Gloryhound(Worm/Jujutsu Kaisen SI) Chapter 16

Waves crashed down with the fury of a god, slamming a caped figure into the side of a building. The impact shattered ribs, dislocated a shoulder, and crushed the air from his lungs just as the ocean swallowed his head. He flailed under the water’s grip, lungs screaming for air, vision dimming as panic set in.

He did not drown.

A moment later, gills unfurled at the sides of his neck like blooming petals. His broken bones knit themselves back together—stronger, denser, more resilient. He had been a blaster—someone who should never have been that close to the Endbringer in the first place. But now he breathed in Leviathan’s element with ease, alive because of him.

One life saved.

Another defender—a Brute with decent strength and toughness—had leapt into the air, aiming a crushing blow at Leviathan’s face. It was a bold move, and a suicidal one. The creature’s tail lashed upward like a striking whip, and everything below the man’s torso was instantly liquefied, the lower half of his body reduced to a mangled ruin of red pulp.

But he did not die.

Flesh bubbled and surged, nerves wove together like silver threads, bones regrew in fractal bursts beneath freshly knitted skin. Within seconds, the Brute was whole again, screaming a war cry and hurling himself back into the fray.

Another life saved.

A flyer had dipped low, trying to lift a wounded cape to safety. She never saw the backhand coming. Leviathan’s glancing blow sent her sailing through the air like a ragdoll, punching through the outer wall of an apartment building. She smashed through ceramic tiles and collapsed in a heap amid a shattered bathtub and porcelain sink. Her neck hung at an unnatural angle. Her spine was broken. Her breath came in wet, wheezing gasps.

But she did not die.

Her bones realigned with an audible crack. Her spine snapped straight like a drawn bowstring. Her broken body was reinforced with enhancements—borrowed from the ones he’d  given Armsmaster during his extensive physical overhaul. Her muscles were denser now. Her reflexes faster. She was a juggernaut. A weapon. Temporarily of course. He would remove the augmentations after the battle. There was no need to empower strangers for free. But for now, she had work to do.

Another life saved.

Ten minutes had passed since the battle began. In that time, over seventy percent of the defenders had suffered what should have been fatal or permanently crippling injuries. Burst lungs. Ruptured organs. Twisted spines. Skull fractures. Amputations. Blows that would have left nothing but red smears on concrete.

He reversed them all.

Dragon had stopped logging deaths. There was no point in doing so. Her systems would register cardiac arrest or respiratory failure—and before the alert could finish pinging, he had already restored the body, restarted the heart, and pushed the cape back onto their feet.

And slowly, the tide began to shift.

They weren’t winning. Not yet. Leviathan was still a monster—a titan born of pressure and drowning and rage. He had broken free from the Rainbow Dragon’s suffocating grip by expelling enough water from it’s body to force it to release, before shoving the creature away long enough to dislocate its jaw with a single crushing blow. From there, the Endbringer moved like a thunderclap—everywhere at once, waves crashing, claws rending, its body striking like lightning.

Even with his clones on the field, even with every Cursed Technique he had amassed today and in the past, they were still losing ground.

But now… the defenders had hope.

And hope was a terrifying thing to fight against.

They weren’t used to miracles. Not in Endbringer battles. They weren’t used to second chances. But here they were—capes who had died, literally died, blinking back to life, their bodies changed. Hardened. Improved. Reforged for the neverending war.

Have you ever heard the souls on a battlefield sing?

It is a sound that transcends ears. It reverberates in the bones. It chimes in the soul like a childhood melody remembered after decades of silence. It spreads like wildfire, cloying and suffocating and divine.

It was the sound of a father who realized he would see his children again.

It was the laughter of a teenager who had glimpsed the impossible—and realized it wasn’t. The kind of laugh that bursts free when you understand, with every cell of your being, that you are not finished. That this fight wasn’t over. That you had a second wind. A second chance to stand tall, to plant your feet, and tag the bastard that thought it'd already won.

It was the sound of hope distilled into pure, irrepressible joy.

And he—Mahito—was its conductor.

Most people would never understand the steady, implacable force that grew inside the soul when you realized that death wasn't the end. That you could return. That the pain, no matter how sharp or overwhelming, was fleeting. Temporary. That your own flesh could rebel against oblivion and claw you back into the world.

But he did.

He felt it—all of it.

He had felt the doubt in their hearts when they first agreed to his plan—when they saw him offer up his strange, impossible promise, and thought it was just another gambit doomed to fail. Just another desperate trick in a long line of failures against the Endbringers.

He had felt their horror, their disbelief, when the first cape staggered back to their feet—one who had clearly died. The last thing they’d seen was Leviathan's claw slashing down, opening them like a bag of meat, guts spilling onto pavement, spine half-severed—and yet, impossibly, they rose, whole again. Eyes wide, hands trembling. A breath taken in shock, lungs repaired. That life-ending wound undone by sheer defiance.

And then came the silence. The creeping awe.

Five minutes. No new death calls.

Then ten.

The wave of realization hit like thunder—they weren’t dying anymore.

They were enduring.

It was fucking beautiful.

The original Mahito, the curse that bore his name in another world, had been wrong. So utterly, laughably wrong. That Mahito, forged from the darkest, ugliest corners of the human heart, had never understood the soul’s capacity for wonder. For defiance. For joy. He had never seen a human soul sing with courage, or roar with purpose. He had never grasped what a person could become when given a reason to fight and the power to match their will.

Give a human the chance to protect everything they love—and you will see something no curse could ever anticipate.

His armband crackled to life, snapping him out of the moment.

“Mahito,” Dragon’s voice came through, calm but urgent. “Leviathan just entered your sector. He’s moving in the opposite direction for now, but I don’t want to take any chances. Strider, get him out.”

“Gotcha,” Strider replied cheerfully, clapping a hand on Mahito’s shoulder. “Mahito. Bastion. You both ready?”

Mahito gave a firm nod. Beside him, Bastion said nothing, but his expression was set—focused.

It had taken some convincing to let Bastion be assigned to his escort team. Strider was obvious—arguably the most reliable teleporter on Earth, capable of crossing continents in an instant. But Bastion? He was a frontline asset, a powerhouse with a versatile shielding ability: barriers that could block brute force, redirect energy, or allow allies to pass through while denying enemies access. It had felt like a waste to Mahito—to assign someone like that to babysit him.

He'd even said as much. But then Alexandria, sharp-eyed and colder than ice, had looked him in the eye and ended the debate with a single line:

“Out of everyone here, you are the most important. I would rather a thousand capes fall on the frontlines than risk losing your power.”

Cruel. Blunt. And true.

In the span of just a few months, he had saved more lives than some teams had in a decade. His ability turned death into a suggestion, not a certainty. And in this fight—against this monster—he wasn’t just a support.

He was the fulcrum.

The pivot around which hope tilted and balance might yet be restored.

And now, as the ground beneath Brockton Bay shuddered from the distant, rhythmic steps of Leviathan, Mahito stood firm. Shoulders squared. Heart steady. Rain soaked his clothes, traced cold rivulets down his face, but he didn’t flinch.

This was the moment.

And if this was the team fate had chosen to protect him—well. He could only accept his new honor guard and endure it, come hell or high water.

Strider’s power activated. The world twisted.

Mahito felt it immediately—a tearing sensation, like spider-silk being pulled taut, then fraying. His mental threads, the slivers of his being scattered across the battlefield to heal the wounded, began to waver. Their connections stretched thin… then frayed… then fractured—

And just like that, they were elsewhere.

The skyline had changed. They now stood atop Medhall, far from the frontline. No screams. No crashing waves. Only the relentless downpour, hammering the rooftop like war drums. Bastion didn’t waste a second. He raised a shimmering yellow dome overhead, translucent and dry, shielding them from the storm.

Mahito took a breath. Centered himself. Then reached.

With effort, his connections reasserted themselves—twelve threads were barely holding on. Too many were critical. One already showed signs of almost irreversible brain damage.

He clenched his jaw. Annoying.

Strider’s teleportation was undeniably useful. But the underlying shard fuckery—whatever dimensional stitching made it work—disrupted Mahito’s power. Just for a heartbeat. Maybe two. But in a battle like this? That was a lifetime.

Every second mattered when lives were measured in heartbeats.

“Y’know,” Strider said cheerfully, brushing rain from his coat, “this is one of the easiest gigs I’ve had in a long while.”

He grinned like this was all some vacation.

“Usually I’m porting capes into the fight, then fetching the ones who got themselves half-mauled and dumping ’em back at triage. Rinse, repeat. But this? Teleporting away from the big scaly bastard? Can’t complain. That’s a bloody win in my book.”

Bastion, by contrast, didn’t smile. He stood like a statue, arms crossed, voice low and rumbling with restrained fury.

“We could be doing more.”

Strider blinked. “Mate—”

“I should be doing more,” Bastion continued. “We’d have the edge. My strength, power, and training. And they’ve sidelined me to guard duty. I am being wasted. There are others more suited to this task.”

“Hey, you heard Alexandria same as I did.” Strider raised his hands, tone casual but firm. “Patchwork here”—he thumbed toward Mahito—“is more important than the two of us combined. If he drops, people die. Whole teams. That’s the math. So until this fight’s over, our job is making sure he doesn’t go splat.”

Bastion didn’t respond. Not with words. He just exhaled hard through his nose, gaze drifting toward the horizon.

From their perch atop Medhall, the city was a storm-wracked battlefield. Flashes of  light from lasers. Pillars of steam and walls of crashing water. Leviathan had arrived.

And though Bastion said nothing more, Mahito understood perfectly well what the man was thinking.

The truth sat heavy in the silence.

Bastion wanted to die.

Everyone knew the story. The incident that had obliterated his reputation and marked him for disgrace. The video had gone viral: the leader of the Boston Protectorate screaming at a little boy, red-faced and livid, calling him a spic over and over again—while the kid, no older than ten, had stood there crying, clutching a crumpled autograph book.

The public hadn’t forgotten. The PRT hadn’t either.

He wasn’t a hero anymore. Not in the eyes of the world. And the only redemption he saw left was a grave—preferably one dug by his own bloody hands, in battle.

Mahito said nothing.

He didn’t pity him. Didn’t hate him either.

But as his threads pulsed with pain and life across the battlefield, one truth remained:

He had no patience for anyone looking to die today.

 Not while so many others were still desperately trying to live.

But the consequences of his actions went far deeper than frayed nerves or a bad day.

No one in his department respected him anymore. The Wards ignored his advice with tight-lipped discomfort. The Protectorate heroes exchanged glances behind his back. The Troopers gave him curt nods, nothing more. Even the Boston Director—once a close confidant—had quietly distanced themselves, no longer inviting him to the meetings they used to hold over coffee or beers.

Bastion had always been like Armsmaster in that way: he had no life beyond the mask. "Bastion" was the only name he responded to. Being a hero wasn’t just what he did—it was the sum of who he was. Twelve years of service, of arrests, of rescue operations and city defense, had gone into building the image of an unshakable, dependable protector.

And then, with one outburst—one slip of the tongue—it had all come crashing down.

Mahito watched him through the lens of Idle Transfiguration, peering into the broken architecture of a man who had once stood tall. It wasn’t just the memories he was see, it was lived experience, filtered through the soul like light through fractured glass, able to be seen through the little gray band of flesh around Bastion's ring finger.

Bastion’s justification was almost clinical in its simplicity.

He’d been raised by his father—a white supremacist, though one with what he called "class." The man had wrapped his racism in gallant rhetoric, preaching about duty and civilization, about protecting the "lesser races" from themselves. A chivalrous bigot, if such a thing could exist.

Bastion had told himself he never believed in that nonsense. That he'd rebelled by joining the Protectorate, by saving people of every race and creed. But deep down, Mahito saw the truth, plain and aching. Part of Bastion did believe it. He had absorbed the idea that his whiteness gave him a duty, a burden, to protect. Not serve. Protect. Save them from themselves.

That was the core of his white savior complex. And Bastion wore it like a second skin.

The day it all fell apart had been particularly brutal.

He’d argued with his father over the phone—another tiresome fight over the estate, which the old man wanted him to inherit. Bastion had refused. He didn’t want the house, the land, or the bloodstained legacy.

Reports had come in that the Teeth were sniffing around for the Butcher again. 

Weld had gotten stuck to one of the PRT foam trucks—again—rendering it unusable during a scheduled raid. 

He hadn’t slept properly in days. 

Hadn’t eaten that particular day, even though it was past noon.

A raid on Blasto, which should have been a clean win, had ended in humiliation. His entire team beaten down by a cape so high out of his mind that he had been caught half naked when they had attacked his base, but they’d still lost.

And this kid.

This little goddamn kid just wouldn’t shut up.

He’d said no. Twice. Told him to go away. But the boy just kept talking, asking questions, whining, tugging at his sleeve like Bastion had time to breathe, let alone babysit this little shit.

And so he snapped.

The pressure valve inside him broke, and the words that spilled out weren’t just harsh—they were cruel. Deliberately, calculatingly cruel. He had chosen the worst thing he could say, aimed directly at the kid’s race, his background, his place in the world.

And for one awful second, everyone had gone still.

No one had understood. They didn’t know about the bad day. About the phone call. About the exhaustion. About the festering legacy of a father he’d spent years trying to escape.

They only knew what he’d said.

He’d tried to explain. Again and again. But every attempt to clarify just made it worse. Every justification sounded like an excuse. The truth—nuanced, ugly, human—wasn’t something anyone wanted to hear.

And the most fascinating part of it all, Mahito realized, was that Idle Transfiguration didn’t hide any of this. It didn’t filter it. It didn’t dress it up in righteous victimhood or easy villainy. It laid Bastion bare, with all the contradictions intact.

It showed him the man as he was:

 The racist. 

The rescuer.

The protector. 

The hypocrite.

The burned-out soldier of ideals who had long since blurred the lines between duty and superiority.

He was harder on black and brown criminals. That was a fact. He subconsciously trusted white people more. Another fact. The people he admired were overwhelmingly white. The people he feared or hated? Not so much.

And yet—

 Bastion was a hero.

Not a good one. Not anymore. But for years, he had saved lives. Risked his own. Thrown himself into collapsing buildings and outnumbered battles and thankless patrols. There was blood on his hands—but also gratitude in many eyes.

That was the nature of souls.

 No one came away clean.

And Mahito found it endlessly compelling.

Bastion had been a textbook hero. He liked helping people—loved saving the day. He was always the first to arrive on the scene, always the last to leave. He’d built a solid working relationship with the Boston Police Department, took regular first aid courses, studied rescue protocols, even trained alongside emergency response teams to better assist firemen and paramedics. Everything about him screamed dedication, service, and moral responsibility.

Bastion was, by almost every conceivable measure, a good man.

And he was also a racist piece of shit.

Wasn’t that just fascinating? That a man so deeply committed to the ideals of saving lives could also carry within him a festering core of prejudice and entitlement? That these two conflicting natures not only coexisted—but intertwined, feeding off each other in strange, inexplicable ways? Was that not proof of just how strange, twisted, and marvelous the human soul could be?

Humans craved violence.

Humans longed to do good.

And somehow, impossibly, they carried both hungers within themselves—neither one snuffing out the other. Instead, they danced. They coalesced. They birthed something new.

Bastion was far from the only specimen Mahito had touched, even in this past hour. Not just physically, but spiritually. Heroes and villains alike, each one brimming with contradictions, with warped justifications, with beautiful little hypocrisies. The ones who charged into battle not out of duty, but guilt. The ones who wanted to protect, but only the people they personally loved. The ones who hated the monster, not for the devastation it caused, but because they saw a chance for revenge.

And then there were Mahito’s favorites.

The glory-seekers.

The ones who wanted to carve their names into history with blood and saltwater.

The ones who stared Leviathan in the eye and whispered, “Let me be the one.”

 They weren’t here to protect or to avenge. They were here to ascend.

 To become something more than just a person with powers.

 To become legends.

But even with his growing collection of souls, there were still some he could not touch.

Alexandria.

 Legend.

 Dragon.

 Eidolon.

 Narwhal.

The five had all refused his offer of healing, declining with polite but firm words. 

“We’re fine.” 

“We don’t need it.” 

“Focus on the others.”

“I’m not even physically here.”

 Mahito didn’t push. But he wanted to.

The techniques he might have absorbed from them—just imagining what insights could have been gleaned from even a momentary soul-to-soul contact—made his fingers twitch with hunger.

Still, he could not complain. This one battle alone had yielded far more than he’d expected. A haul of cursed techniques, cursed spirits, imprints of ambition, spite, honor, and desperation. Each new addition to his arsenal came wrapped in intent, in purpose.

And with all these new powers, new curses whispering at the edges of his self…

He couldn’t help but wonder:

How would he fare against a real monster now? Against beings like Gojo and Sukuna, how would he have fared?
____________________________________________________

Something canon never really tells you is just how insane some capes are.

Yuta knew exactly what he was: a coward. 

Not a hero. Not a savior. Certainly not an avenger. He didn’t leap into the fray, fists flying, risking his life for justice or glory. No — he stood back. He ordered his monsters to fight for him. Cursed Spirits did the killing. He had never plunged a blade into someone’s gut, never crushed a windpipe with his bare hands, never looked a man in the eyes as he took his life.

He fought like a general, not a soldier. 

And maybe that’s why he admired Armsmaster so much.

There was something compelling — romantic, even — about a man who stood on the front lines, alone, encased in armor and nerve, dueling monsters in melee range. One wrong move, one miscalculation, and you were dead. The kind of raw bravery that took? Yuta found it mesmerizing. It was why he had asked Oni Lee to teach him how to use a sword. A regular one, sure, but it was the principle. He wanted to know what it felt like to fight up close — not through puppets, but with his own hands.

Not that he ever really got to use it.

The Empire 88 massacre hadn’t been a battle. It was a massacre, a purge, really. He had unleashed nearly every cursed spirit he had to tear through their ranks. No duels. No theatrics. Just blood and fire and screaming.

But Leviathan? Leviathan made Brockton Bay’s worst villains look like playground bullies. Yuta had been stupid to think Rainbow Dragon would make a difference. The plan was to bind the creature, slow its movements, maybe give the heroes a fighting chance.

What a fucking joke.

Leviathan had tolerated Rainbow Dragon — until he didn’t. Then came the hydrokinetic pulse, sharp and precise, followed by raw physical violence. He ripped Rainbow Dragon apart with his claws. Shredded it like it was nothing. The same cursed spirit who had survived Toji fucking Fushiguro and his bullshit cursed tools(for at least, like, two minutes)… torn apart like soggy paper.

It took Yuta time to reconstitute the dragon, and he could feel it: it was weaker now. The bond between them had frayed, the spirit's energy dimmer than before. It would take time before Rainbow Dragon would be back to it’s full strength.

Kurorushi had been next — and initially, the roaches made progress. Dozens, hundreds of them, carving finger-sized pockmarks into Leviathan’s flesh. But they never got deeper than the fifth muscle layer. Worse, Leviathan’s body was regenerating. Kurorushi was now little more than a glorified tracker. Not that it mattered; Dragon was already doing that job better.

Kuchisake-Onna? Useless. Her domain required a question and an answer. Leviathan didn’t speak. Didn’t think like a human. He didn’t care. Her scissor-blades couldn’t cut deep enough to matter, and she nearly got pulped just trying.

Agito had power, yes — but not against something like this. 

The Ember Insects he’d scrounged from Bakuda’s power were like gnats, more distraction than damage.

Endbringers weren’t enemies. They were natural disasters with faces. Leviathan was Poseidon stripped of mercy and humanity, a monster built to drown the world. Supersonic. Titanic in strength. A hydromancer on a planetary scale, if he wanted to be. Honestly, Yuta couldn’t imagine anyone short of a Gojo-level combatant even delaying him, let alone winning.

So when Armsmaster — Armsmaster! — requested a one-on-one engagement, promising he could buy the defenders five minutes to regroup… Yuta had only one thought:

He had to see this shit. Even if it meant having to rescue what was left of the man’s broken body afterward.

But then something… unusual happened.

Two minutes passed.

And Armsmaster was still fighting.

Two minutes.

That was how long it had been since the last of the frontline teams had gone down—since Armsmaster had been left to face the Endbringer alone.

And he was still fighting.

“You dumb bastard,” Armsmaster snarled, teeth bared in a savage grin. His armor hissed softly with exertion, venting heat, but the man inside looked anything but tired. His eyes blazed with manic focus, locked onto Leviathan with an almost predatory gleam. “Every single fight you’ve had—every time you’ve shown your face—I’ve watched the footage. I’ve analyzed every frame, dissected every movement. Do you know how many simulations I’ve run? How many models I’ve tested?”

He raised his halberd, the twin blades humming with energy as he crouched low.

“I’ve got a processor array on my back feeding data into a supernetwork of predictive algorithms. Subsonic pulses mapping every inch of terrain, every building, every piece of debris on this battlefield. I know what you’re going to do before you do.”

He took a half-step to the side.

“You’re about to flank me with a wave.”

Leviathan lunged.

The claw came first—a blur of motion.

Armsmaster twisted, narrowly avoiding it. Behind him, a crushing wave surged forward, but both halberds swept backward, intercepting and vaporizing it on contact. Steam hissed and rose, the air thick with the aftershock.

Then he laughed. A madman’s laugh. Unhinged, victorious.

“You don’t even speak English, do you?” he spat. “If you did, maybe you’d realize something. I already won.”

He circled, slow and deliberate, boots scraping over shattered pavement.

“The others helped. They stalled you. Distracted you. Bought me the time I needed. This victory—this killing blow—it’s mine.”

Leviathan surged forward again, but with a trick this time. He let his watery echo lead, then followed a half-second later to strike during the moment of confusion.

Armsmaster didn’t flinch.

He vaulted over the echo, curling midair to avoid a swipe, then fired a grappling hook beneath Leviathan’s massive frame. It coiled around the Endbringer’s legs and reeled him in like a human missile. He skidded beneath Leviathan’s torso, pivoting just enough to jam the tip of his halberd upward—right into the thick base of the monster’s tail.

The result was instant.

A plume of grey dust exploded outward, the first ten feet of Leviathan’s tail atomized. Armsmaster vanished briefly in the cloud, then reappeared, blades humming with energy.

“You see this haze?” he growled. “That’s nanotech. Structures engineered on the molecular level to sever atomic bonds. It doesn’t cut like a sword. It disassembles. No armor, no shell, no flesh survives contact. You still bleed, don’t you?”

Leviathan whipped his tail—what remained of it—toward him in retaliation.

Armsmaster met it with a sidestep and a contemptuous backhand from the flat of his halberd. More dust. Another chunk was gone. Ichor spilled freely.

The water echo surged again.

He didn’t even look at it.

“I’ve been here since the beginning!” he bellowed. “I was there when Behemoth first clawed out of the crust of the Earth! I saw the Simurgh take flight over Lausanne! I remember when you emerged from the ocean like some forgotten horror from the blackest trench! I’ve studied all of you! Modified my body for one purpose—to kill you!”

Leviathan turned.

He ran.

Armsmaster’s halberd fired again. A cable wrapped around the smaller of Leviathan’s claws. He waited, timing it precisely. When the chain went taut, he locked it down. The halberd seized in place, unmoving. Not even Leviathan’s immense strength could budge it.

Clockblocker’s ability. So, he’s already at the stage where he can emulate powers…

The Endbringer stumbled, lost momentum—and crashed, slamming hard into the broken street, held fast by the tether.

Armsmaster hit the trigger again, reversing the reel. He launched forward like a bullet, halberd raised. He struck Leviathan square in the face, a blur of motion, driving the nanotech blade deep.

He pulled back, slashed again—another arc of black ichor sprayed into the air. Disengaging without hesitation, he snapped his halberd’s hook toward the far edge of the battlefield. It latched onto a twisted piece of rebar, and with a hiss of compressed air and a whirl of motion, he shot across the broken street. He landed with practiced grace, skidding into a crouch as Leviathan crashed to its knees behind him.

He didn’t even glance back.

Instead, he adjusted his grip on the halberd, recalibrated his stance, and readied himself again.

“Oh, come the fuck on!” Armsmaster barked out a manic laugh, exhaustion and adrenaline mixing into something dangerous. “You didn’t seriously think that I’d let you run, did you? Not after everything I’ve just said? After everything I’ve done?”

His visor glinted in the half-light, cracked and streaked with sea spray, but his voice was clear, electric.

“You know what? Let’s make this a game. Since you like screwing with us, I’ll return the favor. Every time you try to run, I’ll condition you—classical style. Pavlov had his bell; I’ve got a halberd. And every time you twitch, I’ll fuck you up worse than the last.”

“That man is absolutely insane,” a voice crackled in his ear.

It was Lee.

He turned, startled to see the man casually standing beside him. Lee was watching the duel like it was a cage match instead of a man wrapped in metal fighting a living apocalypse and somehow winning, even if the bastard was sandbagging. Leviathan and Armsmaster clashed again in the background—one an elemental force of nature, the other just a man wielding spite, steel, and a bleeding edge of technological insanity.

“I feel obligated to remind you,” Yuta said, arms crossed, “that your entire career used to involve trying to kill that guy at least once a week.”

“I was insane back then too,” the villain replied dryly. “Difference is, I got my sanity back. That’s why I’m over here, and he’s down there, taunting the monster that drowned an entire fucking island.”

“You still strap bombs to yourself and blow yourself up.”

“No, my clones do that,” Lee corrected, with a note of exaggerated patience. “Clones that know they’re disposable. That man has one life—and he’s spending it freely. We are not the same.”

Leviathan lunged.

Armsmaster didn’t flinch. He fired the grappling chain again, and this time, stopped it mid-air—time-stopping tech humming to life as the chain froze in the open space between them. Leviathan didn’t stop in time. He ran himself through, the chain driving through his neck and out his back in a grotesque burst of steaming ichor.

It didn’t even slow the monster.

Leviathan charged.

Armsmaster released the chain, letting it go slack just as a sweeping tail passed inches from his face. He dropped low, rolling under the blow, then darted forward in a zigzag. A massive claw struck the ground where he’d been a second earlier. He moved like smoke and angles, a step ahead, a moment faster. Two clean slashes—blurred arcs of motion—cut deep behind Leviathan’s knees as he passed beneath the beast.

The grappling chain, now freed, retracted with a mechanical hiss, snapping back and slashing across Leviathan’s hip before reattaching to its socket in the halberd’s haft. In the same motion, Armsmaster fired it again, launching himself across the street with lethal momentum, flipping midair and landing in a wide stance, halberd raised.

Leviathan turned, ichor bubbling from the gaping gashes along his flank and neck. Thick, tar-like fluid hissed as it hit the fractured concrete, steam rising from where it pooled. His muscle tissue—those strange sinewy cords not quite flesh—began knitting back together, slower now. The healing was still there, still inhuman, but it was sluggish. Hesitating. 

Failing, perhaps?

Nah, it was just a feint. These things were pretending. He couldn’t forget that.

Armsmaster stood opposite Leviathan, weapons in hand, armor scratched, dented, and smeared with streaks of Leviathan’s lifeblood. His visor was slightly cracked, one side dark with impact damage. His breathing came in hard pulls, audible even through the pouring rain. 

And yet, he smiled.

A wide, sharp grin split his face beneath the helmet, feral and breathless. He shifted one halberd into his left hand, now dual-wielding the heavy weapons with a casual flair that would have seemed arrogant—if he hadn’t just earned it. He wiped froth and sweat from his chin with a gauntleted hand, then spat blood to the side.

“C’mon, Levi,” Armsmaster called out, voice metallic and crackling through the external speakers. “This is getting too easy! Struggle a little. Dig deep. Pull some eldritch horror out of your ass—give me something spectacular! Show me the monster that drowned continents. The beast that butchered millions. Let me kill you at your peak!”

Leviathan paused. Towering, mangled, the Endbringer cocked its head, almost birdlike. One clawed hand rose to its ruined face—flesh half-melted from heat, sonic impacts,  and various blaster attacks, not to mention Armsmaster’s vicious assualt. Its claw trailed downward, brushing its throat.

It stood still. Silent. Considering.

Then it extended its arm.

The street groaned beneath them, deep and thunderous. The sound of shifting earth. Foundations cracking.

The building they stood on vibrated ominously, a low hum building into a deep, tectonic rumble. A seismic seam split down the center of the street below, carving a path in either direction as far as the eye could see—dead straight, like a sword had carved through the city.

Then the road erupted.

A massive concrete pipe, thick enough for a man to crawl through, bulged and then broke free from the earth like the breach of a leviathan from the deep. It surged upward, crashing through the pavement. A moment later, water exploded from it with tremendous force, a geyser of pressurized floodwater screaming toward Armsmaster.

The storm sewers had ruptured.

The battlefield shifted. Concrete buckled. Chunks of asphalt flew into the air. The very ground became a weapon.

But Armsmaster didn’t flinch. If anything, his grin widened.

With impossible speed, he launched forward, boots finding traction on floating debris. The ground was falling apart beneath him—collapsing into waterlogged ruin—but he moved like a man born to it, leaping from shattered segment to broken slab, navigating a crumbling street as though it were solid steel.

He roared with exhilaration, his battle cry echoing over the chaos.

This—this was what humanity could become. Not just science and steel and innovation, but belief. Tenacity. The refusal to kneel. The willingness to face annihilation and say, “I am still here.”

This was the pinnacle of human effort. The triumph of will over despair. A mortal man standing against an extinction-level event and smiling.

This was the indomitable human spirit incarnate.

And Yuta could only stare.

He couldn’t look away. Wouldn’t. He had to see how this ended. He had to bear witness.

Because even if he couldn’t match Armsmaster’s raw firepower or genius, even if he lacked Idle Transfiguration at the moment, he could still recognize a soul so bright it scorched the dark around it.

His voice came out as a whisper, choked with awe.

“Armsmaster… you’re so damn cool.”

____________________________________________________________

There are moments in a man’s life when he must wager everything—his blood, his pride, his very existence—for what he believes in. Moments where, when the world tries to drown you—quite literally in this case—you fight the current with burning lungs and desperate limbs, gasping for every breath. When life demands your surrender, when it insists that you kneel and break, you rise instead, bloodied but grinning, and whisper through cracked teeth, “Fuck off.”

“Armsmaster down!” the armband crackled with static. “All capes in sector BX-6, evacuate! He’s coming your way!”

And today, Aoi Todo was in BX-6.

He, Gallant, and Velocity were evacuating civilians from a compromised shelter. The storm surge had cracked its walls and opened a hole in the side. Now, dozens—maybe a hundred or more—were climbing out into the shattered street: men, women, children, entire families. Their faces carried hope, unknowing, unaware that death was sprinting toward them, surging on a tidal wave just blocks away.

Objectively, they should run.

 That was the logical thing to do.

Aoi Todo’s life as a cape held more value, strategically speaking. He had potential. His power would only grow with time, until perhaps he could stand toe-to-toe with the monster bearing down on them. Gallant and Velocity too—trained heroes, irreplaceable resources. Their loss would hurt the Protectorate far more than a few anonymous civilians.

No one would blame them for fleeing.

This was Leviathan, after all.

 The Citysinker. 

The Water Serpent. 

Jörmungandr.

The Endbringer with more titles than the sea had waves.

Anyone else would run.

But not him.

He was Aoi Todo—a fragment of another life, thrown into this brutal world by fate’s cruel hand and yet thriving nonetheless. 

He was Aoi Todo, who had battled the Butcher, broken the Teeth, and taken on nearly every villain Boston had to offer—and won. 

He was the man who had looked the Triumvirate in the eye and had not bowed—not even when Alexandria’s godlike hand had closed around his neck, demanding his submission.

He was Aoi Todo.

And He. Would. Not. run.

“What do we do?” Gallant whispered, tense and urgent. “We’re almost out of time. He’s going to be here any second—how are we supposed to save these people?”

Velocity, despite the direness of the situation, was eerily calm. “Best shot’s getting them back inside the shelter. Try sealing the doors—might turn it into a killbox, but they’ve got a better chance in there than out here. We’ll distract him—maybe draw him off long enough for—uh, Mr. Todo? What… what are you doing?”

Todo, without a word, had begun removing his jacket. Then his shirt. Standing bare-chested in the frigid air, scarred and powerful, he spoke loud enough for everyone to hear.

“The bells of the Gion Monastery in India echo with the warning that all things are impermanent,” he declared, his voice steady, resonant. “The blossoms of the sala tree teach us through their hues that what flourishes must one day fade.

However—”

He turned to the crowd with a savage, battle-hungry grin.

“—people like me… are the exception!”

“...Is that, like, a poem or something?” someone murmured.

“I dunno what it was,” another muttered, “but it sounded badass.”

Velocity stepped forward, frowning. “Todo, we really don’t have time for—”

And then the street rumbled.

“GET THE CIVILIANS TO SAFETY!” Todo roared. “I’ll hold him off!”

Almost as if summoned by defiance, a wall of seawater came crashing down the ruined avenue—taller than buildings, towering like a living skyscraper. And riding the crest of that wave, like some demented demon surfer from the deepest pit of hell… was Leviathan.

He looked half-dead. Torn to shreds. Gaping wounds covered his body, patches of his carapace missing, tail mangled, skin pocked and cracked and steaming. He was caked in his own ichor, a walking monument to pain—and still, he came.

The civilians screamed, of course. Todo could hear Gallant and Velocity herding them back toward the shelter, shouting orders, trying to impose order on chaos.

But Todo didn’t turn around.

He couldn’t.

Not now.

All his focus was on the monster barreling toward him—on the sound of rushing water swallowing the world, on the pressure in the air thickening like a storm about to break.

Can’t let him get close. Can’t let him flood the street. If he gets enough water, I’m done for, Todo thought grimly as the tidal wave surged forward, an unnatural wall of death bearing down on him with crushing force. So I’ll stop him cold—with the gift I got from Rime.

“Icefall!” he roared.

He dropped to one knee and slammed his palm—frost already forming along his skin—onto the cracked asphalt. A pulse of freezing mist exploded from the impact. In an instant, cold spread like a plague. The temperature dropped sharply as veins of hoarfrost raced across the battlefield, blanketing the terrain in a fast-creeping sheen of pale blue ice.

The wave froze mid-crash, towering above him like a paused tsunami. Even Leviathan, caught mid-charge, was locked momentarily in a jagged cocoon of rime and frost, his monstrous form glazed over with icy armor.

Todo’s breath misted from his lips as he drew on Ice Fall’s cryo-telekinesis, wrenching jagged spears of ice from the frozen ground and hurling them forward. They howled through the air and impaled Leviathan in rapid succession, each one detonating into a fresh burst of frost on impact. More ice spread along his limbs and torso, a desperate attempt to encase the beast entirely.

But it wasn’t enough.

Even with the crushing cold clinging to him, Leviathan moved—wrenching free with a bone-snapping crack of ice, his strength undiminished. One swipe of his claw sent a sharp, rippling shockwave of water surging from the shadow beneath him. It raced forward like a summoned tidal serpent.

Todo didn’t flinch. He leveled his fingers into a gun shape and fired. “Granite Blast!”

A beam of compressed energy rocketed forward, cleaving the water ripple in half and slamming into Leviathan’s shoulder. The creature staggered as the blast seared deep, leaving a charred, smoking crater and a geyser of blood spraying from the wound. The impact slammed Leviathan backward into the frozen wave-wall behind him, chunks of shattered ice exploding outward.

Any normal being would have fallen, howled, stayed down.

Leviathan did none of that.

He snarled and leapt.

Despite the bleeding wound, despite the frost crawling over his frame, he was airborne again in seconds, his clawed hand reaching for Todo with lethal precision.

That’s it. Focus on me, Todo thought, forcing himself to stay calm, stay sharp. Focus only on me.

He extended his arm and twisted his fingers as if grabbing the air itself. The wind curled beneath his grip like fabric. With a grunt, he spun on his heel, wrenching the very sky off its axis. Space warped around him.

And Leviathan—mid-air, mid-lunge—was yanked sideways and slammed into the side of a crumbling apartment building. The wall exploded in a cascade of stone and dust, burying him in the remains of two stories of steel and concrete.

“Sky Manipulation!” Todo bellowed, triumph in his voice. “Don’t tell me that’s all you’ve got!”

He shouldn’t have said that.

From the rubble, a tremor. Then another. Then—boom.

Leviathan erupted from the ruins like a resurrected god, his clawed fist drawn back. Two of his eyes blazed with fury. The third, shattered and bleeding, still managed to lock onto Todo.

Too close.

No time to dodge.

Todo’s instincts screamed.

Tank it.

‘Inverse and Unkillable Mode!’ he activated mentally. His body surged with the  protective energy of Inverse, whilst the song of Unkillable Mode echoed faintly in the air—a booming, rising tone that resonated through bone.

He crossed his arms. Braced.

It wasn’t enough.

He felt the punch land—and then everything broke.

His bones shattered into splinters, each one vibrating with trauma. His organs liquefied. His eyes burst from their sockets. Blood geysered from his mouth, raw and hot.

He felt his life end.

And then—he came back.

Gasping.

Shivering.

Every nerve screamed as his body reassembled itself in real time—ligaments twisting into place, bones snapping together with nauseating wet crunches. His skin re-formed like paper being pulled taut over wire. Then—

 Agony. A single, blinding spike of pain as his heart seized and jolted back to life.

And then—

He was alive.

But Leviathan was still coming.

The monster hadn't even paused. The seconds bought by his sacrifice—if they could even be called that—were already gone.

He hadn’t even hit the far wall before his body began to mend itself, the process somehow faster than before. In the blink of an eye, his shattered ribs were realigning, flesh drawing itself tight across broken muscle. His organs, half-pulped, resumed function midair. Even as he hurtled across the street—through the shattered remains of a bus stop and into a crumbling storefront—he felt his heart slam against his ribs, pumping with desperate rhythm.

It was terrifying.

 It was exhilarating.

It was proof.

 He could die—and come back again.

Again and again and again, as many times as it took to win this fight.

So he didn’t waste time catching his breath. Didn’t stop to gather himself, to plan. There was no room for hesitation, no luxury of recovery. He simply reached inward and called.

A pulse of will—sharp, focused—and the Split Soul Katana flickered into existence in his grasp.

Stolen from Fletchette. Hard-won. Worth every drop of effort it had taken to corner her, to beat her, to take it. 

This was what he had needed for Leviathan.

He hadn’t tested it yet—never got the chance. But he understood it. And that was enough.

The katana was a cursed weapon in everything but name. It bypassed physical defense entirely—ignoring toughness, armor, regeneration. It went for the soul. And unless you were someone like Mahito—someone who could reach inside themselves and stitch their very essence back together—you couldn’t heal from a wound like that. You simply bled out.

The rules had shifted a little when he brought it over—this world didn’t run on cursed energy. But the principles still held. The edge still cut deeper than flesh. The wounds it made didn’t close. And if it worked the way he hoped, it could be the first real threat to a monster like Leviathan.

The problem? Hitting the right target.

The core. Always the core. That was the standard rule when fighting Endbringers. But Leviathan’s core was somewhere in his chest—and that chest was a nightmare. Built like some exaggerated cartoon bodybuilder, massive upper body tapering into a whip-thin waist. Guess wrong, and the blade would bounce off scale and cartilage and water-hardened sinew.

And then he’d die again. 

No.

Too risky.

He needed something safer. Surer.

 He aimed for the leg.

Cut it off at the knee. Cripple him. Make it matter. Make Leviathan limp away from this one. Make him remember Aoi Todo in the deepest part of his monstrous mind.

The beast crouched, muscles bunching, eyes narrowing as it prepared to leap.

 Perfect.

"Projection Sorcery!" he barked—and the world jerked forward.

Time didn’t slow. He sped up.

It was a gift from Velocity, the runner who’d died screaming just to buy him five more seconds. It turned movement into locked animation—perfect, precise, absolute. The drawback? You had to know what you were going to do in advance. No improvising. No last-minute corrections.

One big right step.

 One big left step.

 Plant. 

Swing.

 Commit.

If he deviated, even slightly, he’d shatter the sorcery and freeze in place—locked in a frame for one second, helpless.

But he couldn’t think about that now.

He charged, gripping the katana with both hands, feet slamming into the ice with inhuman speed, closing the distance between them like a missile. Leviathan was massive, all scale and weight and muscle. But if he could just—just—get to the leg…

Please cut. Please cut. Please cut, he chanted in his mind as he raced forward.

And then, of course, Leviathan jumped.

The bastard launched upward, committing fully to his arc—and Todo couldn’t pivot. Not without cancelling his sorcery and opening himself to the agony of death.

So he followed through.

No choice.

The sword came down—not on the knee, but lower. The foot.

There was a sharp CRACK, like ice fracturing—and then the blade sank in.

 It cut.

Thank God, it cut.

Leviathan landed hard, stumbling just enough for Todo to leap away. The monster staggered for a moment, and when its head turned back toward him, he swore there was a flicker of hatred in those glowing abyssal eyes.

Good. Let it hate.

"First blood goes to you," Todo panted, grinning through blood-streaked teeth. His eye was swollen, and a shallow cut ran down the side of his jaw, but he stood tall, vibrating with energy. "But I got the better hit. Wanna see who gets the first kill?"

The civilians were gone now—fled or escorted away in the chaos. The street was a shattered warzone of broken glass, cracked pavement, and abandoned cars, and he was the only one left standing in its center. His earpiece crackled with frantic voices, probably from the control center, but he couldn't hear a word. A high-pitched ringing filled his ears, drowning everything else out. All that mattered was the pounding of his heartbeat—and the battle.

He crouched, ready to lunge forward, energy flaring at his fingertips—

And then the sky opened.

Scion dropped silently from the heavens, golden and terrible. He landed without impact, without even disturbing the ruined street below him. His bodysuit and cape were a stark, unblemished white, stained only with the faded marks of long-dried blood and dirt—ghosts of battles past. His golden beard was neatly trimmed, his long hair brushing against his back. His very presence seemed to mute the world, as if even reality bowed to him.

Leviathan didn’t even react to the arrival. That changed swiftly.

Scion raised a hand and summoned a sphere of yellow-gold light, which exploded against the Endbringer’s back with a sunburst impact. Leviathan skidded down the length of the street, claws tearing trenches through pavement and steel.

He righted himself in an instant, reared around, and slashed at the air. A tidal wave surged up behind him, tall as a skyscraper and crashing toward Scion like a living wall. But the golden man didn’t move. He walked forward.

With each step, ripples radiated from his feet—subtle at first, then impossibly vast. When the wave met the ripples, it collapsed, shattering like glass under pressure. Water flattened across the battlefield into a surreal mirror, still and perfect. Not even a breeze dared disturb it.

Leviathan, undeterred, leapt to a ruined building and ricocheted off it like a missile, claws flashing. He landed between them, sending an afterimage hurtling toward Scion with the force of a bomb. The water exploded in all directions.

Scion turned his head, closed his eyes, and let the torrent wash past him harmlessly. When it ended, he opened them again. No fanfare, no theatrics—just precision. He raised one hand.

Another golden blast. Leviathan was launched across the street like a ragdoll. The Endbringer struck the ground, creating shockwaves, waves of water rippling out—only for Scion’s footfalls to erase those, too, returning the surface to its unsettling calm.

Leviathan seized a car and twisted, Olympic-style, hurling it through the air. Scion didn’t flinch. He batted the vehicle aside with the back of one hand. The car detonated on impact, fragments glowing gold and disintegrating mid-air before they could even touch the water.

Then Scion raised his fingers.

A brilliant flash. Todo had to shield his eyes. When the light faded, one of the few remaining buildings was glowing the same gold as the debris, crumbling inward. The collapsing structure fell directly on top of Leviathan—buried him in a mountain of radiant ruin.

Scion resumed his advance. The ripples of his steps obliterated the chaos of the collapse, layer by layer, until stillness returned once more.

Leviathan tore himself free from the rubble and turned to run. He didn’t get far.

Scion struck again.

This time he flew, faster than Todo could track, overtaking the Endbringer mid-air and slamming him with a second blast before the first could fully end. The creature spiraled through the air. The golden figure halted mid-flight, suspended in the sky as if gravity dared not touch him.

He was completely silent. Not even his movements stirred the air.

Todo stood frozen. It was one thing to argue online about how Scion could dogwalk the Endbringer, but it was another to witness it. Leviathan had brought cities to ruin. It took armies of heroes and sacrifices of villains to even wound the creature. And yet here was Scion—alone, unbothered, barely trying—and he was tearing the Endbringer apart.

It was horrifying.

And thrilling.

This was power. Real power. Todo’s heart hammered in his chest. Could he and his brothers reach this level one day? Could they be the ones to toss around monsters like Leviathan, to bend the laws of nature with the sheer force of will?

Could they become Honored Ones?

Leviathan turned sharply, the ground trembling beneath his taloned feet as he raised a towering wall of churning seawater to shield his retreat. The wall sprayed outward with force, a shimmering curtain of liquid mass cutting through the landscape. Scion didn’t even flinch.

With a flick of his hand, a beam of golden light lanced forward—silent, precise, unrelenting. It struck the water before it could fully crest, detonating it into steam and scattered rain. Even before the first blast landed, Scion loosed another. This one curved midair, defying trajectory and wind resistance, arcing toward its prey like a divine judgment.

Leviathan, seeing the approach, twisted away in a blur of motion, but it was useless. The blast caught him mid-leap, tearing across his back. The air filled with a sound like tearing silk as parts of the Endbringer’s armor peeled away, scorched and glowing with golden fire. Wounds opened and flared along his frame. At the base of his throat, a deep fist-sized crater pulsed with golden energy, flickering and spreading, the edges glowing like embers caught in an updraft.

He dove for cover—but the ocean would offer no sanctuary.

In the distance, near the horizon, a massive tidal wave surged into view. Leviathan had summoned it with a gesture, a final act of defiance. It loomed over the skyline like a falling sky. Scion sent a third beam—wider, more luminous—into the wave’s center. It struck like a spear hurled from heaven. The wave buckled in the middle, collapsing into a harmless sprawl of whitewater. But the wings of the wave curved inward, folding like arms, racing to crash into the street—into Todo.

Another pulse of light, and one wing of the wave froze mid-air, its momentum canceled. Scion didn’t pause. A fourth blast was hurled toward Leviathan, now bracing himself to flee once more, hands and clawed foot digging into the ground.

The blast hit him squarely, driving him into the rubble. The ground cratered beneath him.

And still, water came.

Even as the attacks disrupted the wave, gravity reclaimed the ocean. The rising water swept forward in a great surge. Around Todo, the flood rose a dozen feet—then gently sloshed past him, as if the universe itself had decided to spare him. The tide lapped over him like a caress from the sea, deliberate and soft.

Then it passed, and through the mist and glinting remnants of energy, Todo saw Leviathan in motion—using the cresting water to swim, sleek and serpentine, angling toward the coast.

A fifth beam traced after him, impossibly fast, a glowing spear hurtling across the landscape. Leviathan vanished into the waterline, slipping between attack and annihilation by inches. He would live—barely.

Scion rose silently into the air and followed, a comet of golden light streaking low over the ocean, pursuing the Endbringer like a predator on the hunt.

Todo stood rooted in place.

A part of him wanted to scream—wanted to make Scion see him. To declare his intent, to warn the being that someday, somehow, they would find a way to destroy him too. That Scion wasn’t a god, just another monster who’d been allowed to live too long.

But what could he do? He wasn’t strong enough—not even close.

Trying to force Scion to acknowledge him would be like Panda challenging Gojo. The difference in power wasn’t just vast—it was cosmic.

So he did the only thing he could. He dropped to his knees, exhausted, trembling, the edges of Jackpot Mode dissipating like mist in sunlight. The Split Soul Katana blinked out of existence in a shimmer of blue sparks.

Scion was already gone, a streak vanishing into the endless sky.

Todo watched the clouds, chest heaving, soaked in saltwater and failure.

“One day,” he whispered, his voice hoarse but steady, “one day we’ll be able to stand beside you. And when we do… we, too, will be honored by all.”