“Hens actually,” Trial said. “Let my friend go.”

“We’re giving you a head start, but this definitely isn’t over,” Shortcut said. He gestured at Sveta.

Error climbed to her feet.

“This way,” Trial said. He gestured at the trucks. He was careful to remain within a chain’s length of the road, doing so with Error at his side. “There should be one more truck.”

“Tipped over,” I said.

He shook his head. “Tip it back over.”

“Driver was unconscious, last I saw,” I lied. “You can send someone if you want. Maybe Error can drive.”

“It’s not worth,” Error said.

I watched as Trial considered his options.

He indicated for the trucks to go, with one pausing by him to let Error on. The chains started up, and they were gone.

“We’ll tail,” Shortcut said. He looked at me. “You…”

“We can cooperate on this.”

“We could,” he said. “No. Spright, tell Flapper to handle this mess, talk to the unconscious one when they wake up. Catch up with me after.”

Then he was gone.

“Dick,” Capricorn muttered under his breath.

“Yeah. No way that was going to end well,” Spright said. “Heavy hitter paired with that kind of stranger power. We’ll take our lumps. This loss is Advance Guard’s fault, provided you don’t ask Shortcut to assign blame. Always good to see you.”

“Spright—” I said, interrupting before he could go.

“What’s up?”

“Two things. Mayday wanted me to pass this on. It’s a proposal for information sharing, networking. Dividing up the ten percent of threats that really need cape attention, swapping out. Take a look?”

He took the flash drive. He considered for a moment, the nodded. He floated a foot above the ground, borrowing my power. Just the movement aspect.

“Second thing is… I’m not okay with leaving it like this.”

“Me either, but sometimes we need to eat our losses.”

“I don’t like losing,” Capricorn said.

“What do you say I gather reinforcements and we do this again, try to corner them? This time with no civilians nearby.”

“If you want to try, I’m not going to complain. You have my number. It won’t make Shortstuff happy, but…”

“Rare thing?” Capricorn asked.

“Sure. Do me a favor and brief Flappy?”

“Okay,” Capricorn said.

Then Spright was gone, flying away using my power.

“I’ll call and check on Sveta,” I said. “You handle that side? See what the driver of the big truck says?”

“Yeah,” was the reply. Capricorn jogged off.

Yeah.

I had my phone out a moment later. The automated process for idling had selected one of the songs I’d downloaded for Gilpatrick during one of the Patrol’s visits to a school. Gun rules as a song for grade schoolers.

Because of course it had.