Chapter Text
The world was focused on Newfoundland. On the waves that tore into the cliffs, clawing them apart with unnatural fury. On the desperate scramble of so many to make it to what boats were willing to brave the terror, or what capes were still teleporting refugees out. On the monster who seemed intent on ripping a solid landmass apart, turning it into so much rubble. The attack had lasted long enough for all of the world to mobilize, and it didn't seem to be stopping; the defenders weren't even trying to drive the Endbringer back anymore, working instead to get ahead of the devastation and pull out as many as they could before the seas consumed the land in their unerring hunger.
The world was focused on Newfoundland, yet ironically enough, Leviathan itself was no longer in their sights. Watery echoes of the monster tore through cities and farms, the ocean's unnatural fury indicated the horror, and the bloated corpses of thousands of innocent men, women, and children were more than enough to indicate the presence of the being. Yet the systems meant to track its path had all failed, destroyed as casually as the buildings around it, and those who had tried to follow the menace were now among the dead. What few eyes still remained watching had no method to communicate with anyone who could help at all.
The world was focused on Newfoundland, on the churning seas, on the shattered land, on the breaking soul. Yet the skies were not watched, beyond the tracking of the clouds. There had been a few planes taking off in the desperate early hours, some managing to make it to the mainland, others surviving a scuttling at sea, and many more becoming sinking tombs in the surrounding depths. As the storm raged in unison with the waters of the surface, as lightning struck and crackled in the impenetrable dark fog of the sky, the peoples of the world put aside any thought of flight and flying machines. There would be no point in doomed effort, no reason to watch for the impossible. Thusly did they turn their attention toward the suffering on the ground, even as the ground was consumed by the waves, their agents and their resources bent toward the struggle of constant rescue in practical sense.
The world was focused on Newfoundland, and yet...
Leviathan, for the briefest of moments, paused in its terrifying rampage. Above, the clouds shifted, gathered, roiled under the direction of their monstrous enslaver, the energy within charging and building to a great degree, before being unleashed in a single devastating flash of electric light. There was no satisfaction as the walking apocalypse turned back to its task, callously smothering the panicked mob around it with sewage-drenched wreckage in its march toward its destination.
...the most important event of the day went missed by all but a scant few.
From the clouds emerged a bleeding, sparking form as big as two and a half trucks, a long blue cylinder that tapered into pointed domes at each end with a trio of crescent-shaped wings emerging from its center and barely keeping it level during its uncontrolled descent. It crashed into a hill a scant half kilometer outside the sinking city, kicking up dirt and rocks and buried wires and rattling the house at the very top. A moment before, the balding man living there had been wrestling with his own mortality in the face of assured destruction, falling into a panicked depression as he failed to find any way to escape the menace moving his way; now he ran out of the front door, a flabbergasted expression on his face as he witnessed the source of the impact.
Shock turned to desperate hope as he rushed back inside, emerging but a few minutes later with a backpack and a hastily boxed up computer setup. He skidded down the hill toward the crashed vessel, glancing briefly at the approaching storm and its devastating master, before turning his attention toward the surface of the ship.
"Hatch, hatch, there's got to be a--is that a hatch?"
He reached out for the strange texture, putting his hand on it--and flinching a bit when the surface rippled open into a slanted room with flickering lights. The computer set was heaved in first, then the man scrambled in himself, watching the door shut behind him; some sort of scanning field passed over him and, with a beep, the inner door opened to a tragedy.
The man stepped forth hesitantly, observing the bodies with a grimace. He wasn't a medical expert, but he'd had enough mishaps with electrical engineering to recognize the scars and the burns, even on these alien bodies. Lightning, most likely--that would explain why the ship crashed at all, if it was passing through Leviathan's storm. He reached out, half-remembered first aid lessons helping him to see if any of the feline figures had a pulse. With each press, his heart fell more and more; they all seemed to be dead, at least if they worked the same way humans did, and from the way they were slumped over the consoles that seemed likely.
But when he pressed his fingers to the fourth and final figure, he inhaled sharply. He could feel the blood flowing through their veins! Weakened though it may be, this one, the smallest one, still had a chance to maybe survive. Maybe there was a medical bay somewhere aboard the ship, and even if there wasn't there were probably... veterinarians? Healer capes? Something on the mainland. In either case, his mission had to remain the same.
The man quickly looked around the room, all too aware of the increasing pitterpatter of rain, and located what he was eighty percent sure was some sort of port. He unloaded his computer setup on the spot, pulling a wire and a strange device from his pocket; as the computer booted up, he let himself fall into a brief and directed fugue, the nature of his innovation changing the object in his hand to a new and more useful shape.
"Father?"
"Dragon, good, you're still here." The man took a deep breath. "I know how this is going to sound, but an alien spaceship has crashlanded outside the house, and I need you to connect to it. I've got a wire right here to link you to the system, and I will be removing some of your restrictions to get the job done."
"I--wait, an alien spaceship?"
"Yeah, I think it got caught up in Leviathan's attack and he made the clouds shoot it with lightning. Speaking of which, we've got a deadline. Let's say twenty minutes before Leviathan gets here. You're going to link to the ship and tell me what we need to do to make it flightworthy before then."
"I--well, I'll try, but if this really is an alien spaceship--"
"I know, it's a long shot, but it's the only chance we've got. Alright... here we go."
The man plugged the familiar end of the wire into the computer and the newly altered other end into the alien port, before sitting crosslegged in front of the keyboard. His fingers flew across the keys, quickly flipping digital switches left and right. Dragon, for her part, expanded into her newfound abilities as readily as she did into the alien systems, quickly analysing what she could with unerring precision and delicacy.
"Alright, that's--no, that's... but we can... Okay." The abstract face on the screen moved to the side as another window popped up, showing a map of the interior. "These guys have a system for generating artificial crew members, including Engineering, Security, Operations, and Intelligence. The problem right now is that the base blueprint for their model generation systems was fried during the attack, so we need to replace that data core, which we can do if I upload a few files to one of the drives back in the house. So you get the drive, bring it back here, and after I've uploaded the data you go here," Dragon higlighted a specific space on the map, "open up the panel, and replace this," she brought up another window, this time with a series of machines and wires, only one of which was glowing, "with the drive. Then you slap the big yellow button--you'll have to do it for each of the four divisions--the crew members will come online, and we'll help them with the rest of the repairs."
"Huh. That easy?"
"Not hardly. I'll still have to explain the situation to them, and they'll probably need to raid the house for all the materials and biomass in it, but without them fixing this ship up is impossible."
"Right." The man nodded. "I'll be right back."
"Bring your toolkit!" Dragon shouted after him.
Alone in the ruined starship, her camera turned on the three dead aliens, and the barely breathing alien child.
"...Hang in there, kiddo," she murmured quietly. "We're going to get out of this, I promise."