Disclaimer: This is a non-profit, transformative, work of fiction made under Fair Use and other similar allowances. I do not claim ownership of any copyrighted material, which belong to their respective rights holders. I do not necessarily condone nor endorse the material in this work, but I do take responsibility for the publication of this work. OpenAI's language model was used in part of the drafting, revising, and editing of this work.

  Author's Note: This work, along with my profile, can also be found on the website named Archive of Our Own and FanFiction.Net under the same name.

  Chapter 1

  "But you should know your chances going in," Legend said, his voice clear over the ambient hum of the building's lighting and the faint rumble of thunder. "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."

  He stood at the front of the staging room, flanked by Armsmaster, who looked confident with not one, but two halberds at his back. There were no coughs, and no whispers. Only the low, steady patter of rain against the large windows, and the more distant sound of the sea beginning to churn from Leviathan's impending arrival.

  Taylor sat among a crowd of costumed figures: heroes, villains, rogues, and the unaligned. A patchwork army. Near two hundred capes gathered in one place, with more trickling in as time went by. Some capes fidgeted, hands twitching at gear or masks. A few leaned forward in their seats.

  Elsewhere in the city, tens of thousands of civilians were still evacuating, crowding into the massive above ground shelters spaced across Brockton Bay. Those who could were leaving the city entirely.

  And here, in the heart of the staging room, the Undersiders still wouldn't acknowledge her presence. All except Lisa. It seemed like such a small thing. Petty high school drama that clung to her like a shadow. And yet, even with the very real possibility of death looming like a specter, the loneliness pierced deeper. Even the guilt over Dinah registered only distantly.

  Legend continued, "I'm telling you your chances now because you deserve to know. We so rarely get the opportunity to inform those brave enough to face these monsters…"

  Nearby, Miss Militia adjusted her weapon without seeming to notice. Its form shimmered, reshaping from a knife to a baton before solidifying again in her grip. On one side, Dauntless leaned forward, his visor pressed against the shaft of his pole-arm. On the other, Velocity sat with one knee bouncing in a rapid, restless rhythm, his fingers drumming against his leg. Just behind them, silhouetted against the grey-lit windows and the wall of glowing television screens, Eidolon hadn't moved since the briefing began. His gaze stayed fixed on the storm-churned sea. Alexandria stood nearby her Los Angeles team, arms folded.

  Lady Photon, Manpower, Brandish, and Flashbang, once huddled in conversation, turned their chairs toward the front. The quiet scrape of metal legs on tile was oddly sharp in the hush. Near them, Shielder sat beside his sister, Laserdream, both trying to look calm. The metal-skinned boy from earlier gleamed under the fluorescent lights as he guarded a sealed plastic case on his lap. The teenage heroes and rogues had mostly clustered together, their earlier nervous bravado fading as the weight of reality settled over them. Panacea leaned forward, elbows on her knees, her hands clenched. Gallant and Glory Girl were seated slightly apart from the others, shoulders touching.

  Taylor kept her head from looking off to one side of the room, anything to avoid drawing Hookwolf's attention again. Empire Eighty-Eight had staked out their own corner, apart from the others. They stood with rigid postures and crossed arms. A few wore strained masks of politeness, but it didn't sit right. Cricket and Stormtiger were notably absent. Across the room, Chevalier leaned in slightly to murmur something to Myrddin of Chicago. The man's brown robe pooled around his feet, his staff propped against the back of a chair. Whatever was said was lost beneath the growing clatter of rain on the roof.

  And then there was him.

  Taylor blinked.

  As a rule of thumb, heroes tended toward brighter colors. Even so, the bald man stood out like bleeding highlighter in her ruined notebooks. His wrinkled yellow bodysuit clung awkwardly to his frame. His white cape hung limp and heavy, visibly sodden. The red gloves looked like cheap rubber dishwashing gloves. A crumpled grocery flyer drooped out of one pocket, its ink smearing in the wet. At a fundamental level, the man seemed to embody her opposite. In design. In the way he carried himself. Even in gender. Case in point: he was also bald.

  If she didn't know better, it looked like he'd wandered in from a bad convention and then decided not to leave.

  His face was so plain it might've vanished from memory the moment she turned away, which, oddly, made him more interesting as he was also one of the few unmasked capes present. He had Asian features, though she couldn't place where exactly. Japanese? Korean? Maybe. His expression was one of mild interest, the kind you'd expect from someone waiting for exact change in a checkout line.

  "I will tell you what you may not know from the videos. He feels pain, he does bleed, but few attacks seem to penetrate deep enough past the surface to seriously harm him…"

  Legend's voice stayed level, even as his eyes drifted across the crowd—subtly tracking who had shown up and who might've decided this fight wasn't for them.

  Taylor furrowed her brow beneath her bug-eyed mask, catching movement in her peripheral vision. The bald man near the wall had just made a small, triumphant fist pump.

  She blinked, confused, then looked away deliberately. She couldn't help thinking, weirdo—and immediately felt like a hypocrite.

  After all, she commanded insect armies. She routinely carried bugs on her, much to the discomfort of others, especially the local Wards.

  Taylor had gathered as many insects as she could on the way to the staging site, carefully keeping the useful ones and discarding the rest. A wasp nest clung to the underside of the roof's overhang. She had ants forming thick, interlocking rafts in the floodwaters outside, which acted as writhing lifeboats carrying clusters of more delicate bugs. And still, they were dying by the hundreds every minute.

  The rising water claimed them faster than she could adapt. Many drowned outright, but most were simply swept away by currents too strong, vanishing beyond the limits of her noticeably expanded range. In the briefing room itself, she maintained a scattering of flies and other innocuous stragglers, tucked into corners, clinging beneath chairs, and above light fixtures.

  "Newfoundland," Legend said. "May ninth, 2005. Nearly half a million dead. The Canadian island was simply gone…"

  She remembered the photos. The soundless, grainy surveillance footage of the towering waves that swept people and their homes down into the sea.

  "Kyushu," Legend continued, "the night of November second and the morning of the third, 1999. His sixth recorded appearance. Nine and a half million killed. The entire region was swamped. Tidal waves from every direction. He disrupted the evacuation routes and targeted the highest-density shelters. Nearly three million people were left homeless. A nation sundered."

  There were no coughs, no shifting of weight, not even the rustle of fabric. Taylor found herself scanning the faces again. Panacea pale and hollow eyed, while the Travelers remained wordless, Sundancer quietly fidgeting with her hands in her lap.

  Legend paused. "We have to end this fast. Each wave he brings on top of us is stronger than the last. This means we have to—" He stopped mid-sentence, eyes fixed on one side of the room.

  Oh no.

  Taylor turned to look. All around her, the soft rustle of fabric followed as nearly two hundred capes shifted to see the interruption.

  The bald man had one hand raised high above his head. His expression, oddly enough, was serious—maybe even a little anxious.

  Legend hesitated. "…Yes? You had a question?"

  The man nodded. "Right. So when you say 'fast,' you don't mean too fast right? Like… can't we let him power up a bit first or something?"

  The silence that followed was absolute. You could've heard a pin drop.

  He's insane, Taylor thought. He had to be to say that in a room packed with tense, jittery capes on the edge of panic.

  Legend, clad in electric blue and framed by the flickering overhead lights, visibly faltered. He glanced around, as if checking to make sure he'd actually heard what he thought he had. Then, after a pause just a beat too long, he finally spoke.

  "…I'm sorry," he said, voice carefully neutral. "Who are you again?"

  "Saitama," the man replied, ignoring the growing murmur spreading through the crowd. "Hero for fun… and profit."

  The silence fractured. Whispers rippled through the room like wind across tall grass.

  Some nearby capes were already edging their chairs away from him. One, clad in matte black armor, gave the man a full-body scan before quietly sliding one seat down the row. A woman in copper armor leaned toward her teammate and whispered something sharp under her breath. The teammate responded with a tight shake of the head.

  Armsmaster stepped forward from beside Legend, voice clipped and icy. "You don't appear in any database in my or Dragon's systems. If you're here to interfere with an Endbringer response, be warned—the crime carries a sentence of life imprisonment if convicted."

  The bald man—Saitama—blinked. "Oh. That seems… harsh."

  He sounded genuinely surprised too. He scratched his cheek with one gloved finger, then looked around the room like he wasn't quite sure why everyone was so tense.

  Murmurs swelled into sharp whispers, and the tension in the room shifted.

  "Enough of this," Alexandria interrupted, arms crossed, her voice like steel quieting the crowd. "We're wasting precious time."

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  Legend's expression darkened as the windows shuddered under the relentless hammer of rain. Sheets of water coursed down the glass in twisting rivulets, obscuring the world beyond in a smear of grey gloom. With one final look toward Saitama, he found his voice again.

  "To keep things short, find a place where you can help the most. With your help, we can hold the line today. And if you fall, if you choose to give everything, it won't be forgotten."

  Legend turned, his gaze locking with Armsmaster's at his side.

  With a brisk nod, Armsmaster stepped forward, his voice cutting through the tension.

  "The Wards are distributing armbands designed by Dragon," he said. "They're adjustable—slide them up your arm and fasten them at the wrist. The screen will display your position on a city grid, along with Leviathan's last known location. Use it.'

  He let the words settle a beat, sweeping his gaze the room.

  "There are two buttons," Armsmaster said. "The left sends messages to other armband users. But unless you're Protectorate or a veteran of Endbringer engagements, your messages will be queued. Dragon's system filters communication by urgency to minimize clutter and keep coordination tight."

  He paused, his visor shifting subtly toward a particular cape near the back. When he spoke again, his tone had cooled by a few degrees.

  "We can't afford noise."

  Taylor didn't need to trace his line of sight. She already knew exactly who he meant.

  Without missing a beat, he continued, smoothly transitioning into an explanation of the device's remaining functions. Just from the explanation, the device sounded like it belonged decades ahead of the flip phones and beepers most people still carried.

  Around the room, a soft murmur spread. Unfamiliar teams compared notes and devices in hushed voices. Some adjusted straps and checked displays. Other's glanced at their wrists as Wards moved between rows, distributing the black-and-blue bands from hard cases. Taylor caught sight of Clockblocker fiddling with one beside Vista, both of them half-soaked from the rain. Browbeat was testing his near the rear, holding it close to his mouth and muttering instructions under his breath.

  The boy with the metallic skin moved from row to row distributing devices near her. The sealed plastic case he'd been guarding earlier now hung open at his side.

  Taylor reached out as he passed, accepting one band for herself. She slid it on, tightening the strap. The device hummed faintly to life. Her codename lit up across the top of the screen after she manually set it: SKITTER.

  Nearby, one of the Undersiders muttered something sarcastic. Regent, probably. She couldn't bear to look over.

  And then Legend's voice rang out again.

  "Capes—if you've faced an Endbringer before, stand!"

  Chairs scraped against tile as capes began to rise. Some with grim determination, others with visible reluctance. Eidolon, already standing, was silent and imposing. Miss Militia followed. Armsmaster straightened, expression unreadable beneath his visor. A third of the visiting Wards followed suit, their youthful faces suddenly harder. Chevalier joined them a heartbeat later, the steal of his cannonblade catching the flicker of overhead emergency lights. Even the Travelers stood.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Taylor saw the bald man again.

  He tilted his head, scratched his chin, then—apparently deciding he might qualify—stood up too.

  A few heads turned. Someone whispered in a tone halfway between disbelief and irritation.

  Taylor felt a flicker of irritation herself. How did someone not know whether they'd fought an Endbringer before?

  Then, from the front of the room, Legend's voice rang out again. "When in doubt, follow the orders of the Protectorate first!"

  Teams were forming. Assignments were being handed out in low, clipped voices as capes clustered throughout the staging area, their movements brisk with urgency.

  Out of all Endbringers, it had to be Leviathan.

  Not that the others were any less bad. Each left cities broken in their own way. But Leviathan was the worst possible match for her. Against Behemoth, she could at least burn her swarm alive in a last stand. Against the Simurgh, maybe she'd die without realizing it, her mind unraveling before her body followed.

  But with Leviathan?

  Her swarm would be scattered, soaked, and crushed beneath tides and pressure. Her army would shrink with every passing minute, drowned and carried away by the weather alone. It already was, and the fight hadn't even begun.

  A tap on her shoulder broke Taylor out of her thoughts.

  She turned to find the bald man—Saitama—standing a little too close. His yellow jumpsuit still damp, water dripping off the edge of his cape. He raised his armband, brow slightly furrowed.

  "Hey," he said casually. "Do you know how to turn this thing on?"

  Taylor blinked at him, but then she realized he couldn't notice with her eyes covered. Was he serious? Whatever their flaws at least the others had been paying attention. She almost turned away. This wasn't the time for hand-holding.

  But then again… he had stood up when Legend asked for veterans. Maybe he really had no idea what he was doing with technology. Or maybe he was just that weird.

  She sighed.

  "You need to tighten it here," she said, pointing, "then press the button on the side."

  "Like this?" he pulled the band snug around his wrist with one hand, pressed the button with the other—

  Snap.

  The entire device broke in two with a sharp crack, pieces dangling limply from his fingers like cheap plastic.

  Saitama stared at it. "Huh. Must've been defective."

  Taylor glanced at her own armband. Reinforced metal. Solid. When she bent it slightly, there was no give at all.

  She looked back up at him. He stood there blankly, still holding the broken halves like he expected someone else to deal with it. A flicker of concern passed across his otherwise flat expression as he gave the shattered band a second glance.

  "...right," she muttered.

  He tilted his head toward a nearby group. "So, uh, you going with those guys?"

  Taylor followed his gesture. Assault, Battery, Brandish, Night and Fog stood nearby, assembling with the close-quarters team. The group was relatively small compared to the rest. Not many volunteered to get up close to an Endbringer—at least not without invulnerability, a death wish, or both.

  "I'm not really cut out for close range," Taylor said after a pause.

  When she looked forward, he had a look of relief on his face. She noticed the broken band had quietly vanished from his hands when she'd looked away.

  "Ah, too bad," he said, already turning. "Anyway, I'll, uh, check it out."

  Without waiting for a response, he wandered off. She watched him for a moment as he casually drifted toward the close-range team.

  Then something cold tapped her cheek. A splash of water. She blinked and looked up. Rainwater dropped steadily through a tiny hole in the ceiling. A hole that hadn't been there before.

  Her eyes shifted between the ceiling… and Saitama's back.

  ...what?

  Still, the strange conversation with the man—now firmly filed under weirdo in her mind—pulled her thoughts back to something more pressing: where did she belong? And no, it wasn't some deep, soul-searching question.

  Did she count as long range? Technically, yes. But her bugs couldn't meaningfully hurt Leviathan. Not Really.

  Taylor turned in her seat, scanning the faces of those who hadn't yet stood. Grue sat with his arms crossed, his face unreadable behind his mask. Tattletale had one leg crossed over the other, watching everything with narrowed eyes. Taylor looked away when their eyes met. Regent slouched low, fingers tapping idly against his knee. Othala sat stiffly, flanked by Victor, whose gaze kept flicking toward the exits. Panacea stared straight ahead, pale, fists clenched in her lap. And beyond them, there was a scattering of unfamiliar capes from other cities.

  "The rest of you—"

  Legend's words cut short.

  The sound that followed wasn't a voice. The walls vibrated, the floor trembled underfoot, and the overhead lights flickered.

  Then the building groaned. Windows shuddered violently in their frames. Somewhere overhead, metal shrieked.

  Bastion was the first to move. Still reeling from a recent PR disaster, the broad-shouldered cape surged to his feet, shouting and pointing toward the far wall. His voice was lost in the rising noise.

  Forcefields snapped into place—a shimmering lattice of translucent energy stretching across windows, floors, even parts of the ceiling. For a moment, Taylor almost believed it would hold.

  A heartbeat later, the defenses collapsed, forcefields winking out with a sharp crackle of failure as the ceiling gave way. Concrete and steel buckled inward, the far wall folding like paper. Water exploded through the breach. A tidal force slamming into the room as though the ocean itself had reached inside. It might well have.

  Taylor's feet lifted off the ground. Desks were torn loose. A television screen snapped free of its bracket and smashed into the far wall, shattering. Capes were tossed like dolls, dragged under the torrent as the flood turned the lobby into a churning river.

  For a moment, amid the chaos, she caught flashes on the flickering monitors. There were half-frozen images flipping too quickly to register. The harbor. The ferry. The boardwalk, now twisted and jagged. And in one frame, a shape. Just standing there, motionless in the downpour. A blur of green behind the sheets of rain.

  Then another groan overhead, deep and close. The ceiling sagged on one side. A forcefield blinked into place, bracing the corner, holding it—barely.

  But the rest of the ceiling began to fail.

  "Strider!" Legend shouted. "Get us out of here!"

  Taylor's armband buzzed. A synthesized female voice came through, but it was difficult to make out through the roar of rushing waters.

  Then the world cracked.

  Taylor found her lungs emptied. Sound disappeared. She was outside on the ground in the middle of what felt like a shallow river. They had been teleported.

  Rain battered down with the force of a waterfall. Saltwater burned in her mouth and nose. She pulled in a shuddering breath through the wet fabric of her mask, then another, and managed to stand.

  They were in the middle of a street that she knew was not far from the Undersider's loft. The floodwater receded downhill toward the ocean, pulling trash, debris, dead plants, shattered wood, and broken glass with it.

  Capes pulled themselves up around her. Some took flight. Others clambered onto rooftops. Most had yet to even stand, shaking off disorientation in the rushing waters.

  That was when Taylor looked down the street. The boardwalk was a wreckage of shattered planks. The sea frothed white around them.

  And Leviathan was there.

  Even through the sheets of rain, his silhouette was unmistakable. Thirty feet tall. Muscled, but not bulky. Shoulders hunched forward, arms swinging like pendulums. A tail whipped behind him, balancing his towering frame. Water peeled off him with every movement, like he was shedding a second skin. She'd never seen it, but she knew it was his water echo.

  He moved with unnatural grace, and his head twitched too fast, scanning the defenders.

  "Get ready!" Someone's voice rang out.

  Leviathan dropped to all fours.

  And then he moved.

  There was no warning. The shift was instantaneous to her eyes. Just a blur of motion, Leviathan moved like a tidal wave wrapped in muscle and scale, tearing toward them with inhuman speed. Blood and seawater sprayed in violent arcs as he hit the front line like a bomb. Concrete cracked. Steel screamed. Armbands all across street blared out overlapping alerts of downed capes interspersed with dead capes.

  Names vanished from the map before Taylor could register who they'd belonged to.

  But just as suddenly as the nightmare began, it stopped.

  A violent crash slit the air, yanking her out of her daze. Leviathan was gone. One second he was in their midst, carving through capes like a scythe, and the next, he was airborne.

  He tumbled through the air in a flailing spiral, vanishing into the wreckage of a half-drowned parking structure a block away.

  The wave from the sudden impact followed a heartbeat later, roaring outward with explosive force. Water and debris blasted across the street. Taylor ducked to shield her face from the spray.

  She lifted her face from the crook of her arm, blinking past the sting of moisture as she searched for the source. Her lenses were beginning to fog, the heavy humidity and sweat clouding her vision. Even through the fogged lenses, she could still make him out.

  Standing alone where Leviathan had been a moment ago, steam curling off his fist. His yellow jumpsuit was plastered to his frame from the rain. The bald man. The same one from the briefing room. The one who'd snapped his armband like it was made of papier-maché.

  He looked… mildly annoyed.

  And then, for the first time since the attack had begun, there was something else in the air besides fear: confusion. Dozens of capes stared, stunned. Leviathan wasn't just repelled or knocked off his feet. He'd been launched.

  Saitama, she remembered, didn't stay still. He stepped around a jagged slab of debris and crouched briefly beside a collapsed cape, hand hovering uncertainly before he helped them up onto their feet. Another figure groaned nearby, clutching their side. A few seconds later, he was at their side too, brushing plaster off their back.

  Taylor saw movement stir among the fallen—twitching fingers, an arm dragging a broken body toward higher ground. The water, dark with blood, lapped around crumpled figures. Some capes were clearly wounded: one limped, holding a broken arm against his chest; another dragged herself atop a half-submerged car, smearing a trail of blood across the slick blue paint as she went, limbs trembling with the effort. And then there were the ones who didn't move at all. They floated face-down in the rising floodwaters, their bodies torn and limp, slowly drifting with the current.

  Saitama had intervened just as one cape—a young girl in orange with half her helmet gone—had been seconds from dying beneath Leviathan's claw. Now she was coughing on her hands and knees.

  He rose to his feet, his eyes drifting over the wounded and fallen. His expression shifted from mild irritation to something darker. Then his gaze lifted toward the distant smoking hole where Leviathan had disappeared.

  And finally, to no one in particular, he said:

  "Guess that's the one."

  Author's Note: If you comment, please watch your language and do not use profanity.