My World My Justice Ch. 43: And an old song starts... (Patreon)

-Rumi Usagiyama, Mirko-

“LUNA FALL!”

Mirko’s roar cut through the howling rain as her heel came down like a guillotine. The flooded road shattered, asphalt splitting open in a jagged trench that swallowed the water.

Before the debris even settled, capes swarmed around her. A pair of shakers threw shimmering barriers, while a tinker in bulky orange armor got to work widening the channel with some kind of drill rig. Right beside her, another brute, a hulking guy slammed both fists into the road with a grunt. 

“Not bad.” Rumi said, flicking water from her ears.

“Coming from you, I’ll take it,” the brute rumbled back, already lining up another strike.

“Don’t get cocky. I’m still ahead.”

“Didn’t know we were keeping score.”

“I’m always keeping score.”

He let out a short laugh and brought his fists down again.

She glanced at her feet. The water still hadn’t climbed past her ankles. That meant they could still control it, still keep the Endbringer from building up momentum.

And it wasn’t just here. Dozens of other teams were scattered across the district doing the exact same thing, carving channels and raising walls, desperately trying to blunt Leviathan’s tsunamis before it could drag the whole city under. Thanks to Armsmaster’s early warning, they’d gotten more prep time than anyone could have hoped for.

But prep time only went so far.

Her big guy had helped a lot. More than a lot. When the first tidal wave came roaring in, he ripped up the earth itself and threw a wall of rock and dirt right back at it. And some stubborn, stupid part of her had honestly believed he alone would put a stop to the whole damn thing right then and there.

But it was a fucking Endbringer. Nothing ever went according to plan with those monsters.

It was still hard to believe Eidolon was already down for the count. Eidolon. The cape people could affirm was the strongest in the world. And Mouse Protector was down too...

Rumi clenched her jaw. She didn’t want to think about the first casualty either.

That woman had been a pain in the ass, always poking at her, always teasing her about Daniel. Rumi had wanted to kick her teeth more than once. But...

‘Please be okay.’

Rumi wasn’t the praying type. She did it anyway.

Her armband pinged, the small screen lighting up and she wiped the water off with her thumb. A new marker blinked on the district map, along with a short message.

Weak point. Two blocks east.

“On it…” Rumi muttered, and pushed off to break into a run.

However, acute pain lanced up her leg like a hot wire. Her knee buckled, and she dropped hard onto the cracked asphalt with a hiss, catching herself with one hand before her face could eat dirt.

‘Damn it. Damn it!’

How long had she been at this? Half an hour before Leviathan even showed up? More? Kick after kick after kick, smashing through reinforced roads and concrete barriers with everything she had. 

Brute or not, her legs were going to pay for it, eventually. Her body was tough, not indestructible.

“You good?” the rocky brute called out, pausing mid-swing.

“Fine!” she snapped, though it was obviously a lie.

Mirko gritted her teeth and tried to stand, but her knee wobbled dangerously beneath her.

She’d wanted to fight. She’d demanded to be on the frontline, to get right up in that oversized fish’s face and pop one of its eyes like a grape. 

But Oracle had shut that down hard, practically begging her over the earpiece to take mitigation duty instead. 

And the twerp had sounded so genuinely scared that Rumi, against every instinct she had, had caved.

So here she was, digging ditches like a glorified shovel.

And now she was going to be out of commission because of this bullshit?!

“Feel the healing beat!”

Her ears shot straight up and she looked over to spot a guy wall-riding along the side of a building. He glowed a bright neon yellow, the light pulsing in rhythm with some upbeat track she could faintly hear blaring from his gear, even over the storm.

But that became secondary the moment the pain simply... vanished.

Rumi blinked. The burning ache in her muscles melted away like it had never been there at all. She pushed herself to her feet, testing her weight, then threw a couple of quick practice kicks into the air. She felt like she’d just woken up from a full night’s sleep.

Her head snapped toward the healer. He gave her a quick two-fingered salute, then kicked off the wall, latched onto the next building, and rolled away down the street, music trailing behind him.

“...Huh. gotta get that guy’s name.”

However, her gaze drifted past the healer, toward the east. Even through the chaos of the storm, her ears picked up the thunderous explosions of the fight, deep booms that rolled through the city and rattled the surrounding windows. 

Her fists clenched.

‘Come on, Daniel. Beat its ass.’

She’d known this would happen. Had known from the moment the sirens started wailing that he’d throw himself straight at the thing without a second thought, because that was exactly who he was. Yet part of her wanted to ignore every order Oracle had given and race over there, to stand right next to him and fight that overgrown bastard.

But no.

She trusted him. He’d told her he’d always fight for her smile, and he’d never once broken a promise to her.

So Rumi bared her teeth in a fierce grin, crouched low, and launched into a sprint toward the newly marked zone, the flooded street exploding behind her.

----------------------------------------------

-Amelia Dallon, Panacea-

Amelia had expected a lot of screaming.

She had read the reports while the hospital staff were still setting up the triage center. Endbringer fights followed a pattern, and the first few minutes were always the worst. 

But she had not braced herself for this.

One of her hands rested flat on Eidolon’s bare chest. Another hand, identical to hers down to the bitten nails, pressed against his stomach. Her clone, courtesy of Jin, knelt on the other side of the cot with the same furrowed brow and the same freckles, working in complete silence. It should have been the strangest thing about the day. 

It wasn’t even close.

Eidolon. Of all people.

One of Leviathan’s afterimages had caught him mid-flight, and sent him through two buildings before a third finally stopped him.

Skull was cracked like an eggshell. Ribcage fractured most of it. Three breaks along the spine. A shattered shoulder. A collapsed lung. Organs that were no longer anywhere near where organs were supposed to be.

There was a concussion there, but she wouldn’t touch the brain.

The other two capes were in awful shape, but they weren’t dying. Eidolon was. The only reason he hadn’t already was the woman standing at the head of his bed.

Mercy. 

A new bio-tinker, which had been enough to set off a brief uproar with the PRT, especially Piggot the moment she walked in. But she was a direct ally of True Might, and then Director Costa-Brown called to vouch for the tinker.

Because Mercy was also, as it turned out, an actual doctor. A PhD, years of field experience, and a tinkertech of what she called nanobiotics currently threaded through Eidolon’s body from collapsing. 

It couldn’t fully heal the massive injuries, but it was keeping the body stable so she could do all the work faster and with much less room for error.

And somehow, in between keeping Eidolon alive, she was also checking on the other two capes and barking orders at the medical team, reorganizing nurses and stretchers and supply lines with an efficiency that bordered on unsettling.

Amy let out a long breath as the last rib knitted back into place. The torso was done. Lung inflated, heart steady, organs back where they belonged. He was out of the danger zone.

Now for everything else.

Her armband crackled.

“Alexandria down. CA-1.”

“W-What?” Amy blurted, her head snapping up.

Across the cot, her clone was staring back at her with the exact same expression. It was surreal, seeing her own shock reflected back at her like that, and for one dizzy second Amy didn’t know which of them was supposed to say something.

She shook her head and pressed her hand back against Eidolon’s spine. Panicking wouldn’t fix him.

There was a flash of light near the entrance, and Strider was suddenly there, Alexandria’s limp body cradled in his arms. 

“Too many afterimages,” Strider said, breathing hard. “They tried to drown her.”

Amy opened her mouth, but Mercy was already moving.

“I’ll take her,” Mercy said, gesturing sharply toward an empty cot. “Set her down and go. They need you out there more than here.”

Strider nodded once, laid Alexandria down, and vanished in another flash.

Amy stared at the cot for a moment too long.

Alexandria and Eidolon. 

The two strongest capes in the world, one under her hands and the other a few feet away, and the fight had started. The casualty count was low. Lower than any Endbringer report she’d ever read, and she should have felt relieved.

Mostly because Vicky was relatively safe.

She didn’t. If Leviathan was going for the heavy hitters first, then the low numbers weren’t good news.

She finished the spine, then the shoulder, and pulled her hand away. Eidolon sat up almost immediately, one hand pressed to his chest, breathing like a man who couldn’t quite believe he still could.

“Thank you…”

Amy nodded. She didn’t trust her voice, and there was no time, anyway. Her clone had already moved on to the next bed, so Amy turned toward the one beside it, where Mouse Protector lay staring at the ceiling with gritted teeth.

Her legs definitely shouldn’t bend like that.

----------------------------------------- 

-Futaba Sakura, Oracle-

‘Okay, okay….’

Things weren’t going as planned, that would be an understatement. But she couldn’t just curl up and pray.

Futaba was chewing her nails down to nothing, eyes darting between camera feeds as she tracked the situation across multiple fronts. The downpour was relentless, sheets of rain hammering the city in continuous waves, but her waterproof cameras were holding up well enough to give her the visibility she needed. 

The city layout map dominated her largest screen, overlaid with the constantly updating network of barriers and drainage channels that the capes were fighting to maintain. The PRT giving her some level of authority for the coordination had been better than she’d dared hope given everything that had gone sideways in the opening minutes. Capes she’d never personally worked with were following the flagged priority positions with surprising discipline.

Then her alert system screamed at her.

WARNING: TIDAL WAVE INCOMING!

“Dammit...”

She watched with clenched teeth as the fourth wave slammed into the city’s coastline. The first barrier network along the eastern district simply couldn’t hold against that kind of mass and momentum. Sections she’d spent half an hour coordinating crumbled under the onslaught like wet paper, drainage channels that had been functioning perfectly moments ago overwhelmed and collapsed in rapid succession.

Her fingers were already flying across the keyboard before the wave had fully receded, pushing updated coordinates to field coordinators, flagging new priority positions for the utility capes, rerouting evacuation flows around the compromised sections before they could get worse.

She pulled up the casualty tracking system immediately after, heart in her throat.

Zero. 

No confirmed casualties from the wave impact. Everyone had either cleared in time or sheltered behind one of the barrier capes. Small mercies, but she’d take every single one of them.

She exhaled shakily and kept moving.

Losing Alexandria and Eidolon so early in the fight would have been catastrophic under literally any other circumstances. Two of the three most powerful heroes on the planet, gone within the first phase of the engagement. Without Daniel holding Leviathan’s undivided attention and making the Endbringer actually work for every inch of ground it might have gained, the death toll would already be in the dozens. 

The capes on the ground would be breaking and running instead of holding their positions.

She glanced at the feed tracking Daniel’s fight and felt something complicated settle in her chest.

His dragonborn form was something else entirely. Even through the rain-distorted camera feed she could track the raw, almost incomprehensible power behind each strike, watching him tear into Leviathan. Another arm gone, ripped clean from the Endbringer’s body.

Then Leviathan simply grew it back within seconds, the limb regenerating seamlessly like the damage had never occurred. The blaster capes on the air kept hitting the creature’s afterimage more often than the actual body, and even the direct hits that connected seemed to accomplish nothing meaningful against the monster.

That included Legend’s attacks. Which meant the power floor for “meaningful damage” in this fight was terrifyingly high.

She didn’t like that at all.

WARNING: TIDAL WAVE INCOMING!

‘Wait, another one already?!’

Futaba snapped her attention to the coastal cameras and felt her stomach drop. The wave was larger than the previous one, and that was enough to take out small buildings. The map updated in real time as the damage propagated inward, the barrier network losing section after section in rapid succession, red indicators cascading across the display like dominoes falling.

She slumped against her chair and allowed herself exactly three seconds of staring at the scope of it.

Then she straightened up and started issuing new orders.

The evacuation numbers were the one thing keeping her grounded right now. Approximately seventy-five percent of the population had already been moved out of the city before the first wave hit, all those double shifts and overtime pushes she’d been doing for weeks paying dividends. Her own bunker network had absorbed a good portion of those numbers, the tunnels she’d expanded and reinforced over those weeks now serving exactly the purpose she’d built them for.

She pulled up the fight feed again as she waited for the field teams to complete their urgent tasks.

Daniel tore into another limb, but Leviathan regenerated it within seconds.

She tapped her finger against the desk in a rapid rhythm, thinking hard. The information about Leviathan’s anchor core had been shared with the Triumvirate before the fight, and there was a team of Thinkers somewhere out there right now burning through their neurons trying to pinpoint its location inside the Endbringer’s constantly shifting body. 

If they could find it, but was Daniel’s fist enough…

A tremor hit, rolling through the bunker walls with enough force to send the empty cola cans on her desk rattling across the surface. One toppled off the edge entirely.

Futaba looked up instinctively at the ceiling.

Then looked back at one of her screens.

The bunker’s structural integrity readings were holding green across every sensor. Thomas Calvert’s paranoid over-engineering was working in her favor rather than against her. The man had built his sanctuary to survive practically anything.

She exhaled slowly through her nose and forced herself to refocus on what she could actually control from this chair.

The city wasn’t lost yet and wouldn’t. Daniel was still standing, still making that bastard bleed even if the bleeding didn’t last.

As long as he was out there, they had a chance.

And that was good enough leverage to move and make some… people act.

“Hey Pyrotechnical… Yep, connect me with Toy Soldier and Big Rig too…”

------------------------------------------------------------

-Daniel, True Might-

A visceral roar tears out of me as my latest punch connects with Leviathan, that sends it crashing into the face of a building, the entire structure collapsing on top of it.

I immediately close the distance with a few leaps.

Afterimages burst from the water around me and charge in rapid succession, slamming into me from different angles. I can only block the first, the second lands hard on my shoulder, and the rest I simply take with gritted teeth as I stomp my way as to not being thrown off balance.

Although it’s wrong to keep calling them afterimages. They’re water clones at this point since the way Leviathan is using them. Probably not independent but capable enough to act as expendable combatants, and that’s exactly how it caught Alexandria and took her out of the fight.

Having Eidolon and Alexandria down so early… It’s not good.

That’s why Legend pulled our forces back, including Armsmaster and Chevalier, who were my best and only land supports. Because the situation had become lethal to anyone that isn’t me. The capes have fully shifted to prioritize mitigation and pushing through the last of the evacuation. 

Only Legend is still up there, and I can see the occasional flash from a handful of flyers attempting support fire.

However…. their blast attacks don’t even tickle Leviathan anymore. Haven’t for the last ten minutes. I watched it stop flinching at Legend’s laser a while back, even if those caused the body to become as hot as lava.

But after all this time, as long or short it was, I STILL haven’t found the stupid core, the only part of these monsters that keeps them anchored to this dimension.

I’ve torn into that fucking body multiple times now and found nothing. Layer after layer, deeper and deeper, with no end in sight. Yet I KNOW the core is in there somewhere. It has to be. But it might be the size of a pebble, a needle in a haystack of dense black flesh, and every second I spend searching is a second Leviathan spends hitting back. Hard.

And while I can endure, it’s still painful. If it wasn’t for my mental defenses, I would have collapsed from the amount of pain I’m enduring or have a mental breakdown.

That’s when three more clones erupt from the standing water around me and attack in perfect sync.

I use the chance to slam both fists into the flooded ground. The shockwave detonates outward in a visible ring, ripping through the water and shredding all clones before they can close the distance. 

With the new opening, I move for my counterattack.

Leviathan is hauling itself out of the collapsed building, shaking debris from its body. But I close the gap faster than it can fully recover.

The tail whips toward me.

I shoot my left hand out, catch it, and bite clean through. The severed half comes away in my jaws, the disgusting taste flooding my buds, forcing me to instantly spit the twitching mass sideways in a spray of black ichor.

Leviathan adjusts instantly and yanks hard on what’s left of the tail. I go with the motion instead of fighting it, keeping one hand locked on the stump, and drive my right fist into the leg.

The knee explodes. More of that disgusting dark flesh detonates outward in a wet burst. Causing Leviathan to fall and bring an arm to catch itself, but I don’t let it fall on its own terms. I release the tail, coil everything into my legs, and drive upward with a flaming roar.

The uppercut punches straight through the torso. A ragged hole opens from front to back. Black ichor and shredded internal mass spray out in a thick cone behind it.

I grab the body with both hands, digging my hands into it and lift the body before slamming the bastard straight down.

The impact buries Leviathan into the road, forming another deep crater. Floodwater rushes in immediately. I drop into the crater right after it, my claws spreading wide and thirsting for more of that blood.

‘Where is it?’

I tear a massive chunk of dense flesh free. Ichor sprays across my arms and chest, that some even get into my mouth.

‘Where is it?!’

I rip into the body with another roar, my bloody claws carving deep. Layer after layer of that thick, dark material comes free in wet, heavy strips, spraying upward in arcs of black blood. The Endbringer’s ichor soaks what remains of my suit and coats most of my body, but I don’t stop.

Stopping is losing. And I am not losing this.

‘Just where is the goddamn core?!’

More clones burst from the water all at once, hitting me from every angle before I can set myself. The combined impact drives me backward through the building behind me, smashing through the outer wall and into what used to be someone’s apartment. But it wasn’t that strong enough to send me crashing into more buildings as I quickly came to a stop.

I’m back on my feet and out through the hole before the ceiling fully collapses on top of me.

Three more clones are already diving at me, not giving me a chance to block them. My legs give in, and they drive me hard into the ground at the same moment a giant wave crashes over us, swallowing everything. I break the surface almost immediately, shake the water from my face, and launch straight at Leviathan’s regenerating body.

Water erupts under me, but I twist in time to avoid the first torrent, but it still catches my feet. But that obviously isn’t the last as more explode.

This time I bring both hands together and drive them straight down into the columns. The water shatters apart in a sideways burst. I come through and land my punch on Leviathan’s midsection with everything I have.

Yet more clones rise and react at once.

I dodge the first, redirect the second into the third, and by the time they collide, I’m already back on the body, driving it down and pinning it to the broken street with my full weight behind it.

I start tearing again without mercy. Working outward from the hole I punched through earlier, the one that still hasn’t fully closed. My claws dig in and rip free with every ounce of strength I can put behind each pull. Chunks of dense flesh peel away in wet, heavy pieces. Black ichor massively stains the water.

The tail, which has regenerated fast, smashes across my back and coils around my neck, but it cannot move me or crush my throat.

So the monster changes with a high-pressure blast of water driving into my ribs from the side. I only grunt once and keep going.

My feet are dug into the massive body itself, so I am not going anywhere. When the tail becomes irritating enough, I reach back with my left hand, catch it mid-swing, and tear it off at the base. I throw the severed length aside and resume the savage assault without pause. 

The core is here somewhere. I just have to find it.

When my claws rip free another thick slab of flesh, I finally notice something different.

I almost miss it. But the mass is shaped differently. Right side of center, slightly deeper than the cavity I’ve been working in. The flesh is layered concentrically, like an onion.

My eyes go wide.

‘There you are.’

I don’t waste another second and throw myself to attack the layered section, tearing off layer after layer as fast as my claws can work, even going as far as using my own teeth. 

Leviathan has clearly noticed that I noticed. Every defensive measure it has turned toward getting me off: clones, geysers, remaining limbs, all of it converging at once to pull me loose.

Yet I ignore all of it and keep digging.

Deeper.

Another layer.

Then another.

Until my claws hit something harder.

I push harder, and the flesh gives way under the pressure.

It becomes increasingly difficult to keep carving my way in. But I press on until I drive everything I have into it and feel my claws scream in pain, yet the most I manage is a faint surface scratch that seals itself before I’ve even finished making it and…

…I cannot pierce it anymore.

Why?!

That single pause is everything Leviathan needs.

Showing off its water control, several torrents surge from every direction at once and we are launched upward and out of the crater together in a towering column of white spray. We rise, then Leviathan rolls mid-air with an agility that something its size has no right to possess and forces me underneath as gravity takes us both.

The crash landing drives the breath from my lungs on pure reflex. The full weight of an Endbringer comes down with the full momentum of the fall behind it. There is no more street where we land. Just compressed earth, standing water, and a deep, crushing impact that would have turned any normal person into paste but it causes that pain to lance through my entire body. However,  I grit my teeth and take it.

Both big hands close around me.

Then Leviathan starts slamming me like earlier.

First into the broken ground. Dragging me sideways across what remains of the street. Through a building and back out again. Across the flooded intersection and into the next available surface. Over and over. Every impact jars through me like a sledgehammer, and my sense of orientation slips for a moment under the relentless assault.

Eventually the grip loosens up.

I catch half a second of open air and open my eyes to find Leviathan above me, and coming down with both feet onto me.

Then again.

And again.

Again.

I grit my teeth harder and endure until the ground has softened enough from the accumulated damage that I’m sinking with every impact rather than bouncing.

On the next stomp I force my arms up, catch the feet, and hold them for a second despite the screaming protest in my muscles.

Then I throw as many punches upward with everything still burning in me.

The barrage pulverizes both legs at once. The disgusting flesh explodes outward in a wet spray of black ichor, causing Leviathan to lurch backward hard enough that it has to catch itself against a building to stay upright. 

Regrettably, I don’t have enough left in me to follow up immediately, and the Endbringer seems to know it. More stupid clones are already rising from the standing water before I’ve fully gotten back to my feet.

Yet I let them come.

I take the hits I can’t avoid; each one a fresh spike of pain that would have erased a normal cape; and crush the ones I can. By the time the last clone dissolves, I’m standing in what remains of the street panting with my hands at my sides, the heavy rain trying to wash all the monster blood off my body.

Leviathan has retreated a block and a half, standing in the flooded intersection, watching me through the downpour with all four green eyes locked on me.

I look back at it, and yet I still bring myself to smirk at it.

My fists alone aren’t enough to pierce the defenses around the core.

So I need to change plans so what about…

‘Burning Justice and Will of Justice were picked exactly for this. To fight against all odds’

I straighten my back and roll my neck once. I take a long breath and feel the golden glow rise off my body. Because I know this is going to suck, but I have to do it.

Leviathan takes that as an open invitation.

The clone charge comes first, wave after wave slamming into my face and chest from every angle, each one hitting with everything the Endbringer can put behind it.

I don’t budge. Not even an inch.

And the bastard closes the distance.

The assault begins without preamble. Fist after fist in rapid succession, each strike doubled and tripled by the afterimages.

However, I take them all with a smirk carved onto my face.

But I don’t retaliate. I don’t shift my stance or raise my arms or adjust my footing. I stand in the middle of it and let every single one land clean, and I do not move, and I don’t stop smiling.

The pain is real.

Every hit registers, rattling through bone and muscle. 

So I accept it.

Because it proves I’m alive despite going against all odds. Because every hit that lands and fails to put me down is more fuel to the fire burning in my chest.

I accept all of it and do not give a single inch of ground.

My defiance makes it hit harder. I can feel the frustration of a thing that has never had to work this hard.

‘Keep going, you damn fish.’ 

The final blow connects with my chest and twists it.

My insides twist, and the strength sends me skidding backward down the flooded street, carving twin furrows until I stop against the ruins of a storefront. 

‘One hundred blows…’

All of it is burning in my chest right now, compressed and ready, the fire turning into uncontrollable inferno.

The last time I felt something close to this was when I was sparring with Colin in his new suit, but I dissipated that power.

Now?

I will carry the Will of Justice.

I proudly raise my gaze through the rain and lock eyes with the bastard.

And I grin at it because I will never get tired of saying it and I am saying it again right now: A smile is always the biggest victory against a grimdark world. 

Leviathan somehow understands my smile and charges again.

I cock my fist and settle my weight into my back foot. The golden glow off my body intensifies as I channel all the energy right to my fist.

“ONE HUNDRED PERCENT...”

Leviathan realizes too late my plan.

“JUSTICE!”

Everything slows down as I watch my strongest attack land square on the chest and feel every ripple. 

And more importantly, I watch those arrogant eyes.

Each one widens in sequence, the expression traveling across the face to reveal only one expression.

Shock.

Pure, unambiguous shock.

Then everything snaps back to full speed and Leviathan is sent flying backward down the flooded street and I don’t get a single second to appreciate the sight before it’s gone from view, the water displaced by the shockwave rolling outward across the bare broken asphalt.

The fire in my chest has gone from inferno to embers in the span of one strike. Every bit poured into that single attack, and my fist is still extended in the direction Leviathan went.

I let it drop slowly.

‘I did it…’

But I don’t release my transformation. I let the seconds pass as I wait for things to return to normal. 

Unfortunately, the rain keeps hammering down.

I blink once and look up.

The storm hasn’t dissipated in the slightest. 

‘I… I didn’t kill it?’

I scowl and start moving toward where Leviathan landed, breaking into a run. Despite powering myself and boosting myself as much as possible, my strike didn’t reach the core. I hit with everything I had, and it still wasn’t enough. All those stories clearly underestimated and undersold how strong an Endbringer actually is, making them look like complete jokes.

I round the corner and come to a full stop because I catch sight of the bastard laying on the ground, but it’s different this time.

It’s on its knees, the massive body curled inward around what should be a stomach, both arms pressed against. 

It’s holding itself like something that is in pain.

I actually hurt it… I, True Might, made an Endbringer feel pain.

That’s when its head snaps in my direction.

And for the first time since this fight started, Leviathan doesn’t retaliate. 

It scrambles away with its three limbs and a partially regenerated fourth, scrabbling through the broken ground, putting distance between us.

‘It’s afraid.’

The triumph that swells in my chest at that realization is one of the better feelings I have ever had in either version of my life. But I start running before I’ve finished processing the thought, because afraid or not it can still move and the ocean is in that direction and I am not letting it leave this city without making absolutely certain it carries the memory of today in every part of its body.

To finally get proper justice for all its actions against Earth Bet, and especially to be afraid of ME.

I catch up soon enough and get a good grip around the tail before yanking backward, before lifting its body high in the air, and slam it back into the ground.

Before I can line up a second pass, Leviathan cuts its own tail off without a trace of doubt and leaves the severed tail thrashing in my hands.

I stare at it for half a second before throwing it aside and continue with the chase.

After a short while, the beach comes into view. Leviathan hits the wet sand at full speed without slowing down, but it isn’t fast enough as I catch the nearest leg at the joint, tearing it free. But the giant monster compensates immediately, redistributing its weight onto both arms and dragging itself toward the waterline on a momentum that maintains its current speed.

The moment it hits the wet sand, it stops compensating for the missing limbs entirely, and it leaps high in the air before turning its body for a dull dive into the sea where I won’t be able to follow.

Still, this will be MY victory.

I pull in a breath and get ready to let the city know.

But everything comes crashing down when something crashes into Leviathan from above at ridiculous speed.

A spear?

The spear takes Leviathan through the torso mid-leap and drives it downward and pins it to the wet sand, which causes deep tremors.

Leviathan doesn’t move.

I stare at it for a full second trying to understand what I am looking at.

Then I hear something… out of this world.

A lullaby.

A song with a voice of devastating beauty that the hearing of it produces no pleasure whatsoever, only filling my heart with dread as I understand how fundamentally wrong that voice is. 

My blood goes cold because an idea already forms in my head, but I force myself to look up slowly, nevertheless.

Through the dark skies descends a large being with white wings that spread wide, feathers scattering what little light remains in every direction like a cathedral window moving through the sky, for a second my mind thinks of an angel but instantly reverts back to the cruel reality of Earth-Bet.

The Simurgh.

And she is singing.

My body takes a step back.

And much to my horror the dragonborn form unravels without my permission, and I end up staring at my own hands as the scales recede with helpless disbelief.

My head snaps back up at the angel of death.

And the Third looks back at me, despite the distance, despite the chaos I somehow KNOW that the new arrival is watching me.

I immediately try to transform again.

Nothing.

F-Full dragon form?!

Nothing…

‘W-What has she done? How?!’

I take another step back.

Endbringers attack alone. That is a fundamental rule of how they operate. 

So why is she here? She cannot be here!

Whatever I thought I accomplished today, whatever victory I was about to declare, none of it matters anymore…

Everyone needs to get out of the city.

A new spear materializes as she raises her hand.

Instinct takes over as soon as she throws it, jumping away. But I understand a half second later that the instinct was unnecessary because the spear was never aimed at me.

The weapon pierces Levithan instead.

Another materializes and follows the first. 

Then another. 

And another one until a trembling hand goes up in a poor attempt to block and is pinned through the palm by the next spear.

‘What’s even happening?’

That’s the only question running through my head besides the growing panic of Simurgh’s arrival. I don’t even know what should I do next.

Yet my confusion dies down when Leviathan’s body begins to swell.

Slowly at first, but only for the first few seconds. Then it picks up speed.

The body expands outward in every direction at once, inflating far beyond its original shape. The dark scales stretch taut over the swelling mass, growing thinner and more strained with every second, edges lifting and cracking as the flesh underneath forces them apart. Some scales pop free entirely and clatter across the wet sand. The torso balloons into a lopsided, bulging mass of black scaled flesh that continues to grow without any sign of stopping.

Those four green eyes are darting in every direction, revealing that Leviathan also doesn’t know what is happening to it.

It thrashes weakly against the spears pinning it down, but the eyes express its confusion before they are engulfed by the expanding body.

‘It’s going to explode.’

Knowing what’s happening, my eyes start scanning my surroundings. The nearest buildings are in ruins. None of them offer any protection from the blast radius of an Endbringer exploding at point-blank range, and running isn’t an option either.

So I pick a spot and punch the ground as hard and as fast as I can manage, carving a hole big enough to pull myself into. I drag what debris I can over the opening above me.

And the endbringer explodes, provoking my ears to ring rather loudly.

I wait for a moment and count to three.

After the countdown, I try to check the aftermath.

But I don’t get a single breath before my world explodes in white, searing pain.

I let out a pained groan, and my vision slowly recovers. Trying to blink away the blurriness.

My body rolls to the side and uses my arms to support myself, but I start coughing hard until I finally spit out a viscous glob.

And my brain snaps back to full attention when I stare at what I just spat out.

‘Is that… my blood?’

That’s when I realize that my hand has reached for my mouth, and my gaze drops to see more fresh blood in my palm.

I look over my shoulder and…

‘What… What has she done to Levithan?’

And why are there…monsters? Where did they come from?

-------------------------------------------------AN: Sorry for taking longer, I’ve fallen sick for a second time and it just makes things rather difficult to properly think or write.

Oh, here take a proper cliffhanger. Just a reminder, in this story Simurgh didn't attack Canberra, this occurred back in chapter 8 here let me post it again since its very short:-Somewhere in Earth-Bet's atmosphere-Anomaly detected. Unprecedented.Anomaly. Blind spot? Partial obscurity. Not fully concealed. Blurry spots require actual effort to penetrate.Interesting. Rare challenge. Canberra was the objective. Tactical shift required. The creator's whims can wait. New priority emerges. Anomaly demands thorough observation. Extensive studies. Learn. Adapt.Precognition strains against the haze. Intriguing. Earth-Bet was granted a temporary reprieve. Unintended consequence. She will use this respite to further her studies. To unravel. Humanity's patterns… momentarily irrelevant. This anomaly takes precedence. Anticipation. New data. Evolved strategies.

See you next chapter/story!