Amelia, Ch 272
The Endbringer froze in place. And then fell over on its side.
"Fuck yes!" a man's voice shouted over the armbands. "We took it alive! We captured a fucking Endbringer!"
ShockConfusionAwe.
"Umm," a woman's voice cut in. "This is Rosary, from Haven. What Shaman meant to say is that we've managed to paralyze the Endbringer. For the time being, at least. It's still alive, but unable to actually move. Requesting immediate aid, because this is stressing our powers to the limit."
"They... how?" I muttered.
HorrorGuiltFailure. Oh god, we destroyed Brockton Bay. For fucking nothing.
"Understood," Taylor replied. I felt the offload of her emotions, as well as the regret for doing so. It's okay, I'll be strong, I can handle it for the time being. "Shunting over our Tinkers and Thinkers. We'll try to find a way to help."
I closed my eyes and cried, clinging to Taylor. A lot of it was my own guilt as well, of course, but the stress of holding both of us together was agony. It was such a relief when she took up her side of the slack that I almost fell over from the lack of emotion.
"Thank you for that," she whispered. "They're going to need your power a lot more than me right now."
"You mean?" I asked.
ConfirmationCertaintyFear. Thank you so much. I pushed my emotions down into the bond, forced myself to pretend I didn't feel them. Taylor clung tighter against me. I tried not to think about what I was now putting Taylor through, knowing that thinking about it would only make things worse for her.
I need someone to help her while I'm in Brockton Bay. Away from her. I couldn't ask Lisa to do it, we might need her. Taylor wasn't really close to anyone other than the pair of us. "Crystal?" I spoke over our system.
"I'm here," she replied. "What do you need?"
"Look after Taylor for a bit," I asked her. "I'll explain later."
"Okay," she sounded concerned, but she didn't hesitate. I looked at my partner.
Sorry, I'll try not to take any longer than I have to. I shunted over.
Brockton Bay was... there was no Brockton Bay. Miles around was smooth as glass, from the Endbringer's power. Water was already pouring in from the bay, but this far inland it was reduced to little more than a fast moving stream. Nothing Dryad's extra bulk couldn't manage easily. I activated the hover setting and moved toward the epicenter.
"To the right," Riley informed me. I had to use the telescopic zoom to find two people sitting on a demolished building, just outside the Endbringer's effect.
We did that. Not the Endbringer. Us. That building, the others behind it, those would have survived if not for us. I tried not to think about it, the more I did, the worse things would be for Taylor.
She's being strong for me, I'll be strong for her.
I reached the pair. The woman, Rosary, stood to greet me. I didn't give her a chance for pleasantries.
The sooner this is done, the sooner I can get back to Taylor. "I'm a healer," I told them, immediately feeling stupid because of course they knew that.
"I'll be fine for a while," Rosary responded. "He's going to need your help right away."
I put my hand on his shoulder, letting my armor partially meld with is. I recognized the design, it was full of organels producing inorganic spores.
Right, that suit. I remembered because this was the guy who could counter Lily's power.
He was in bad shape. Exhaustion equivalent to three days without sleep, a rapidly worsening migraine, and minor brain swelling around the Pollentia. "I'll do what I can," I told them. I started mending his body first, and hesitated for only a moment before reaching into his brain. I reduced the swelling and did my best for the headache. Eventually choosing to give up and turn off his ability to sense pain entirely.
That's something I can fix later.
"Fifteen minutes," Riley spoke up. I could tell she was talking over the coms. Probably to Lisa. "Twenty if we're lucky. Then his power collapses. Honestly I'm not sure how he held on long enough to be healed."
Fuck. "We don't have a lot of time," I told the pair.
"Get us closer," Rosary instructed. "This is harder at range."
I nodded, and touched her armor, allowing mine to meld with it as well. Activating all our antigrav fields at once, I used mine to pull us toward the paralyzed Endbringer. By the time I'd gotten there, everyone else was already talking. The Triumvirate, Dragon, Defiant, Narwhal, Lisa, most of our thinkers.
Vicky's not here, I realized.
No, worry about her later. Taylor's under enough pressure.
There was a layer of forcefields blocking Wendigo, and the nanothorn mist that it was generating. If they hadn't completely encased it, the Endbringer would have sank god only knows how far into the earth by now.
"Moving it will be impossible," Lisa replied. "Shaman's power is absolute, and pretty much evenly dispersed throughout the Endbringer. And don't bother suggesting shunting it somewhere, that won't work. The best we could hope to achieve is stripping off a few layers to expose the core. And even if we could, we would need a world we thought for a second it couldn't escape from. Spoiler alert: we don't have one of those. Endmakers are clearly capable of dimensional travel, it would return."
"I suppose the same immovability also makes it indestructible," Defiant asked.
"Pretty much," Lisa shrugged. "This bought us time, sure, but only time."
"Same strategy as before?" I asked. "Another fifteen minutes to evac the region outside of the city could save tens of thousands of lives."
"Already on it," Alexandria replied.
"Eidolon, any ideas?" I asked. "A power that can kill it while it's paralyzed like this?"
"I can't do anything to it while it's still being locked down by this power," he admitted. "I can damage parts of it, and that's all."
"And if we damage it without destroying it, then it'll just activate its final stage, and everything will be annihilated anyway. Letting it go would without taking advantage of its current state would be less destructive in the long run."
"Forcefields and containment foam," Lily replied. "I can control what my power hurts, ignores, or is effected by. Give me a few containers of foam, or better yet that gel stuff. It'll expand into everywhere inside this thing. When Shaman's power wears off, it'll expand there, too."
"I... I can shut it off in pieces," Shaman gasped. "Already have. I'm just controlling the outer layers right now, and parts of the inside. Less than half of what I started with.
"Dragon?" Lisa asked. "Your tech best suited for this. We'll probably lose a few ships. Oh, and use magnetically attuned shielding, not the kinetic stuff. Everyone else, we need to retreat. If this goes wrong in any way, we don't want to be anywhere nearby."
A few of the suits started taking their position, while Taylor, bless her, still had the presence of mind to bring in a few of the containment gel suicide bombers. They were promptly gutted by Lily, who pulled out the foam container tanks. I wasn't sure all the difference between the typical foam, and this gel, except that it was a more densely packed recipe. It didn't leave breathable air pockets, and it was a strong enough adhesive that it would eat away at skin. Forbidden to be used except against targets with kill orders, and restricted even then because of the danger it presented to the area. If it weren't for how Endbringers always seemed to have some new trick up their fucking sleeves every time you had one cornered, it might even be able to hold them.
"Will you be safe when we breach the container?" Dragon asked Lily.
"No need," she responded. "It'll breach itself when I use my power on it. Just get everyone to safety." She hovered up and landed atop Wendigo, ignoring the wisps of blue nanothorns that washed across her armor. Her power in action. Her feet sank slightly into the Endbringer's corpulent stomach.
We all started shunting across. "Wait," Shaman gasped. "If I move over, my power will wear off."
Fuck. "Can you shield yourself?"
"Not right now," he admitted. "It's either my armor, or the Endbringer. Pretty soon it won't even be that. Don't worry, I'll just have to hope that forcefield holds long enough."
"Climb into that," Trevor pointed at one of the now eviscerated suicide bombers. "Still has a shunt drive. I can help Dragon slave it to one of her tracking AIs."
"Y'know, I always knew the hero business was a shit job," he muttered, as Rosary helped him make his way to the artificial lifeform that was only alive on a technical level. I followed over, healing and sealing the thing around him. Cost me a few pounds of mass from my Dryad to make that work, but it did work.
"Okay, he's secure," I informed the others. By now, almost no one was here in person. I infused my armor around Rapture's and shunted us both over.
It didn't look like much, from the other side. One moment there was Lily in a cloud of mist that was melting as it touched her. The next, a giant light gray polyhedron made where all the shields overlapped. It wasn't a particularly uniform geometry, consisting over curves in some areas, various shapes in others, forming an oblong shape overall. Kind of like a clear balloon filled with lumpy oatmeal.
"Don't worry, I'm alive and well in here," Lily replied. "Kinda hard to breathe. Aren't these suits suppose to be protected from that?"
"Up to one kilometer underwater," Emma confirmed. "Don't worry, the structural integrity field's still holding, you'll be fine."
"Trade you," Shaman muttered. "I'm going to let small parts go at a time. Tell me when you sense your power finish covering its interior."
"My power doesn't work that way," Lily replied.
"No shit?" he chuckled painfully. "You always did make me do all the work. I'll tell you when I'm done."
I stopped exploiting the bond to keep me stable, rushing to hold Taylor.
Sorry, so so sorry. ReliefAcceptanceLove. I squeezed her, as we both dealt with the wash of pain, guilt, and uncertainty.
===============
A/N- The reason I didn't release the last chapter yesterday was because I was afraid someone would put 2 and 2 together and predict THIS chapter too early.
Oh, and this absolutely was foreshadowed. I forget what chapter, but it was definitely foreshadowed that Rosary/Shaman could be an Endslayer combination. And by "foreshadow" I mean "fore-freakin-told-you-outright".
Edit: Found it. Ch 194
