Are You Afraid of the Dark? [Worm AU fanfic]

[Ack]

Ack, can QQ haz Leviathan omake, plz? Because that was fucking gold.

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Crossposted from Spacebattles.

This was written in response to the comment:

I know it's ridiculous, but reading this just made me imagine Danny making plans to kill Leviathan.

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Rain poured down over Brockton Bay. The heroes of the Protectorate and the Wards gathered together as sirens wailed across the city. Heroes and villains alike came in from across the country, with one aim in mind. To stand, together, against one of the primal forces which had destroyed cities, sunken whole islands. Millions of people were dead as a direct result of Leviathan's depredations, and countless hundreds of thousands more had fallen victim to the after-effects.

And now he was coming to Brockton Bay. Every hero, every villain ... every cape there knew that this could be their last day on Earth. Leviathan may not have been Behemoth, the Hero-Killer, but many capes had fallen to his claws or his water shadow, or simply drowned under a million tons of water.

Offshore, a tremendous surge of water began to build. This would be the first tsunami to fall on Brockton Bay, but not the last. Leviathan would call them in as easily as a man might pick up a beer and open it. Heroes of might and power such as Eidolon might be able to blunt the impact of the waves on the city, but that would mean they weren't fighting Leviathan.

It began to roll toward the coast, rising higher and higher as it came. From within, for those who had the senses to detect it, Leviathan surfed the inconceivable power of the wave, drawing it with him. Unstoppable. Inevitable.

And then a cloaked figure started out on to the longest pier that jutted out into the Bay. As sturdy as it was, it would be crushed to matchwood when the tsunami struck, but the figure showed no hesitation. Stride by stride, carrying some sort of bulky object in his right hand, he made his way along the pier.

Some capes noticed him, but few would be able to reach him in time, and in any case he was outside the force-field barrier they were even now assembling along the shoreline.

Alexandria flew up and over the barrier and lanced down toward him. Even now, the tsunami was building to its full power, rising high above the pier, high above the Protectorate base. It would be touch and go, but she could--

And then the figure stopped, and pulled the cover off of the thing he carried. It turned out to be a Tinkertech megaphone, which he raised to his mouth. Slowly, almost theatrically, he pushed back his hood.

"LEVIATHAN!" His voice, amplified by the megaphone, echoed back from the still-building wave, clearly audible to those in the city. "ARE YOU AFRAID ... OF THE DARK?"
There was a pause. The wave, astonishingly ... stopped. Alexandria, even her racing mind stunned by the name she'd just heard and by the cessation of forward motion, landed behind the cloaked figure. He made a 'wait' gesture with his free hand, his attention fixed on the wave.

And then, slowly, it began to slump away. Water--the incoming tide, nothing more--ran back over the bare sea-bottom up to the level of the beach, and stopped there. The rain ceased, and the clouds began to part. In the distance, on the surface of the water, there was a brief disturbance, as of something huge and powerful returning to the ocean depths.

The cloaked man turned to Alexandria. "Yes?" he asked mildly. He was taller than her, she realised. Strands of greying hair were stuck to his scalp by the rain. Droplets glinted off of his glasses. But behind the facade of the mild-mannered suburban dad, she saw the true man. The Dark. Involuntarily, she swallowed.

"If ... if he hadn't turned back ... what would you have done?" she asked.

He smiled. She had never seen a more chilling expression on a man's face. The cloak blew aside briefly, and she saw a rifle hanging down off of his back. His free hand brushed the barrel. "I would've had to get serious," he said lightly. Turning, he pulled the hood up over his head again and began to walk back along the pier. She heard him begin to whistle, off-key. Belatedly, just before he got out of earshot, she recognised the tune as "Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head".