Greg Vs Server 8-10

00:03:21 had elapsed since the previous internal checkpoint. His suit core temperature continued to climb even as Armsmaster logged the matter, only to quickly dismiss the HUD notification with the slightest of eye movements.

He advanced five steps—three‑point‑nine‑meter strides propelled by an artificial muscle system, weight distributed as well as he could manage to minimize asphalt shear and reduce bleed. The street beneath him already resembled a grey river filled with shattered masonry and traffic‑light skeletons. Every footfall sank five centimeters as water gushed away, resurfaced, and dragged loose gravel in centrifugal rings.

Kinematics demanded speed mode for glide strides, but power budgets favored durability for the next probable impact event. With that in mind, he left the lattice in hybrid mode, doing his best to manage both despite the slight increase in power draw.

Leviathan’s tail speared through floodwaters 102 meters south‑south‑east, mass moving with metronomic confidence, the storm’s keystone. The Endbringer’s mass displaced water like a hull, the action a threat as much as it was an attack .Every motion lifted a skin of seawater, an after‑image the volume of the limb displaced forcing powerful waves that rolled down flooded avenues and pummeled storefronts that would better be considered derelict after this.

Despite its movement, Alexandria grappled the creature high on the right shoulder, flight doing as much as her strength. She bled kinetic energy off Leviathan’s charge by twisting him into the husk of a bus. The vehicle folded and water and steel erupted skyward with enough force to match a geyser.

Legend hung above, pulses of condensed light striking Leviathan’s elbows at precise joint centers. He estimated conversion efficiency with a single second of thought: single digit percent thermal transfer, negligible structural breach. Acceptable as steering mechanism but unsustainable as damage route.

All the while, Eidolon floated a hundred meters overhead, generating pressure spikes the suit’s instrumentation still categorized as unknown. That lack of clarity irritated him; unknown equaled vulnerability. He forced irritation back as he put his mind to better use.

His heads‑up display minimized sociograms from the outer ring. Overlapping arcs of color-coded fire formed an inconsistent lattice, a frustrating reality staring him in the face, but not an unexpected one. Effectively every power set available lacked penetration depth; they served only to distract, at best delaying the Endbringer by a second or two. He placed suppression probability at eight percent, their chances of chasing Leviathan off before massive casualties and damage falling by the minute.

The comm net streamed casualty updates: thirty‑one capes down, twelve confirmed KIA. High noise: low value; he filtered for armor‑relevant signals. Numbers flickered as new armband pings failed. Velocity’s beacon had flatlined minutes ago at 00:05:54—tail spike through the chest cavity.

An instant death.

It was recorded, but still difficult to internalize. Armsmaster pushed that aside, focused on the number feed more than the names.

Krieg (deceased), Rogue Sun (down), Yangtze  (deceased), Parallaxe  (deceased) —each blinked off his tactical board, casualty icons stacking along the left margin until the margin scrolled.

Three wounded capes—Tetsu, Kintsugi and Terracota—lay prone behind a jack‑knifed cargo trailer forty meters to his nine‑o’clock, salvageable assets. He pivoted through chest‑level water in a three‑step dash, servo joints restricting lateral sway as jump jets burst in quarter‑second pulses, raising him just high enough that a vault over the trailer was easy enough. Without a moment to waste, he tagged them, summoning three of Dragon’s nearest med-drones — 007, 012, and 018 — for an airlift.

He glanced skyward. Eidolon hovered, cloak snapping like torn canvas, emitting radioactive turbulence that somehow registered only as irregular vector shifts in raindrops. HUD algorithms failed to classify. Again.

To his left, the blaster cordon was slipping east as exhaustion clearly set in, the number of losses weighing on as they failed to keep formation against the onslaught. He saw Mongoose’s fireballs shrinking, Scapegoat’s muzzle flashes irregular.

Leviathan lunged, tail sweeping at bus wreckage. Alexandria forced a collision to divert, tackling the Endbringer with an impact that sounded like a landslide, but the redirected force produced a lateral wave that hammered the blaster line, specifically  Purity’s aerial vantage. The Empire 88 meber recovered as she burned a strobing path overhead, forcing Leviathan to dodge a blast that scored through water and asphalt alike.

He toggled his suit speakers, amping them up to a decibel rating they couldn’t miss even in the storm and chaos. “Rotate firing line. Fresh capes forward. Burnout capes recover behind barrier.”

Leviathan pivoted, sending Alexandra flying as it whipped around.

At the same instant, water mass equal to an olympic pool rolled from its shoulders, hammered the street, converting debris into so much shrapnel propelled at deadly speeds. Colin pushed from cover with a directional burst from his jump jets; pavement cracking under the sheer force of his sudden movement. He landed beside Dauntless, anchored his feet, and raised the halberd in guard position. “Tail sweep coming left‑low in seven,” he said to the other man in gold, voice terse from tension and less from annoyance as usual.
Dauntless’s helmet jerked in a nod, not a word said.

As expected, Leviathan’s tail swept low a full second later, water blade riding its edge. Colin leapt above the arc, jump jets firing on half‑thrust, and planted the halberd spike into the tail’s second bend, vibratory edge engaged.

Darting up Leviathan’s tail, the blade skittered through Endbringer flesh until Armsmaster forced separation, not willing to risk any more. He nodded at the result. Surface cut depth: two centimeters. Expected.

Eidolon loosed a kinetic wave, arrows of dull-gray light surrounding the cloaked Triumvirate member flying loose and rocking into Leviathan’s torso with all the tempo of an accelerated twenty-one-gun-salute.

Good window. Colin triggered strength mode, dumped power to arms, and shot forward as his jump jets roared to life. He pivoted, moving aside just in time to let Alexandria’s descending fist set vector with a thunderous impact, then mirrored the motion—kinetic charge on his halberd slamming down on the creature’s exposed clavicle.

Night (deceased), Fog (deceased). A pulse of frustration beat at the back of skull as he retreated Leviathan’s counter, the news threatening to skew focus. Any loss at this point was a small disaster on its own.

Legend darted, and delivered a triplet of lasers at new angles. Leviathan’s left forearm lost skin thickness measurable on sensors and Eidolon’s swirl of energy turned violet before the hero let it fly.

Colin toggled visor to maximum attenuation a fraction before the world white‑flared. Radiance stung sensors, even through compensation. When clarity returned, Leviathan still stood, a layer of skin chipped aside on one arm, but the beast already had its retaliation as the zone was entirely flooded, street geometry rewritten: cars pancaked, lamp poles uprooted, and a sinkhole where an intersection once was.

Leviathan turned, water cloak swirling as the Endbringer’s eyes seemed to glow in the dim lighting, their asymmetry unsettling even to him no matter how many times he had joined in on these fights. Without warning, the beast rushed forward in a direct charge, tail snaking.

Armsmaster’s eyes widened as he tracked the target vector: west barricade where capes attempted shield layering.

Speed Mode engaged itself almost without thought, Armsmaster already moving as he threw himself forward in a halo of jet burner wash. Pavement shattered upon arrival and shockt traveled through his ankles and up his spine, the sensation enough that he nearly regretted the action.

Focused too much on his actions to do much of that, the hero stabbed his halberd into the ground, blunt end piercing asphalt and activating the anchor claw, while the blade launched out with a wordless command, a cable pulling at Leviathan’s rightmost limb.

“DRAGON!” He raised his voice, the action a rare one at that magnitude. “RAIL!”

His HUD pinged in response. Heavy impact rail shot inbound T‑minus 5.

Leviathan reared, a water surge bursting to life as the cable tore from his halberd, and the sky split. A tungsten rod screamed through the air from Dragon’s suit a mile above, trailing plasma.

The Endbringer shot forward but it hit anyway, the rod impacting where torso met tail.

Concrete cratered.

Overpressure slammed Colin sideways; the force of it sending his suit tumbling away from the flooded intersection, his armor plating shedding sparks as it skid across the ground. Gyros fought and the suit adapted, allowing Armsmaster to roll, and regain his stance.

Diagnostic? Right elbow actuator damaged, arm ninety percent mobility. 

Leviathan emerged from smoke with a dusting of ash on its back and only the slightest scarring to its flesh, but it was obvious that locomotion was unimpaired. Deviance less than one percent. Orbital strike effect minimal. He filed disappointment, and quarantined away all his frustration in place of focus.

Alexandria streaked from above, striking exposed tissue with a tremor that rattled the thing’s sternum. Good; even minimal impact bought seconds.

Another explosion soundd off and Armsmaster’s head snapped right, HUD automatically zooming in. A half-kilometer northwest, a collapsed apartment building complex came apart like a cardboard box in a hurricane. Concrete chunks sprayed outward, steel beams twisted into corkscrews, and then—heat. A column of red-orange fire erupted from the wreckage, bursting fragments of rebar and building material into the air.

Colin’s HUD automatically zoomed, tracking the figure that shot free from the inferno. White and blue armor, gold trim, sword sheath glowing with residual heat. The readout flickered: White Knight.

The boy trailed spirals of fire and hardened air behind him, temperature readings around him climbing past 1200 degrees Celsius. Under this much rainfall, he should have been surrounded by steam clouds thick enough to blind a satellite. Instead, the vapor formed neat thrust cones that pushed him further and faster.

Leviathan’s head snapped toward the approaching heat signature, water already beginning to shift in response. The Endbringer ignored everyone else entirely now, attention locked on the new threat.

“LEVIATHAAAAAAN!”