PURIFIED [Event]

The dragon didn't react immediately to the supers' arrival. It continued to plow forward, apparently more concerned with spreading destruction than with protecting itself, its temporal distortions wiping out another house or small apartment complex every few seconds.

As Geata pelted the dragon with debris, it didn't even seem to notice. Each piece crumbled to dust almost instantaneously upon hitting the smooth flesh of the beast's main body. But it wasn't a complete waste of time. After the third volley, there appeared to be a distinct pattern in that faster pieces of debris were torn apart utterly, while slower ones merely broke apart the way one would expect from hitting a very hard surface.

The dragon did take notice of Limen's efforts to coordinate the supers, however. An eye on its fin glimpsed her between the ruined buildings, and an instant later, the dragon briefly breached out of the ground. Its fin sliced the motorcycle Nemesis launched at it in half, and the resulting explosion didn't stop it from touching its fin's tip to one of the transformers on a telephone pole overhead. There was a blinding flash of light, a loud boom, and an electromagnetic pulse burst through the area. Every earpiece in the vicinity emitted a painful screech, then fell silent, killed by the blast.

But even without radio coordination, Dullahan's bulldozer full of supers had still been able to find a good tactical spot for attacking the dragon. The road on the hillside above was well-positioned for raining attacks on the dragon below, and Dullahan was able to keep up well enough to give his passengers a window of opportunity.

The first thing to actually slow the dragon's rampage was the terrain ahead of it dissolving into Aurora Disicio's particles. The dragon was an unstoppable force, so the rock and asphalt did nothing to slow it down, and removing it only had the effect of exposing it to more attacks. It began sinking deeper into the earth, but the deeper it sank, the deeper Aurora's power was able to dig for it, and soon it was far enough down in a valley carved by her power that the bubble of its distortion field was affecting noticeably fewer of the houses above.

Then it got blindsided by Timezone's rapid attack. The dorsal fin had eyes on both sides, but as one of those eyes took a hit, it closed to protect itself from further damage. The dragon's field of view was briefly narrowed.

Then another eye, this one on the tail, began taking fire from Destructo. The sniper rifle's bullets, while large by human standards, were too small to do any serious damage individually. But as the stream of lead added up, the eye closed itself to prevent the sheer volume of projectiles from permanently disabling it.

As Blue Jay teleported up above, an eye on the dragon's chest glared up at him... then glanced down at Stunt Double, and back to Blue Jay. That eye, too, closed itself, and just in time to get hit by the first of Blue Jay's pressure waves.

As if in pain from the hits that had landed on it, the dragon began to slow, and with Arcanum remaining alert for any attacks from unexpected directions, the other supers had a chance to catch up and attack. Blurry distortions in spacetime flickered constantly around the body, making for a harrowing obstacle course the closer one got to it, but Unhallow's power seemed to be slowing the distortions down, and Sanduleak's power made clear pathways for the heavy hitters to go in. Doubledealer, Gilgamesh, and Lobisomem were all able to get through and begin landing powerful blows on the beast. Blue Jay's flurry of attacks rained down from the heavens while Titan and the cats worked together to prevent the beast from escaping or dodging - its tail apparently had fewer distortions around it, making it easier to hold on.

Balance was able to get through as well. Touching the body was like reaching into an entirely different universe, one with completely alien laws of causality... and then she felt a surge of energy from inside the dragon, blasting through her own power like it wasn't even there and flooding the entire area.

It turns out that the dragon had hardly been hurt at all. It was only charging its power and using the opportunity to lure the supers into a trap.

More distortions suddenly erupted around the dragon, countless dozens of them, reaching deep into the earth and up to the buildings on the surface. The release was wild, uncontrolled, not even aimed at the supers themselves. Instead, the dragon was attacking them indirectly, putting all its focus into the direction of the shift: upward.

A huge dome of displaced matter was forming above the dragon. The flit flit flit of matter and air being moved across space and time was deafening. When the power finally faded, there were thousands of pieces of rubble, some smaller than a person and some consisting of entire uprooted buildings, all tumbling in place above the fight. The field was so dense that it blotted out the moon and stars, leaving the area lit only by Aurora's and Sanduleak's powers.

And then the rubble fell.

The impact could be felt throughout the city. Houses several blocks from the impact were shredded apart by supersonic debris and then flattened by the shockwave that followed. As for the supers directly under the falling debris, even those lucky enough to avoid the bigger chunks were still subjected to a pressure wave capable of blowing out eardrums and peppered by smaller pieces of shrapnel moving easily fast enough to break the skin. Titan himself, as the largest target, took the worst of the impact, a five-hundred ton apartment building falling directly on his head. The only small consolation was that the supers in his shadow were saved from the hits he took in their place.

Where Aurora's power had made a valley, now the area was overflowing with rubble. A rising cloud of dust made it impossible to see anything within. The head of the dragon emerged, followed by its chest... but then it came to a stop. Titan's hand was still holding onto its tail, along with over a hundred cats that had managed to hang on through the attack. Giza's white papers swarmed forth, covering its eyes and preventing the dragon from seeing exactly how it was being held. The combined powers of Passion and Purity drew blades from the sky to impale the appendage and bind it with shining energy.

But the tail's abrupt movement was so fast that there wasn't even time for Hooded Siren to call out a warning from her vantage point. The tail twisted unnaturally, seemingly unconcerned about cutting itself apart against the impaling blades. It sliced all the way through Titan's hand and broke free, scattering Giza's papers to the wind and sending the impaling swords flying. It flicked one way, launching a spray of cats flying several stories into the air, then flicked the other way, slapping a large piece of rubble with impossible velocity and accuracy at HalOS's airborne body. The tail's movements were so bizarre and contrary to physics that it was impossible to get a read on them.

And with that, the dragon was free once again. It changed direction, tipping onto its side to put its dorsal fin at chest level. It traced a wide arc as it turned, the fin effortlessly slicing through a dozen of Bloodbath's creations before heading straight toward Unhallow. Khan was able to recognize and counter the incoming attack, and with Azoth blinding the tail at the critical moment, Unhallow was able to escape with nothing more than a superficial cut. The dragon went upright again as it continued past, leaving the super behind before the effects of the decaying power could begin to add up. The wound dealt by the dorsal fin was insidious, leaving behind a distortion effect that caused any healing to rapidly tear itself apart again, an effect so strong that even Misty's healing powers couldn't remove the light scrape. If the fin had hit more squarely, the consequences could have been dire.

Awenydd's song spurred the heroes to catch up and get back into the fight. The dragon was moving with purpose, now. It seemed to be damaged, with dark spots where the heavier hits had landed, but not to the point of slowing at all. If anything, they seemed to have motivated it to stop wasting time on the relatively small population centers in the suburbs and head straight for downtown. Stopping it for good wouldn't be easy.

Anonymous was able to get a clear look at the monster as it sped away, and with it, a glimpse at its thoughts. The dragon's alien mindset was a struggle to wrap his head around, but a few familiar concepts could be discerned.

Rescue... Exalt... Purify...