//------------------------------//
// 8 - Endbringers (Part 1) 
// Story: A Friend In Need 
// by sopchoppy 
//------------------------------//

Twilight’s head jerked off of the desk a page of her notes sticking to her face as a few more scattered to the floor in the conference room Armsmaster had provided for her at protectorate headquarters. Flame Dancer was sleeping on the bottom half of a bunk bed that had recently been added in the corner. With the threat of the Nine seeming to have passed Dragon had convinced her that it would make a lot of people feel better if she took up residence with the protectorate when she wasn’t working in the city. Being close to her friends in the wards again had been nice as well.

Through the window she could see rain falling in sheets into the bay outside and an uneasy dread swept over her. Something wasn’t right. A monitor on the other side of the desk clicked on and Dragon’s face appeared.

“Is there something wrong Twilight? Are you ok?”

“I, I’m not sure I could explain it.” Twilight said as she pealed of the page that had been stuck on her face with magic and sorted it and the others that had been disturbed by her waking. “I don’t feel right, something feels wrong somehow…..I can’t put my hoof on it.”

“You’ve been working yourself too hard, and sleeping on the desk can’t have helped. Maybe you just had a bad dream?”

“Maybe,” Twilight grimaced, “Ugh I almost feel sick. That’s the last thing I need right now with all the projects we’re working on. I think we are really making progress on finding a resonance connection to Equestria.”

“Why don’t you go to bed and get some sleep in a real bed for a few hours, You may feel better after a few hours of decent sleep.”

Twilight snorted, “Look who’s talking Miss ‘I’m always awake whatever hour Twilight is working.’ Besides I’m not sure I could get to sleep feeling like this.” Twilight floated over a bottle of water and took a small sip and grimaced as she swallowed.

“I know something that will cheer you up. I have some more footage of your two disciples in action.” Dragon said with a definite amused humor. Twilight groaned and brought a hoof up to rub her forehead.

“Please tell me that they haven’t accidentally electrocuted or frozen anything…else.” Dragon chuckled and brought up a video feed of Uber and Leet in blue coveralls, Uber wearing a red shirt and hat while Leet wore green.

“What are they wearing now?” Twilight asked as she watched the video play. “Do I want to know why it looks like they're kicking turtle shells into an open sewer grate?”

“They explained to you about video games right?” Dragon asked and Twilight shuddered at memory of a discussion that she truly believed only Pinkie Pie could have made sense from. “One of the most popular games series of all time feature two plumbers.” Dragon said as she gestured to the screen again.

“Wait..plumbers? Seriously? And what do turtle shells have to do with plumbing?” Twilight asked feeling a headache coming on as she watched them put the manhole cover back and hop onto two vehicles that had been painted to almost resemble immature dragons and speed off screen. Dragon giggled.

“The Japanese sometimes had very..hmm..unique, ideas when they made video games. I do believe they took your words about helping make the city a better place to heart. From what I’ve been able to gather the ‘turtles’ seem to be cleaning the sewers and the storm water system.” 

Dragon paused and continued in a slightly more serious tone. “They seem to have given up on crime and even emailed a bunch of designs and plans to the protectorate this morning. After you sort through all the game console specs even Armsmaster grudgingly said they had a few good ideas.” Dragon glanced over Twilight's shoulder where Flame Dancer was sleeping. “You seem to have a knack for getting people to turn over a new leaf.”

Twilight smiled but shifted uncomfortably. It had been strongly hinted to her by several people that they suspected who Flame Dancer had been, and it was only Twilight’s word and their nonsensical secret mask rules that was allowing the charade to continue. Before Twilight could dwell on that Dragon continued her tone amused again.

“They also appear to have organized the creation of a new non-profit and purchased one of the vacant lots near the boat graveyard. Assault cc'd everyone a picture of the lot and the sign they put out in front of it this morning.” Twilight looked at the picture that Dragon put up on the screen and read the sign with growing bewilderment and disbelief.



“Future home of Our Twilight Princess Temple of Friendship and Gaming. Honesty, Generosity, Kindness, Laughter, Loyalty and Magic. Follow the path of friendship and harmony laid down by the emissary from the stars.”



Twilight spluttered, “Princess?! They can’t just go and suddenly make someone princess, you can’t just do that! My family isn’t even nobility. Emissary from the stars?!? What does that even mean?” She kept reading.



“Estimated completion date Fall 2011. Temporarily based at 516 Forsyth Street, half hour services every Saturday at 6:30PM. Community game night to follow. For more information and to get involved go to:www.OurTwilightPrincess.com - Uber & Leet”



Twilight stared at the screen as if looking at could make it change. The background of the sign was an image of a building and grounds that seemed to be shaped like Twilight’s cutie mark. “They can’t just go and..do whatever it is they’re doing can they?” Dragon laughed.

“I’m afraid there is nothing really stopping them, honestly I can think of a lot worse they could be doing than trying to spread your ideas about friendship and harmony.” Twilight struggled to find a rebuttal to this and after a moment let out a defeated laugh.

“I guess you're right, if what Skitter told me about them is true, but I only had time to give them my half hour friendship lecture and some brief notes on my theories - and they can’t just decide to call me a princess, there are rules to those things. And ‘Temple’, if my translation spell is working, that doesn’t sound right. Ponies haven’t had temples since the pre-classical era. Maybe I can at least get them to just call it the ‘Friendship hall’ and without Twilight or Princess cluttering it up anywhere.”

“Good luck with that.” Dragon replied in a tone that Applejack used when she thought someone was going to attempt something both pointless and humorous. Twilight grumbled a bit looking at the screen and back at Dragon before laughing again.

“Thanks for cheering me up or at least distracting me.” Twilight trailed off with a little yawn. “I do feel a little bit better now, maybe I will try and get some sleep and let whatever this feeling is pass.” Twilight said as she pushed herself away from the desk.

“That sounds like a good ide-“ Dragon suddenly froze and a worried look overcame her face.

“Dragon? What’s wrong?”

“Leviathan’s coming.”

“WHAT?!?” Twilight said loud enough to wake Flame Dancer on the other side of the room. “Where? When?!?”

“Brockton Bay, half an hour, maybe less.” Twilight reached out with her senses and immediately wretched all over the floor. She suddenly understood her unease and nausea from earlier. The whole local field felt subtly twisted, wrong. And the effect was slowly getting worse. Rolling in from the ocean like an incoming tide. Twilight yanked a notebook from a shelf on the far wall labeled: ‘Local Leviathan attack checklist, one hour or less.’

She almost tore the front cover off with her magic before she forced herself to take a calming breath. As Twilight flipped to the first page she heard sirens start to wail all over Brockton Bay.

Ten minutes later Twilight stood on the roof of the Protectorate headquarters in the middle of the bay, mane plastered to her fur by the downpour and carefully checked over the spell diagram she had inscribed there before sitting down in the middle of it. The local protectorate team had relocated to the city and were hurriedly preparing a staging area for hero’s and villains to rally at. Dragon was flying in from Canada and other super hero teams were teleporting in as fast as it was possible to do so.

Twilight took a deep breath and lit her horn, prepared, she was able to hold her gorge as she started to channel more and more power and began to interact with the tainted field. As far as she knew casting a magic dampening ward of the size she was attempting had never been tried before. Her eyes began to glow and her mane and tail lifted from her skin as if caught in a phantom zephyr as she started to forcibly wrench twisted field back into its normal state.

Fully immersed in her power she could now see the approaching dark anomaly that had to be Leviathan and the disrupted wake in the magic field his presence was pushing before him. At the heart of that rushing darkness the magic was so intense that it was warping space and matter around it. Twilight pressed a hoof against the silver necklace she was wearing and spoke into the air, her voice strained in concentration.

“Dragon, I can see the effect he is having on the magic field - He’s starting to slowly accelerate, the best approximation of his distance and speed puts his landfall in just shy of ten minutes. As we planned I’m going to attempt to suppress water based magical effects in the area with a ward spell. He’s so strong Dragon. I’m not sure how much what I’m doing will effect him, but if it works at all it will also likely effect anyone else in the area that uses a water based magic.”

“Confirmed, I’ve passed the information along to the responders. I’m less than five minutes away. Be careful Twilight, good luck.”

Even before Twilight had seen Leviathan’s presence in the field she knew from what she had read and the videos she had watched that it would be all but impossible to cast a strong enough ward spell to cut Leviathan’s access to water based magic completely. The best she could hope for was to make it harder to reach, slower to respond. To dull the edge of his preferred magical weapon enough to maybe make a difference.

The forcefield that enclosed the protectorate base snapped off as interference from Twilight’s gathering spell became too great for the tinker equipment to compensate for. In the gloom of the storm Twilight and the diagram below her were now glowing a like purple star over the ocean. The largest teleportation spell she had ever felt dropped into the ocean of power somewhere behind her in the city, and Twilight hoped that meant more help had arrived but she could pay it no more attention as she reached the critical phase of her casting. 

She floated off of the roof and the rain suddenly froze in mid air. The water in the bay stilled until its surface resembled a dark mirror. Then the bay, and every rain drop and puddle in Brockton took on a momentary purple glow. With a flash Twilight collapsed back onto the roof panting as the rain thundered once again around her. Laying on the rough wet roof Twilight felt a glimmer hope as she felt the overwhelming presence on the horizon stop its advance, only to have that hope dashed when after just a moment she felt Leviathan’s twisted magic wake start pushing forward once again. 

“Did it work?” A strong female voice asked from behind her. Twilight pulled herself to her hooves and turned her head to look at Alexandria who was floating inches above the rooftop.

“Yes, I..I put as much power as I could into the ward, the spell cast successfully. I don’t know how much it will effect him. I did feel him hesitate a moment, he noticed it.” Alexandria paused for a second in thought before nodding.

“Making an Endbringer hesitate is not a feat many can claim. Hopefully it will give us an advantage. Either way, thank you. Let me carry you back to the staging area, we only have a few minutes left.” Twilight nodded and Alexandria knelt so that Twilight could wrap her forelegs around her neck. Seconds later Alexandria took off with more speed and certainly more grace than Twilight thought she would ever achieve with her wings.

They landed in a large open parking lot not far from the boardwalk and Twilight let go and dropped to her hooves. Alexandria walked briskly towards a man at the edge of the crowd wearing a blue-green outfit with an oversized hood and sleeves that were illuminated in a soft green glow. Twilight scanned the crowd until she saw Flame Dancer, Skitter, and the Wards gathered off to the left and started to trot quickly in their direction. 

Dozens of capes, some she recognized from her time in the city and many others she had never seen before stood in loosely organized bunches. They were listening to man in a skin tight blue costume with what looked to Twilight like a design of jagged white flames covering it. Twilight had seen him flying and shooting bright beams of energy at Leviathan in one of the recordings Dragon had showed her. He had a strong confident voice that carried over the sound of the rain and the murmured conversations of people talking frantically into radios, phones or quietly with their neighbors.

“We owe thanks to Dragon and Armsmaster for their early alert. We only have a few short minutes before Leviathan’s arrival so I am going to get straight to the details. You’ve all seen videos online, you know what he’s physically capable of, what I want you to remember, no matter what his appearance might suggest, is that he is not stupid. He has displayed cunning and tactics that have caught too many good heroes and villains off guard. Don’t let yourself think that you have him figured out.” 

He paused as a vehicle that looked like someone had tried combine a human airplane with the aesthetic of a four legged creature roared overhead and landed on the far side of the crowd. As Twilight followed the machine with her head she stopped and did a double take. At the edge of the crowd was a naked human with a horn larger than Celestia’s growing from her head. The human looked up and caught Twilight staring. Twilight blushed and waved awkwardly with a hoof and the woman gave her a small smile in return. Despite a burning curiosity Twilight turned away and finished closing the distance to her friends. They shared a couple of quick hugs while the man in the blue costume continued. 

“What sets him apart is his focus on water. You’re likely aware of his afterimage, his water echo. This is no mere splash of water. At the speeds Leviathan can move, surface tension and compressibility make water harder than concrete. He also has a crude hydrokinesis, the ability to manipulate water, and there will be water on the battlefield. Twilight Sparkle has attempted something that should make it at least a little more difficult for him to use these abilities today.” Twilight ducked her head as the assembled crowd glanced her way. “However the effect is not limited to Leviathan, any ability you have that focuses on or interacts with water may be impossible or at least much harder to use.”

“Regardless of any impairment Twilight Sparkle’s actions may cause him, this is a fight we must end as quickly as possible. Brockton Bay sits on top of a large underground aquifer and Leviathan is primarily a hydrokinetic on a macro scale. Given enough time he can likely stir and agitate the water beneath the city and collapse entire local seaboard. We cannot afford another Newfoundland or Kyushu to happen here today. Our first Priority-”

Twilight suddenly felt the approaching presence of Leviathan accelerate faster than anything she had ever even conceived of. She lit her horn pulled as hard and fast on her magic as she could. An unexpected resonance in the field around her magnified her spell and a shimmering purple dome snapped into existence just in time to intercept Leviathan erupting from the ocean and traveling faster than sound. 

Twilight cried out in pain and staggered as the thirty foot tall beast and hundreds of tons of water slammed into her shield. An earth shattering boom carried for miles as water and earth were vaporized and ejected in every direction from the impact point. Spiderwebbing cracks spread rapidly outwards across the shield. Everyone began to move. 

“Strider get us o-“ 

The dome shattered with an almost musical sound and Leviathan swung his huge tail around in a vicious arc towards the crowd of capes.

Twilight’s stomach lurched and her head spun as tried to recover from the roughest teleport transition she had ever made. She heard groans around her and she lifted her head from the grass where she was laying to look around. Sprawled around her in ungainly heaps were most of the capes that had been at the rally point, retching and obviously feeling the effects of the bad teleport even more than Twilight. They appeared to be laying in the grass of some sort of sport’s stadium and Twilight could see a huge plume of dust reaching for the sky over the far set of stands and the distant rumble of explosions.
 
She saw Alexandria, Legend, and Eidolon launch into the air and Dragon’s suit roared after them. 
 
“Whoa, ugh, Strider’s teleports never felt like that before.” Twilight turned and saw Vista slowly pushing herself up into a sitting position. As others around her started to sit up or stand a niggling feeling prompted Twilight to stretch out her magical senses and what she felt shocked her. The lingering traces of the spell had her magical signature all over them. It was her spell. She had been the one that cast the teleport spell! Yet clearly she had no memory of doing so, how was that possible? Suddenly she remembered the odd resonance and unexpected strength of her shield and the pieces clicked into place. She knew what she had to do.
 
Twilight’s horn lit up and arcs of magic began to spark from her as wind started to swirl around her.
 
“Twilight? What are you doing? Legend just called in over the communicators, they need everyone with shielding abilities to-”
 
“I’ll be back, there is something I need to do right now.”
 
“Back?!? Twilight what are you-” Twilight didn’t hear the rest of whatever Vista was going to say as she was surrounded by a globe of white light and vanished.
 
And reappeared on top of a building by the ocean, looking down on the group of assembled parahumans just as Past-Twilight was beginning her frantic preparation to cast her brother’s shield spell. Hurriedly she synchronized her magic with her past self’s and threw as much energy as she could spare into reinforcing the spell while hopefully saving enough to manage the largest teleport she had ever attempted.
 
Even before the shield snapped into place Twilight released herself from the spell and dove deep into her remaining magic to construct the teleport spell. Her mind screamed as she tried to keep track of all the shifting variables over such a huge area, and even though she knew it was coming her concentration nearly broke when she was knocked off her hooves by Leviathan’s earth shaking impact with the shield. Frantically she rushed to finish the spell as the shield began to shatter and she began to feel herself being tugged out of the present. 
 
The capes below had just started to react, Leviathan, ichor streaming from his body, began to bring his tail around faster than the eye could follow, Twilight straining in concentration and loosing her grip on time, released the teleportation spell just as she was flung violently back into the future. With a flash she reappeared on the sports field. Thirty seconds had elapsed, things had changed.
 
Hovering a couple of feet over the center of the field was what looked like one of the barges she had pulled from the boat graveyard. It had been cut down to form a long oval and iron railing welded along it’s edge. A metal fin, almost resembling a rudder, was attached to either side of the stern. Uber and Leet, dressed in another set of costumes were ushering what looked like most of the Wards, Flame Dancer, Skitter, and a few other parahumans aboard as the sound of explosions and collapsing buildings grew closer by the second. No one else was still there.
 
Vista noticed her and suddenly there was virtually no distance between Twilight and the converted barge. Before Twilight could react Uber reached down and hauled Twilight up by her forelegs.
 
“Get us out of here Chewy!” Uber shouted and Leet responded with a guttural cry as the ship lurched skyward just as Leviathan barreled through the far side of the stadium collapsing a huge section of the stands in his wake. “Nice of you to join us your worship.” Uber said as Twilight regained her feet and the barge continued to speed away from the stadium. Eidolon flew into the stadium and Leviathan started to glow a light green. The monster levitated off the ground just long enough for Alexandria to fly in and slam a fist into him. Leviathan flew back through the hole he had created and Legend and a cape glowing a blinding white arrived to fire searing energy beams into the tumbling beast.
 
The barge was high enough now that Twilight could see the swath of destruction Leviathan had left between what had once been the boardwalk and the sports stadium. A slightly irregular line a hundred feet wide of collapsed buildings all the way to the ocean, in less than a minute. Twilight gasped at the destruction and all the ruined lives it had to represent. Twilight felt sadness and then a bewildered anger start to well up in her. ‘Why? Why was this happening? Why was a creature that was obviously on some level intelligent doing this?’
 
“Twilight…TWILIGHT!” Twilight snapped her head around to see Aegis standing beside her and obviously trying to get her attention. Flame Dancer was kneeling beside her and gently hugging Twilight around her neck. The barge began a wide banking turn about a mile from where the fight against Leviathan was happening.
 
“Sorry Aegis, I, I just…never mind what do you need?” Twilight spoke just loud enough to be heard over the strange vessel’s engine as she gave Flame Dancer a gentle nuzzle. The girl seemingly satisfied with that stood up and walked over to the railing. The other wards and Skitter were gathered around as well, while some humans she didn’t know held onto the railings and watched the battle and Uber and Leet stood at the controls at the back of the barge.
 
“It’s ok, trust me, I get it. Where were you?” Aegis asked.
 
“I had to go back in time to strengthen my shield spell and teleport everyone away.”
 
“Wait WHAT?!?” Clockblocker interjected. “I’m all for bullshit powers, but If you can go back in time, why didn’t you go back further and warn everyone about the attack a week ago?”
 
“Because I didn’t, so I couldn’t.”
 
“What the hell does that mean?”
 
“I, never mind, my temporal mechanics lecture is four hours long, we don’t have time right now.”
 
“Clock let it go, we know Twilight well enough to know that this was the best she could do.” Aegis interrupted. “Dragon wanted us to tell you whats going on as Leviathan is definitely operating off his usual script and she’s busy planning something with Armsmaster.” Twilight nodded and grimaced as she saw another building collapse in her peripheral vision. She wanted to go down and help right now, but if her already limited knowledge of Leviathan was not relevant it was important for her to know how things had changed.
 
“Ok, so first the good news. The general consensus is that whatever it is you did, is working. Since he launched himself from the ocean we haven’t seen Leviathan use a single water based ability besides his water echo, and even that appears to be spotty, only echoing a limb or two at a time.” Twilight closed her eyes and concentrated. She and a small smile that formed on her face. She could feel Leviathan straining against her ward, and the magical construct was bending but at least for the moment not breaking. Considering the magical force battering it, she couldn’t help feeling a bit of pride.
 
“The bad news is that he has apparently been holding back in all his previous fights. He’s moving so fast that only capes with the highest brute or mover ratings have any chance of surviving getting close to him and Dragon says he’s fighting to maximize the damage to the city. The-”
 
“Tl;dr” Uber interjected as he walked up dressed in a white shirt with black pants and vest and what a gun strapped to his thigh. “You took away his favorite toy, now he’s pissed and showing us all he doesn’t need it to kick our asses anyway.” Aegis gave a pained sigh but didn’t correct this. “The big three and their helpers are hoping you have some other cheat codes to try, otherwise its just waiting to see how much he destroys before Scion shows up or he breaks through whatever you did and drowns everyone.”
 
“Ow, Hey!” Uber complained as Skitter smacked him on the back of his head.
 
Twilight grimaced as she turned to the railing to see another half dozen blocks had been leveled while the explained the situation to her. She racked her brain for things to try. ‘Petrification?’ No, he was moving to fast for the primitive magical spell she had thrown together. ‘Transmutation?’ No, same problem only worse. As she thought she heard the others talking around her. The rumble of the battle below punctuating what every second of thought was costing.
 
“Twil-” Vista Began.
 
“Shh, don’t interrupt the thought process of pers- pony who is trying to come up with a plan to save our bacon.” She heard Clockblocker whisper.
 
“As is fitting for her name our Twilight Princess will lead us from the darkness into day, have faith brothers and sisters.” Leet said from the back of the barge.
 
“Breaking character a bit there aren’t you Chewy?” Clockblocker responded.
 
“I can’t believe you helped them build this thing Kid.” Gallant said softly.
 
“Don’t just leave it up to her, think everyone. Between us there’s got to be something we can do.” Skitter said.
 
“Shh!”
 
Twilight reached out with her magic, trying to shut out the nervous chatter and the distraction of her other senses hoping to find something she could use. Leviathan was shining like a dark star below, unlike parahumans Twilight could see the creature interact with the magic field around him, twisting it, straining against her ward, warping reality, a thousand subtle effects she couldn’t make sense of. Along side him the subtle mysterious flickers of the parahumans fighting him were almost completely lost in the dark vortex of power and destruction.
 
It hurt to ‘look’ at him too long. Twilight pulled her awareness away and concentrated a moment on feeling her friends around her. Slowly as she slipped deeper into her magical sight she began to see the connections between them like she had on the night she met Flame Dancer. As she drifted farther away from her physical senses a bright and beautiful spider web of relationships sprung up around her. Weaving patterns beyond any ability for geometry to describe, friendship, trust, love, duty, resentment, fear, and a thousand other things bound them together and soared off to the connect them to those that were not present. 
 
At the edge of her awareness she felt something familiar settle onto her head and the connections became brighter, more detailed. As she drifted along the web she suddenly heard Pinkie laugh. Rainbow flew by and ruffled her mane, Applejack’s sturdy hoof braced against her back, Rarity’s cultured voice and a gentle hug that could only have been Fluttershy.
 
“Twi, you’re getting to bogged down in the details of this thing. Most stuff is pretty simple at the heart of it. I reckon your friend had the right of it. That critter looks an awful lot like a foal having a tantrum.”
 
“Oh my yes, he looks very upset. Angel sometimes acts that way when he thinks I’m not giving him enough attention.”
 
“Quite uncouth really, his parents should have instilled proper manners.”
 
“Yupperoonie, he’s a big grumpy pants that needs a time out alright.”
 
“Come on Sparks, you’re smarter than this - just look!” 
 
Twilight felt Rainbow wrench her head around and saw a bright pulsating and twisted bond connected to Leviathan and leading to..
 
Twilight gasped and jolted her out of the trance she had been in. Everyone on the barge was looking at her strangely.
 
“What was-”
 
“Coool”
 
“Hey where did that tiara come from?”
 
Twilight ignored them all and pressed her hoof into the communicator on her chest. Remembering what Dragon had told her before the battle about how to broadcast to everyone.
 
 
“Hard Override. I don’t know why, but the only thing Leviathan cares about, the only person he has ever cared about is-” Twilight was flung violently into the air and the barge broke apart into a dozen pieces as a fifteen foot tall winged alabaster human slammed into it at several hundred miles per hour.