(A few minutes later) [Cincinnati city outskirt]
Sophia Hess was no coward. Even if it was like the apocalypse was happening all around her.
Rainshower down, GD-5.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck." She chanted under her breath. She had just watched a flying cape get swatted out of the sky by one of the Endbringers car-thick lightning bolts- the blonde cape's blue and white silhouette crashing somewhere nearby.
"AAAAUGGGHHHH! IT BURNS! MY EYES! MY EYES!" she heard the cape that she was tracking wail in agony. But in the midst of the bone-rattling thundercracks and the zooming lasers and tremoring shockwave and everyone else fucking screaming, Sophia didn't know where the fuck that particular screaming was coming from.
"Chloe, can you guide me to that Rainshower cape?!" Sophia barked into her armband to the 'Operator' that was in charge of tracking downed capes.
"Rainshower is currently in the second house south of you. Second floor, west side of the structure." Chloe's voice advised from her armband as she took on her shadow form- phasing through hedges and walls to her target.
Sophia Hess was no coward. After all, here she was- a Ward fresh out of the PRT's boot camp- and already attending her first fucking Endbringer fight.
Realitywiper down, FG-1. Ansgar down, HB-4. Takhmaspada deceased, HB-4.
Sure, she might have talked big in front of the other Brockton Bay Wards. Lorded it over the others about how she was a predator, and wasn't scared of anything and how she would have had no problem attending an Endbringer fight… just as Armsmaster had walked in to announce Behemoth's attack. In that situation, what else was she supposed to do? Back down and say that she was just full of hot air? She was pretty much forced to come, out of her own damn pride. Pride that she sure as shit knew wasn't worth dying for!
Sophia entered the house just in time to hear the Rainshower cape scream hoarsely.
"I DONT WANNA DIE! SOMEBODY HELP PLEASE!" the cape continued to scream.
"Search and rescue has arrived at your location, Rainshower." Sophia heard Chloe announce through Rainshower's armband just as she turned the corner, and Sophia almost stopped in her tracks as she saw the cape. The left side of her upper body was burnt incredibly bad- angry black and red burns spread up from her vapourized left breast, past the burnt stump of her left arm, and all the way to the top of her head. The left half of her face was made skeletal as the skin was burnt off to char the muscle underneath, and all the blonde hair on the left side of her head was gone. Her melted eyeballs streamed down her cheeks in still steaming rivers.
This was what Behemoth- the Herokiller endbringer- does. To the lucky ones.
Kiaskari deceased, HC-2. Turbokick deceased, HC-2. Ironlurker deceased, HC-2. Capoleox down, HB-3.
"I'm here! I got you, Rainshower!" Sophia shouted out to her.
"Thankyou! Thank you!" the burnt cape blubbered gratefully on the floor- blindly reaching out with her unburnt hand.
"I got you, I got you!" Sophia half-yelled as she kneeled down beside the fallen cape, "I got something for the burn, then we can get you to safety. But bite down on something, this will sting bad."
Rainshower assisted.
Sophia heard her armband announce, and she had to stop from spitting in contempt. 'Assisted.' What a fucking joke. She got sent here with nothing but a two big can of burn spray, a suture kit, some bandages, radiation pills and happy fucking thoughts. Not even some morphine to stop the blinding pain. Pulling out a can of burn spray, Sophia applied it liberally over Rainshower's wounded area- ignoring Rainshower's muffled scream of pain as she emptied the can. They can only hope that it was enough to prevent shock.
"Wait!" the burnt cape pleaded, "My leg, the left one, it's broken from the landing I think!"
"Fuck our shitty luck. Come on!" Sophia grunted out as she hefted the white-and-blue form of Rainshower up from the floor and supported her with her shoulder. "I don't got splints with me so I have to support you down the stairs."
"We're not going to make it, we're dead, I'm already dead!" the other girl sobbed- her blackened arm stump gesturing to herself.
Sophia slapped the girl hard on her uninjured cheek.
"1-in-3." She growled back.
"Whah?" the other girl gasped breathlessly in confusion, and Sophia gritted her teeth.
"Legend told everyone that every third cape going into a Behemoth fight was going to die on a good day. But I'm not going to be part of that third, and neither are you! So hold the fuck on, Rainshower!"
Ansgar assisted. Capoleox assisted.
Still, it was a fucking welcome change of pace to hear people getting assisted instead of getting downed or deceased. Down the stairs they climbed despite the momentary quakes, and through the side door of the house they stumbled onto the grassy lawn and into hell. Burning suburban houses all around them, raging forest fires in the distance, the orange afternoon sky filled with lasers and missiles and beams and lightning and flying capes. And just for icing on the shit cake that she's been served, Sophia's endbringer armband told her that they were about half a kilometre away from the nearest triage station.
"Behemoth's running South-west!"
Electronking deceased, GC-1. Eferhild deceased, GC-1. Hoplite deceased, GC-2…
With the odds stacked against her, Sophia was forced to do something she had never done before: Call for help.
"Shadowstalker requesting Medevac, low prior-
"Broadcasting to everyone in the GD sector, if you're hearing this, then Behemoth is running in your direction from the North-east!"
North-east? But that was…
RRROOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGRRRRRRR!
…right in front of them.
50-feet-tall or around 15 meters as- Like a black-stoned volcano had stood up and marched- it towered over the suburban houses. The ground shook slightly with every step it made as lightning crackled from its stony fingers- its arms raised to chest-level as entire lightning storms raged out in every direction.
Redliner deceased, GC-2. Prabir deceased, GC-2. Hoodwastrel deceased, GC-3, Goron deceased, GC-3. Latticelady deceased, GC-3. Whiterook deceased, GD-1. Arjuna deceased, GD-1. Diamondtoad deceased, GD-2. Lakshman deceased, GD-3…
And it turned its head toward them both. A magma-orange maw snarling wide open with rows of sharp teeth of black stone. Horns of obsidian flared from the tops and sides of its head to form a fearsome black crown.
Legend down, GC-2.
This was Behemoth. The Herokiller.
A titanic arm of dark stone began to aim in their general direction and Sophia's utter instincts and fear kicked in.
"HIT THE DIRT!" she shrieked as she tossed both of them to the ground- a constant beam of lightning ravaging the ground they were just standing on as well as the house they had just left. And just as the beam passed them, searing pain shot up her leg, and slammed into her brain with the force of trainwreck.
"ARRRRGGGGHHHH!" Sophia grabbed at the stums of her cauterised right calf.
Shadowstalker down, GD-5. Rainshower down, GD-5.
"Don't leave me! PLEASE!" the injured cape that she had tried to rescue who was alternating between pulling herself along the ground with just her one good arm, and reaching out blindly for her. Sophia's gloved hand caught it- gripping it tight.
"We're not dead yet!" Sophia shouted out in defiance, "Not like this! Not in fucking Ohio of all places!"
Then she heard it. Strange music- like a church choir of oversized fax machines was singing gospel hymns to the thooming melody of a techno-pipe organ.
Sophia watched as they marched through the wreckage and ruin.
She would have said that they were half-man and half-machine. But that would be untrue: they were far more than just half machine. Their arms replaced by either too-long steel vices or cannons so large she could fit her arm into the barrel. Each massive gun belching fire and smoke and a boom that thumped against her bones. Steel censers swung on chains from their hips. The pungent scent of car oil and engine exhaust wafting in their passing as dozens of them fearlessly stomped towards the Endbringer on their digitigrade legs of powerful hydraulics and clawed feet of solid metal.
And one of those cyborgs loomed right over her and Rainshower.
The expressionless face of a normal man stared down at her even as the entire left-side his face looked like it was being eaten by metal plating, camera lenses and wiring. Narrow metallic tentacles tipped with syringes, pincers and tiny chainsaws sprouting from the metal plating of its chest and back.
"G-get the fuck away!" She panicked.
"You are being rescued, meatbag. Resistance is futile." The man-robot coldly replied just as two of its needled tentacles darted forward as quickly as snakes and lightly jabbed each of them on the jugular.
"W-whu?" Rainshower groaned lazily- making Sophia do a double take.
"Was that morphi- Wait, nevermind, I figured it out~" She murmured with a dopey smile as her eyes dilated- the pain floating away… along with her. She barely even felt it as the metal man reached down, picked the both of them up and began stomping away with them.
Shadowstalker assisted. Rainshower assisted.
And as the strange techno-gothic music reached its crescendo, a massive robot almost as tall as the Endbringer itself strode into view. Like a hunched back iron giant with long mechanical limbs, it stood there fearlessly with its sturdy metal armour casing painted in a distinct red. A fucking orange lightsaber in hand and the biggest scifi-looking raygun Sophia had ever seen in the other.
It stared down Behemoth as they stood about 80 metres apart from one another, and spoke in a voice- cold and metallic. Its booming declaration echoed by every armband and rolled over the landscape like a grand edict from a demigod.
"The Adeptus Mechanicus has arrived."