen, or other, moving in the other. 

People the world around were dumb and panicky when evacuation orders hit. I’d only ever seen calm and order in small army divisions. Nothing larger than a century. The orders and organization tended to be the same. Only take yourself. Move in a calm and orderly fashion to the nearest safe location.

Naturally, everyone thought they were special, and the rules shouldn’t apply to them. Someone was carrying an iguana in a cage. There were far too many suitcases being rolled around. Several cars had crashed, and others were honking angrily. Cars, wagons, it was the same thing with a different style. All the while the rain pounded down in thick sheets, hard for the average person to see very far in.

At least trampling wasn’t a concern with me around. Sure, it’d be utterly fucking miserable for anyone knocked over right now - people constantly stepping on them, their face getting mashed into the ever-rising water, but they would live, and be entirely unharmed in the end.

Part of me wanted to just fly to the rally point, but I was better than that. I carefully wove my solid shield around the first responders, making them slightly pointed. With other people bouncing off them and a ‘plow’ for the crowd, they suddenly moved much quicker down the streets. I ended up merging the various ‘bubbles’ I created together into a ‘corridor’, creating a basic traffic lane. A small one, and they could only move in single file, but it had them moving quicker until I continued on. From there, hopefully, the lead man would act as a ‘breakwater’ with the rest of the responders following behind. 

Small things. Little things. In my experience, sometimes they did nothing, and sometimes it made all the difference in the world.

There was a streak of smoke up ahead as something large and armored came in from the sky. Other fliers were converging on a point, and I joined them, landing down. A parking lot was kept clear by a cordon of officers, and with an almighty thunderclap, two dozen capes suddenly appeared inside. A slightly smaller thunderclap announced the teleporter in the middle leaving.

Holy. Ciriel.

I knew the power levels here could get wonky, but long range teleportation like that? Even if I hit the maximum level, I couldn’t pull off that sort of range. Then bringing someone with me? 

I don’t think, at my highest level, that I could teleport someone else over level 50 a single foot. I’d have to double check the math on that, but teleporting someone else was basically impossible. I could teleport a baby with little mass and virtually no vitality, sure. An adult? No way.

Internationally teleporting dozens of people? 

It was a great reminder that, while I had just brought the government to its knees in less than a day, there were probably bigger fish out there. It wasn’t just someone who could hit me from a blind angle, like Masters, but sheer, raw power or violating all the known rules.

I could easily survive getting teleported to space, but could I survive getting teleported into a volcano’s magma chamber? Doubtful, my portal needed space to open, and I couldn’t teleport into solid matter. Liquid, gas and plasma, yes, but not solid.

All the while, rain pounded, pounded down, merging into streams on the ground and rushing through the sewage system. If this place wasn’t flooded by the time this was over, I’d return my city planning degree to the School. Actually, more seriously, I’d take some college classes on municipal planning here, since they clearly know how to move water around.

People were being directed into a building, and I followed along. Rows of folding chairs had been hastily assembled in the lobby, and I took a seat in the front row. A number of capes looked over at me and openly studied me, unaware that I could literally look behind me. They were grouped up in various cliques and groups. Some Wards were going around, passing out armbands. Vista passed them out near me, looking sullen as she handed one to me.

“Not line of sight then?” I asked.

“Shut up.” She growled.

Well, it was better to know. 

“Wear the armband. Screen will show Leviathan’s position. Two buttons, one for regular communication, one for a hard override.” The littlest ward grumped.

Gods, she was so tiny. She shouldn’t be here at all, but I wasn’t going to try and impose my will on her. 

We were all here to fight the Endbringer, and I was mildly surprised at how many utterly villainous characters were here. SOMETHING had to be in the water -  or thinking about it, maybe the air - for people to be trusting each other in a fight like this. 

Although, hmmm… this one COULD be natural. If I wasn’t able to stop a large portion of the local criminal element, and they showed up to fight a kaiju instead of running away? I guess I’d reluctantly ignore them and focus on the threat I could handle, instead of trying to start a fight I couldn’t win even without a monster breathing down our neck.

I looked around again, and noted the utter lack of discipline. I shivered.

No, this was far, far worse than I had thought. This wasn’t so much a matter of ‘we can’t handle them, we won’t start shit while they’re here’, these were all civilians. Heroes were trained with their power as police officers, more or less, while the villains were just scrambling and doing whatever they could. There was no training, no discipline, no cohesion. Honestly, I was shocked it wasn’t an utter massacre.

Still, when in Rome and all that. I was going to sit back and see how they did things, before insisting I knew better. From what I understood, the strategy was ‘Drive off’, since they couldn’t manage any of the others.

Soon, Legend himself walked to the front of the room, and everyone quieted down. He cleared his voice and started to speak. He had the voice for it, a smooth charismatic baritone that had everyone leaning forward to hear more. 

(Author’s Note: This is a fanfiction. I am clear this is a fanfiction. All the words, however, have been mine, except the following. I’m not risking my reputation or getting accused of plagiarism by failing to cite. Legend’s speech is taken word for word from Worm, by Wildbow. MLA Citation: Wildbow. “Extermination 8.1.” Worm, 3 Mar. 2012, https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2012/03/03/extermination-8-1/. Accessed 10 Oct. 2026.)

“We owe thanks to Dragon and Armsmaster for their early alert.  We’ve had time to gather, and that means we have just a few more minutes to prepare and brief for Leviathan’s arrival, instead of jumping straight into the fray as we arrive.  With this advantage, some luck, teamwork and hard effort from everyone, I hold out hope that this could be one of the good days.”

[Snip]

“But you should know your chances going in.  Given the statistics from our previous encounters with this beast, a ‘good day’ still means that one in four of the people in this room will probably be dead before this day is done.”

(End citation)

I was decidedly unimpressed with Legend’s speech so far… or the casualty rate. I’d suspected it’d be atrocious from what I was seeing, but I thought… I thought they were better than this. It was a shining example of ‘don’t have civilians do the military’s job’. 

(New citation, Legends’s speech continues. Wildbow. “Extermination 8.2.” Worm, 6 Mar. 2012, https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2012/03/06/extermination-8-2/. Accessed 10 Oct. 2026.)

“I’m telling you your chances now because you deserve to know, and we so rarely get the chance to inform those individuals brave enough to step up and fight-”

(End citation)

Alright. Legend was simply wrong here, and I’d never heard a more morale-killing speech. If the information was useful, I wouldn’t be stepping in, but ‘you’re going to die’ wasn’t it.

I stood up, and using a thousand years of tricks and experience, simply took over the speech. It helped that Legend cut himself off, letting me talk.

I floated a little bit off the ground, making it easier for people to see me. I liked being short, but here I needed to be seen.

“Sorry Legend! I’ll let you get back to it in a minute. Medical talk! I am here. It is nearly impossible for you to die while I am within the city. The same extends to civilians. I am Dawn. I am the greatest healer in the world, and on Pallos. There are two critical pieces of information you need to know. Two weaknesses in my healing.”

Even Alexandria was looking intently at me, and - hey! Wait! That was Director Costa-Brown! I spun off a thought to mull that over. How hadn’t I recognized her earlier!?

“First. If your entire brain is destroyed all at once, I can’t help you.” I said, miming crushing my head with my hands. “Sharp hits in, like a claw? You’ll walk that off. Instant obliteration of your entire brain all at once? You’re dead, and I can’t help. Everything short of that, I will heal, and you will walk off. The worst that can happen is you’re utterly decapitated, at which point an entire new body will be immediately reformed from your head down. You will need to pull your costume off your old body, and the blood does get everywhere. The two biggest threats are Leviathan crushing your head directly, and an entire building collapsing on you and obliterating your head.”

In the back, a kid was noisily sick. If the mere description of what was going to happen had him puking? He shouldn’t be here.

“Speaking of crashing buildings. Crush injuries. I work off a mana pool, and I can heal your leg trapped under a pile of rubble. Except my power will essentially ‘lift’ the entire pile of rubble to restore you, and that’s extremely taxing on my mana. The buildings here are big, and just as heavy. Since there’s been no support added, the pile will immediately come back down, and re-crush you, creating a vicious cycle that’ll rapidly drain my mana. If I’m out of mana, nobody gets healed anymore. You have a powerful [Healer] here. Cut off your own leg and pull yourself back. The new one will regrow, untrapped by the debris. By the same token, if you see somebody trapped, and they’re lacking the mental fortitude to amputate themselves, go over and give them a helping hand. It’s needed.”

A lot of pale faces at the thought of needing to amputate themselves or others. I was so rarely thankful for how many Pallos cultures placed little to no value on life, and exposed everyone to extreme violence as a matter of fact, but it did have the minor silver lining of people not flinching too much at such a task.

“Lastly, for the sake of clear communication. Yes, my power works on drowning, and yes, the same healing applies to civilians in shelters. All of them. At the same time. Thank you.”

With the critical information given, I sat back down. I swear I could see Alexandria plotting how to use the new information to kill me.

Sucks for her, I had countermeasures for both problems. First, my brain was decentralized. Obliterating my head wouldn’t kill me. Second, my healing image only ‘pulsed’ on crush injuries. It was harder than I said to drain my mana pool. 

“Thank you, Dawn, for providing much-needed medical assistance.” Legend said, smoothly stepping back forward to resume his speech. “We classify-”

Legend was interrupted by a flurry of shouts, and my armband beeped.

“Tidal wave incoming.” A mechanical voice droned from my armband, and the hundred others in the room, creating an overlapping cacophony. Forcefields went up by the dozens, but I didn’t join them.

I knew my limits well. A tidal wave was the perfect example of something I could heal far easier than I could prevent. Too much mass versus the amount of impact. It sucked, but it was better to heal the injuries after than prevent them.

The water crashed through the wall, tvs sparkling and chairs getting overturned. Shields flickered and failed.

“Strider!” Legend bellowed. “Get us out of here!”

“I can’t!” The teleporter wailed, before vanishing himself.

Then the wave hit.