With the weather being what it was, the water being close enough that wind could blow over it and chill everyone present, and the light weight of costumes in general, a lot of people looked like they were struggling to stay warm.

Natalie’s friend wore flannel, and Natalie wore an overly puffy coat that I was guessing would do a lot to keep her warm in this chilly weather.

“Hey!” Lookout greeted me, as I got closer.

I put my hand out, and she jumped up a little in the process of giving me a high five. With everything else going on since the dinner at her place, it was good to check in outside of the bounds of one-on-one meetings and phone conversations.

Our lives were in upheaval. Capricorn’s life was overturned on two hour shifts. Chris’s body and schedule were mixed up by form changes, but the chaos he wrestled was one he wrestled mostly alone, in a way that only made sense to him. Sveta’s boyfriend was away and the loss was felt.

Rain and Ashley? Relocated as a part of incarceration.

That left me—I’d just moved out of a desire to burn restless energy—and Kenzie, who had just turned her parents in a few days ago.

“Hey, so rude,” Sveta said.

I put my hand out. She gave me a prosthetic high five.

“You realize the other teams are going to see this and think we are the absolute lamest, right?” Cryptid asked.

Maximum sass Lookout retorted, “You are dragging the rest of us down when it comes to the averaged numbers.”

“Oooh,” he said. “Just so you know, if you sound like a math dork when you’re giving your comeback, you fail. I’m sorry.”

“If you get a mouthful of comeback after you burp because you chug so much—”

“Nooo,” I interrupted.

“I’m going to be glad I didn’t commit to the team thing, and I’ll let my brother deal with this,” Byron said. “Zero guilt.”

Byron became Tristan. From blue scale armor to red plate and chain.

There was a moment’s pause as he looked around.

“Fist bumps are better than high fives,” Capricorn said. “I’m pretty sure someone out there has enhanced hearing and got to hear Lookout say that.”

“There’s more where it came from,” Lookout said. “I went to the training camps for Wards. That’s like, ten percent kids acting like it’s prison and crying in a corner being homesick, twenty percent kids with stars in their eyes being amazed by everything, and seventy percent kids trying to establish a pecking order and murdering each other with words.”

“You were, what, nine?” Cryptid asked. “I can’t imagine you establishing any pecking order.”

“I didn’t say I was one of those seventy percent.”

“Oh, stars in your eyes, of course. You have that all the time.”