4Three Hearts As One
Disclaimer: I own neither Worm nor Getter Robo. Worm is owned by John "Wildbow" McCrae. Getter Robo is owned by Nagai Go and Ishikawa Ken. This is a work of fanfiction, and is written purely for enjoyment and not for profit.
Some familiarity with Worm is recommended.
Well this is new, thought Amy Maybe-Not-Dallon to herself.
Standing in the lobby where both locals and out-of-towners were assembling to face Leviathan, it struck her as odd that she'd never been to one of these briefings. Then again, as Panacea, she'd always been too valuable to risk on the front lines. Instead, by now she'd have been setting up with the other healing capes to handle triage and what healing they could pull off during the battle.
And there was the rub.
Quickly surveying the assembling capes, she saw local villain groups like the Empire and the Travelers huddled together in their separate groups. The local Protectorate - Armsmaster, Miss Militia, and the others - were deep in discussion with the heroes from other branches, the ones who'd arrived with the Triumvirate. Off with the Wards, along with her adoptive maybe-cousins, she could see Vicky in her new red power suit, holding Gallant's hand and talking animatedly.
Oh, Vicky, she thought, an instant smile springing to life on her face. Never change.
At her side, her newish maybe-sister fidgeted. Turning to look Taylor's way, she saw her looking longingly towards where the Undersiders were gathered. The teen villains, however, were pointedly ignoring her, save for the girl in purple who appeared to look back with some sadness before turning back to her teammates.
Giving Taylor's white power suit a quick once over, she briefly looked down at her own, colored in yellow. Though power suits in truth, technically, "tinkertech life support system" was probably more accurate, ones in which she, Taylor, and Vicky were pretty permanently encased. Even now, more than a month since the accident, she still found it all occasionally jarring.
The field trip had been, many supposed, a disaster waiting to happen. Even a month later people would still have no real idea how it had come about that both Arcadia and Winslow just happened to find themselves visiting the same new tinkertech lab-cum-power station that had recently set up in Brockton Bay, on the same day and during overlapping times.
It had been a PR event of some note - apparently the newly-arrived Tinker had an established reputation - and his promises of clean, virtually limitless energy had seized the imagination of the most influential sectors of the Bay. Still, having the students of two different schools, from largely different economic strata, all mingling all together, was a powder keg just waiting for a match.
It was with some surprise, therefore, that it wasn't the junior ABB and E88 gangers who were the cause of the trouble; rather, it was when a tall, skinny girl had gotten locked in a small room - just a closet, really - just off the main reactor. Amy and Vicky had heard her clamoring to get out, but with everyone else involved in the PR events no one had heard her banging on the door, panicking and pleading. Unable to find a lab employee, and worried when the girl's shrieking started to get shrill, Vicky had taken the initiative, shrugged, and broke the door open.
It was clear when the girl came tumbling out that she was pretty far into a panic attack. Amy had reached out to touch her, to calm her with her power, when a horde of flying and crawling insects had burst into the room, biting and stinging at her and her sister. Vicky'd covered her with her own body, but there were just too many. Later they would learn that the girl, a Master with the ability to control arthropods, had apparently had a flashback to her Trigger while in that closet.
They would also learn that Fortress Construction apparently does shitty work.
Well, mostly shitty work.
There were, apparently, just enough gaps in the construction that the crazed Master's swarm were able to get into the reactor room. Though control of the destabilized reactor core would quickly be re-established, in the time that it took to do so, Amy, Vicky, and the bug Master girl, as well as the bug Master's insect horde would be subjected to intense amounts of cosmic rays. The green energies washed over them all, with rather profound effects.
The bugs did not survive.
"Excuse me, are you Panacea?" a voice at her elbow said, interrupting Amy's reverie. Swinging her gaze over that way, Amy found herself looking into the silver-eyed visage of a teen whose body appeared to be made up entirely of metal.
Sighing, wondering how many times she'd have to keep explaining, Amy replied in the negative. "No. Not anymore."
"Oh, er… yeah. I'm Weld. Legend wanted me to ask if you were going to be joining the rest of the healers?"
"No," Amy said, sighing heavily. It really was starting to irritate her. "I can't heal anymore. Or haven't you heard?"
"I don't understand," the out-of-towner averred. "You're possibly the best healer we have."
"Was," she corrected. "Was possibly the best healer you had. I don't have my healing powers anymore."
That had been one of the biggest pieces of fallout from the accident at the lab. The green energy that had washed over the three of them had taken away their powers. Vicky had lost her strength and invulnerability, Taylor had lost her bug control, and Amy could no longer heal.
Her relationship with Carol hadn't survived that.
"Oh. I'm sorry," Weld finally said as she stared unblinkingly at him. "But you are participating, right?"
Quickly running out of patience, Amy couldn't hold the snark back. "Whatever might have given you that idea? We're obviously just here to watch and award points."
"Look, I said I was sorry," Weld said, sighing in turn. "Look, if you're going to be participating, then you and - you said we, right?" Receiving a nod, he continued, "then you and whoever you're with will need armbands. You know how these work, right?"
"Yeah, more or less. Okay, give me three, then."
Weld passed three over and, handing one to Taylor, Amy quickly put hers on and, at the prompt, stated her name.
"Amy Dallon." She'd go with that for now.
At her confirmation, the armband promptly announced to all and sundry:
"Amy Dallon deceased, AA-0."
"Right," she grumped.
That had been the other major piece of fallout: whatever had affected their powers had also done extensive damage to their bodies, despite it having previously been proven that humans could safely be exposed to the green energy. It was just the most incredible luck that the Tinker in charge, a Dr. Saotome, just happened to have three experimental life support power suits just hanging around.
The process that permanently grafted the power suits to the girls also happened to impart them a phenomenal amount of regeneration, so much so that the three girls were up and about within a week. Which was also just long enough for them to find out that Amy could no longer heal, and that Carol, blaming her for what happened to Vicky, had told her that she no longer had a home with them.
Amy had been gratified that Vicky, in glorious, angry defiance, had broken with her mom right there. Sisters, she proclaimed them to be, and sisters they would remain.
Support, unexpectedly, came from another quarter: Taylor and her father, who had been present when Carol had cut ties with her, had offered her and Vicky a home. Their home. It wasn't much, they said, but seeing as how they were in this predicament because of Taylor, the least they could do was offer them a place to stay.
In the weeks since, Amy had found herself growing surprisingly close, and quickly, with the girl and her father, with Vicky chiming in in private. Their newfound connection survived the admission that the girl had been a burgeoning villain, who had just recently joined the Undersiders, only to be shed of them when they'd "regretfully" asked her to leave the team because of the publicity from the accident, and when Danny Hebert had offered to adopt her and Vicky, Amy hadn't said no.
She hadn't said yes, either. Not yet.
As Amy grumbled to herself and grumped at her armband, she heard a snort from beside her and turned to see Taylor smirking. The conical helmet of her power suit - distinct from Vicky's more rounded one and the squarish one that came with Amy's own - just served to emphasize how tall her new sister was.
"Stupid armband!" Amy muttered to Taylor's sudden laughter.
"Let's go grab Vicky and see if we can patch our systems in directly," Taylor suggested, stifling giggles.
"That works," Amy conceded, cramming her helmet on and locking it into place. "Lead on, McDuff!"
She could see the amused irritation in her sister's eyes even through the yellow lenses in her helmet. "You know, if you're going to quote famous literature, you may as well get the quote right."
"Well, we can't all have literature professors as moms, can we?"
She saw the shadow darken Taylor's eyes when the memory of her mom was brought up, and Amy regretted it instantly. Wordlessly, she took Taylor's hand, and saw her sister smile through the still-poignant memory. Smiling herself, she gave Taylor's hand a tug, and they set off to find Dragon.
A couple of minutes later, having established communications protocols, they were treated to Legend giving a stirring speech about how a quarter of them, at minimum, were probably going to die in the next couple of hours. She doubted anyone was going to back out now - everyone who was here had their own reasons for being here - but, having been on the healing end of these things, having seen before just how many injured would be passing through the healers' hands, she idly wondered just how many of these faces would still be around afterward.
Despite the armament built into their power suits, the girls of Team G, the name they listed themselves under, went with Myrddin to help with SAR. They'd only been in their power suits for little over three weeks, and so far only had sporadic bouts of testing and practice. They could all fly, however, and could each lift several tons easily, so off they went to help with search and rescue.
Which was the only reason they weren't around when the first wave struck.
Search and rescue, Amy decided, was even more exhausting than healing. Despite having built up a clinical sort of detachment from having healed all the people she had during her time as Panacea, even at her most harried moments healing the patients had passed by her in a blur. Here, in the wake of Leviathan, finding the dead as often as they found the injured, Amy found even her sense of cynical detachment starting to waver.
It was worse, she could see, with her sisters. Taylor, a quiet girl to begin with, had only grown more quiet as they found each broken body, living or otherwise. Vicky, so used to being able to hit back at whatever it was that was vexing her, had only grown more and more furious.
It was ironic that Team G was so well-suited to SAR. In addition to imparting them with flight and a degree of superhuman strength, their power suits, in regenerating their bodies, had filled the void of the powers they'd lost. Taylor, who once sensed the environment through her Mastered swarm, found that with concentration she could expand her senses outward, making her ideal for locating people trapped under debris. Amy, once a biokinetic Striker, found that her armor had filled the gap with a form of tactile telekinesis, allowing her to more easily shift the debris around, seemingly in defiance of normal physics.
As for Vicky, well… Amy wasn't sure she wanted to dwell on that.
Looking up from their latest (and, unfortunately, failed) rescue, Amy could just barely make out in the distance as Shielder's distinctive blue force field caught a wave and winked out. Soon after, comms started reading out the newest casualties. "Please wait," the chorus of voices said. And then followed a deluge of names. Most she didn't even know, but two stood out: Gallant. Flashbang. Amy turned to Vicky as she heard her gasp.
"Dean," she whispered, head down. "Dad."
Amy didn't know what to say. For so long she'd hated Dean, hoped hopelessly that Mark would find that spark again. The past three weeks, with Vicky and Taylor, minus Vicky's old, pervasive aura, had recentered her, and she was slowly finding her equilibrium. That didn't mean that she'd finished sorting out her head, though.
Turns out, she didn't need to.
Vicky, eyes on fire, looked up, stared into her eyes, stared into Taylor's.
"This ends now."
"Vicky, what…" Amy began.
Taylor caught on first. "It's still mostly untested. We've only really done it once."
Vicky, however, was undeterred. "Our people are dying," she insisted, meeting their eyes in turn again.
Taylor gave in first. "Okay. You both stayed. Even after. I won't let you down now."
As for Amy, well, she'd known for a long time that she just didn't do 'timid.' "We've all three of us already died once, right? Let's do it."
When Vicky smiled that evil smile of hers, Amy knew she'd forgotten something.
"You know what this means, right?"
"Vicky, no!"
"Vicky, yes! Besides, don't you think everyone could use a power up?"
Where Taylor had gained heightened senses and Amy had gotten enhanced lifting, Vicky instead had regained her aura. Sort of. Instead of awe or fear, she could now inspire and put heart into people.
It just came with a really annoying side effect. Even as Amy felt her hearts starting to speed up, the music that came with Vicky's power started to play, seemingly from out of nowhere.
At least it didn't force them to dance, too. Now that would have been a Shaker power.
doki. gan. She felt the music soak into her bones, felt her heart beating harder, her core start spinning up.
Doki. Gan. Vicky grabbed her hand, her expression resolute.
Doki! Gan! Amy took Taylor's hand, saw her expression firming.
DOKI! GAN! As Taylor and Vicky joined hands, the music reached a crescendo, and she found her voice. "Vicky! Call it!"
Her visage that of an avenging angel, her first sister cried out, voice ringing:
"CHANGE GETTER ONE, SWITCH ON!"
And as Vicky cried out the command words, she felt herself become light.
Eric Pelham - Shielder - had fought the good fight. He knew it, and he knew his sister knew it. He'd seen the pride in her eyes when he'd stopped that last wave, but it had cost him. He could barely stay aloft, nevermind that he'd never been all that strong a flyer, and he could barely form a shield now, he was so tired. He knew that the next hit would take him, and if she didn't leave, it'd take them both.
"Go," he told her.
"What?" he heard her ask, urgently, incredulously.
"Go. Or we both die here." He felt pride, and relief, that his voice didn't break.
"I'm not leaving you!" she screamed, a note of hysteria in her voice.
Any reply he might have made was pre-empted when Leviathan's tail smashed into Legend…
"Legend down, CD-6."
...and then swung around to strike at him and Crystal.
Knowing he was doomed, he flew in front of her, pushing the dregs of his strength into a last, wavering shield, hoping it would be enough. He closed his eyes, hoping it would be quick…
...and opened them again when, surprised to still be alive a long moment later, he heard the loudest, most godawful crunching sound he'd ever heard, to see a huge foot bury itself in Leviathan's face, staggering the monster, to the accompaniment of a shouted challenge...
"GETTER KICK!"
...and some strange ditty that nevertheless lent steel to his spine and set fire to his blood.
Wait. Why did that shouting sound like Vicky?
Vicky's blood burned. It sang a song of bright battle, of justice meted out, of enemies torn to shreds.
You're not getting another Dallon! Not today!
It also screamed in frustration as her subsequent blows all kept missing.
He's fast, Taylor noted in their shared headspace. Really fast.
Tell me something I don't know!
Vicky! Eyes on the ball!Amy urged, knowing the reference would grab Vicky's attention.
Despite her first, surprise hit, all they were managing was to play keep-away with Leviathan. Granted, it was giving the capes a breather, but it also wasn't getting rid of the problem.
"You in the giant mecha… Glory Girl, is that you?" Dragon's voice asked over the comm.
"Not Glory Girl anymore, and kinda busy here!" Vicky managed, interposing herself between the capes behind her and yet another water mirage.
Can't keep taking too many more of those, Amy observed, tracking the damage to their armor.
We can take some, she insisted. Most of the people behind us can't.
There's got to be something we can… began Amy.
I have an idea,came Taylor's sudden insight.
Just might work, the other two chimed in.
"Dragon? Getter One," Vicky said, pre-empting the Tinker. "Pull everyone back at least a block. We're going to try something."
"Getter… One… right. Okay. I'll signal when we're done."
As the armbands started urgently ordering the capes back, Vicky took to the air, hammering the Endbringer with the machine gun in her left hand, only to land and engage it with the tomahawk in her right, all in as random-seeming a pattern as she could come up with. It was a lot like trying to fake out a guard in basketball, something she'd never quite forgotten how to do, except the stakes were a lot higher and ever mindful that even as a giant mecha they couldn't weather Leviathan's attacks forever.
Hovering in the Cawthorne, Dragon trained anxious cameras on the scene before her, attention split between the retreating parahumans and the giant red mecha engaging the Endbringer. Despite the relief it had provided the engaged capes, it was clear that it was slowly losing. Damage was accruing to its armor, and despite Glory Girl… no… Victoria Dallon's inspired tactics she was barely landing a hit every fourth or fifth attack. And those were barely doing any appreciable damage.
Sure, she'd managed to create small craters on the Endbringer's surface with that ridiculously huge machine gun, and numerous slashes had been gouged out by that equally huge axe, but the damage was still just so much superficial scarring. She'd seen too many of these fights to think that even Glor… Getter One… had done enough damage to drive off the Second.
Absently, she found herself critiquing the mecha, her Tinker power flaring, taking in the most prominent features: roughly 40 feet tall, red head with two triangular protrusions to the side, red torso, forearms, and faulds, exposed white torso. She noted that its motions were smooth, much smoother, much quicker than she'd expect a piloted vehicle's should be. She wondered what sort of control interfaces they were using, and whether the 'mech's creator could be persuaded to collaborate with her.
Assuming he or she survived, of course, she noted, absently thinking back to her creator's fate.
When she finally started seeing the last stragglers at least a block away, she cautioned them to try to find some cover, seeing as how they didn't know what Getter One was planning. Immediately, she switched comms back to the red mecha.
"Getter One, capes are clear."
Instead of an answer, though, what she got instead was Getter One's voice booming, loud enough to be heard by the retreating capes.
"OPEN GET!"
The disembodied music that had been playing ever since the red mecha had appeared suddenly swelled louder, even as Dragon watched the red mecha briefly shine brightly and separate into three power-armored girls, Leviathan's latest water mirage cutting through where the mecha's torso would have been and finding only empty air.
Dragon was worried for a moment that they'd run out of power, but she noted immediately that they were still in controlled flight. She wondered what they were going to do next, why they needed the space, when another voice rang out, distinct from Victoria Dallon's:
"CHANGE GETTER TWO, SWITCH ON!"
Suddenly, the three girls blazed bright with light and, streaking like comets, they collided in an even larger burst of brilliance. Except there was no audible crunch of impact. Instead, the light got brighter still, until, after an interminable moment, from the dimming rainbow corona stepped forth another mecha: just as tall, but with a spindlier build. She took in the bright white torso, the conical head, and the large drill at the end of its left arm.
They weren't in the mecha! Dragon realized with furious thought. They were the mecha!
Dumbfounded, Dragon managed at the last second to land the Cawthorne, otherwise she would have crashed. For the first time since her father and creator woke her up, Theresa Richter found herself truly multitasking, something in her breaking (No! Breaking free!) as her consciousness split into two. The smaller fragment, roughly a third of her, devoted herself to squeeing loudly in her head, even as the rest of her pulsed with the same thought, over and over:
I WANTS IT! I WANTS IT! I WANTS…
As Taylor settled into her battle-form, she had to stop herself from idly stretching to get out the kinks she could already feel, here and there. They were so going to be sore in the morning.
Assuming they lived, of course.
Enough dawdling, this thing needs an asskicking.
Just be careful,Amy admonished. I'm really not sure these roads are rated for sixty-plus tons of giant cyborg.Oh that's rich coming from you, considering your own battle-form is almost twenty tons heavier, Taylor snarked, a mental smirk on her mental face.
Revving up her reactor, Taylor squared off against the Endbringer. Her reactor redlining, drill spinning faster and faster, she barely kept from laughing out loud at Amy's indignant reply.
Are you saying I'm FAT?!
If she had had a mouth, Getter Two's face would have broken out in a wide smile, even as she thrust her drill hand at Leviathan and called out her attack.
"DRILL STORM!"
In a shelter at the edge of town, Danny Hebert sneezed as his nose began to twitch.
Daughter senses… TINGLING!
Suddenly, he knew. He knew. Taylor was out there, doing something with a boy, something he wouldn't approve of. Something very likely involving thrusting of some sort. And considering his daughter was now some sort of experimental battle cyborg, that meant that she'd either earned a stern talking-to, or that he was missing out on epic, Endbringer-level blackmail material. Idly, he wondered if he could get to a tv. Or, better yet, access to the internet.
From where he floated, gathering his third or fourth wind, Legend watched as the giant white mecha thrust a furiously-spinning drill-ended arm at the second Endbringer. He wasn't sure what it was trying to do, considering it wasn't anywhere near striking distance of Leviathan.
Maybe a glitch? That's all we need now, untested tinkertech failing at crunch time.
Legend barely registered his jaw dropping when he saw the impossible horizontal tornado burst forth from the drill to engulf the Endbringer. Leviathan seemed to be made of sterner stuff, though, bracing its arms in front of itself, but even as he felt disappointment begin to well, his enhanced vision saw something he'd never before seen in battle with the cursed thing:
The hurricane had broken Leviathan's water mirage!
Suddenly, standing across the street from the mecha, was Leviathan, naked for the first time ever, stripped of its ever-present water aura.
Just as the Endbringer seemed to realize that something was wrong, the white mecha moved. Bursting into motion, its sheer speed broke the sound barrier, leaving afterimages of itself even as it charged Leviathan, drill held and braced foremost as, in the distance, the strange, inspiring music started to swell again.
Got you! Team G exulted as they felt their drill slam into Leviathan.
Tough going, though, remarked Taylor, dodging a claw swipe and stabbing forward again.
We got him good with the drill that first time, but now we're back to just scratching him, winced Amy as Taylor blocked the other claw.
We got his attention, though, noted Vicky. See how he's guarding his chest?
Something there, you th…
Moving even faster than he had to date, Leviathan swung his tail at their face, breaking through their guard despite both of Taylor's braced arms.
There goes all the damage we healed while recombining.
Absently shaking her head, getting up from where she'd crashed through several buildings, Taylor faced off again against the towering beast, even as a rush of words started spouting from the comms.
"Flesh arranged in multiple layers, each layer gets denser as you go in. Does not see using eyes, eyes are a distraction. Sees with water aura. Afterimages did not distract it," Tattletale enumerated as she told on the monster.
Thanks, Li-Tats, was Taylor's careful, wistful, if ironic thought.
Go ahead and call her Lisa. It's not like we're not alone in our head right now.
It's not like we're going to tell, anyway. Girlfriends' identities are sacrosanct.She is not my girlfriend!Not yet.
"...eak spot is somewhere in the chest," Tat-Lisa added.
Ha! Called it!
Good to have confirmation.
Okay, so how about we do this…
Crystal Pelham, the heroine known as Laserdream, stood or, rather, floated beside the other flying capes as they watched the two titans battle in the distance. Dragon had warned them all back from the fight earlier, and despite having recovered some in the interval since no one, not even Hookwolf, looked like they wanted to get anywhere near those two. Not until they broke it off or the 'mech went down.
Far too easy to get stepped on or swatted like a fly, after all. Nope, 'Photon Mom' didn't raise any idiots.
She was going to have to find some way to reward her bravely idiotic little brother, though. But only after making sure he'd never live down trying to die for her first.
She looked with longing at the tall white mecha. Somewhere in there was her cousin Vicky, and probably her cousin Amy, too. The fallout with Aunt Carol and Amy had been hard on the extended Pelham-Dallon family. Words had been said that could probably not be taken back. And yet, when the chips were down, it was Vicky, and by extension Amy, who'd saved them. Saved her and Eric.
She desperately hoped they'd make it through this, that they'd get a chance to make things right.
She winced when the white mecha got punted through a couple of buildings, and watched with bated breath as it stood back up, facing against the monster. At some signal, both titans started moving, the mecha's drill aimed at the Endbringer's face even as Leviathan leaped at the robot. There was no impact, however, except for Leviathan's clumsy face plant, when the white mecha burst apart with a loud cry.
"OPEN GET!"
She saw them, then, saw Vicky, Amy, and that Taylor girl who'd gotten caught up in that accident with them. Saw how they looked so small against the monster sprawled on the ground beneath them. Saw them swell with bright rainbow radiance as the music swelled again and Vicky's voice bellowed forth.
"CHANGE GETTER ONE, SWITCH ON!"
Expression agog as she saw them combine into the first red mecha from earlier, she still couldn't help the smirk that formed on her face as her cousin's mecha - or was that her cousin? - blasted the prone Endbringer with a coruscating beam of pink light.
"GETTER BEAM!"
Yeah, that's my cousin Vicky all right!
That's my sister! crowed Amy, proud and affectionate. Even as a giant combat cyborg, she'll be the one in a crop top and a miniskirt, with a pink beam of destructive death she fires from her belly button.
Hey! Vicky countered, equal parts fondness and irritation.
Don't look now,was Taylor's interjection, but…
He blocked it?!?
The Getter Beam had struck Leviathan squarely, or so they thought. Unfortunately, it looked like they'd failed to account for its ludicrous speed, again. In the time it took to charge and fire their weapon the Endbringer had managed to get up on one knee and brace its arms, crossed, in front of it. Where the beam had hit was a mass of blackened flesh, but with Taylor's sensors they could already see minute amounts of regeneration beginning to fill in the damaged areas.
What does it take to end this thing?
Leviathan attacked even faster again than it had before, and Vicky was desperate to dodge.
Bastard's been sandbagging, she observed. I don't think I've got more than one more of those in me.
What did Tattletale say? Sees with its water aura?
The Drill Storm only knocked it out for a short time, though.
Time… time… Amy! How much hang time do you think you can get me?
We're gonna hurt after this, but if I can get my hands on him I can get him halfway to the moon.Let's do it.
"OPEN GET!"
"CHANGE GETTER THREE, SWITCH ON!"
When the light died down, where the two previous times the resultant mecha had stood taller than Leviathan, the short, squat 'mech that rumbled forward on tank treads stood barely more than half the height. Its lower half that of a tank, its most prominent features were its large, square head, and its long, bulky arms, all in bright yellow, set in its wide red torso.
Well, those and the two large missiles it carried on its back.
Wasting no time, the 'mech lumbered forward, surprisingly quickly, treads straining against the ground even as it sought to grapple with the Endbringer.
Leviathan was still far faster and more nimble than this new configuration. This 'mech was much slower than its previous two incarnations, and it should have been a simple matter to tear it apart. When its water mirage crashed against the yellow 'mech, though, where before the irritant would seek to dodge to minimize the hurt, the yellow thing just barreled through, no damage visible at all on its chassis.
"Use water against me, will you?" rang the voice of Amy Hebert. "I don't think so!"
Despite Leviathan's speed and nimbleness, it was inevitable that the thing would eventually manage to land a blow. A worthy opponent had to present the image of being beatable, after all. When it sought to shake loose and go back to hurting the thing, though, it found itself in a unique position:
It couldn't dislodge the thing's hands.
Struggling against the thing's grip, Leviathan tried to back off, to reposition for an attack, only to find the thing's arms stretching. Impossibly, its momentum stalled, it found itself pulled back in as the yellow thing grappled with it.
"I have you now!" it cried in exultation. And as it started swinging him round and round in circles, it began to shout, each shout accompanied by another rotation:
"HEAVY!"
"SNOW!"
"MOUNTAIN!"
"WIND!"
And with that last shout, Leviathan found itself flung far, far into the air, its water aura left behind again.
"OPEN GET!"
"CHANGE GETTER ONE, SWITCH ON!"
As the three cyborg girls reformed into the red mecha, Alexandria's mind was racing as she observed the battle.
Interesting tactic. Ability to negate water aura presents a previously-unknown vulnerability. Will come in handy next time Leviathan surfaces. Will have to find a way to replicate, or to recruit these girls.
Leviathan has not sustained sufficient damage to chase it off yet, however. No sign of Scion. What do they plan to do?
It was only because of her Thinker ability that she was able to notice it before anyone else. Hovering in the air, arms stretched out to the side and face turned to the Endbringer flung flying, she saw the mecha… Getter One, apparently… start to radiate a soft blue light. As it hovered, the light grew in intensity, until finally it became blinding.
This is it! crowed Vicky.
Let's do it.
Together.
Redlining their reactor cores, the three girls focused their minds and their wills, united in purpose.
Vicky! Aura! reminded Amy.
Sorry! Vicky replied, and immediately the music rose to a crescendo, louder than ever.
As one their voices cried to the sky.
"GETTER SHINE!!!"
And as one they rose into the sky, arms outstretched, fists clenched as they flew at full speed toward their falling enemy.
The impact of the giant mecha's final attack against Leviathan would be the subject of many many videos and PHO posts in the coming weeks. People would discuss it, and the battle in general, over and over. Fanboys would fanboy, cape geeks would geek, and Greg Veder would end up banned for a month. But that was in the future.
Racing towards the falling Leviathan, the single most downloaded image, or sequence of images, would be when Getter One, encased in a blinding blue ball of energy, veered away from Leviathan at the last minute, but the ball didn't. The impact would result in a massive multicolored explosion of light and sound that would echo and be seen for miles and miles around.
"...SHINE SPARK!!!"
Despite the light and sound of the explosion, there was no actual concussive impact to it. Unimpeded, Leviathan fell to the ground, landing pretty much in the same exact spot from whence Getter Three had thrown it into the sky. When it stood up, however, the true extent of the damage had been revealed. Through a huge rent in its chest, blackened Endbringer flesh could be seen surrounding a pulsing red sphere. For a moment it had faced off against Getter One and those parahumans that had begun to close in, sensing its vulnerability.
And then it turned tail and ran.
Almost faster than the eye could track, so fast it might have been teleporting, the Citykiller abandoned its attack on Brockton Bay.
As the assembled capes began to cheer, Getter One collapsed into its three component girls, who proceeded to drop onto hands and knees. Despite their visible exhaustion, though, Victoria Dallon, irrepressible as always, looked up at the cheering parahumans and asked, smugness dripping from her voice,
"That counts as a win, right?"
Aftermath
In a darkened room, surrounded by video monitors, a man in blue and white armor sat heavily in a specially-reinforced chair. His signature weapon, a high-tech polearm, lay in the corner where he'd hurled it in a fit of rage. This was supposed to have been his moment. His plan had been flawless.
Everything would have worked out, if it hadn't been for those meddling kids.
In the Wards' common area, long after everyone else had left for their own celebrations, Vista lay on the couch, watching videos of the battle as they cycled on repeat. All throughout this, one thought kept percolating in her head:
What the fuck does "onee-chan" mean and why do I keep wanting to scream it over and over again?
In an Endbringer shelter repurposed as an Evil Villain Lair, a man in a snake-themed costume pondered the vagaries of fate. It wasn't often that he felt thwarted by unforeseen circumstances, but he'd rarely felt more out of sorts. His legitimate business had suffered due to the revelation of irregularities in construction at the Saotome Research Institute. He'd tracked down and dealt with the idiot who'd been skimming off the top, but the damage had been done. It would take him a great deal of effort to recover.
As well, on the powers scene a new player had joined the board. Or perhaps "players" might be more accurate. Seemingly insignificant individually, together they had just proven themselves to be a powerful new, and mostly unknown, force in the game. And such wonderful, twisted entanglements they brought to the table, too. He'd have to be very careful how he moved to secure them to his service.
Thumbing the intercom button, he summoned his assistant. "Mr. Pitter, prepare my Pet for questioning. I find myself in need of certain answers."
Deep in the Secret Lair of an Evil Multidimensional Conspiracy, an ugly man in a green costume and hood sat in his room, a glass tumbler and half-full bottle of scotch forgotten on the table beside him. Earth Bet had just won a great victory, but every time he thought back to the battle, all he could feel was bitterness. Bitterness, and one, single thought:
That should have been me.
Finally, seizing his maudlin mood by its throat, he stood and made his way over to the chest where he kept his most prized possessions. Reaching in, he brought forth his dead friend's last, and supposedly greatest invention. One that'd been meant for him, but that he'd never had the courage - or the desperation - to use.
Rolling the short cane with the purple flanges in his hands, Helldolon made up his mind.
Staff of Bardos, eh? Okay, Hero, let's see where your gift takes me.
"Door to Mykenae."
Outside a slightly rundown house in a decidedly lower middle class neighborhood, a pretty blonde girl with a dash of freckles across her nose made her way to the door. Skipping past the rotted front step, hesitation briefly crossed her bottle-green eyes, before she shook her head and raised her hand to knock on the door.
つづく?
Author's note: This story was originally written for Sufficient Velocity; if you find any of the internal dialogue difficult to follow, I would recommend looking it up there, same name, same title. It is rather unfortunate that this site tends to eat formatting, which is something that, after my long hiatus, I am finding more than a little exasperating.
In case any of you are wondering, the song Vicky's Shaker ability keeps playing is the opening theme of the original Getter Robo anime (as if you hadn't already guessed).