“You happen to beat me to the scene, and then you use your secret identity, condescension and anti-parahuman shit to take me down a notch? And then you want a place on Advance Guard?”

“I happened to be there. I’m sorry, it was not my intention to come across that way.” I tried to help you out some.

“Yeah,” he said. “Right. I can guess what your intentions were.”

I was pretty darn confident my handling of the situation had been alright. I was inclined to chalk this one up to the guy having a screw loose or a few bundled up issues. It still bothered me, and it bothered me more that a nice conversation had been interrupted, and now this guy was apparently intent on keeping me company for the night, telling me how I was responsible for his problems and issues.

I pursed my lips, doing my best to filter what he was saying, tuning out what I could and responding where necessary, so he wouldn’t add me ignoring him to his list of grievances. He was talking about the community center now.

Voices were raised, a few shouts, both from capes at one of the other streets, and by people in the crowd. Phones were out.

It was almost a welcome interruption, in that solitary moment between the initial commotion and when I realized that it meant people were hurt.

I rotated myself in the air, looking, trying to figure out what had happened. I saw Crystal coming, and flew to meet her.

“Come!” she shouted, barely pausing as she flew. I joined her, wavering as air ripped past my forcefield, lopsided in a way I couldn’t quite detect, moving.

I disabled the forcefield, and in the doing, I could fly straighter, but I flew against cold wind, unprotected.

Crystal didn’t explain. It was left for me to see.

Our site had been quiet. At least one of the other places workers were congregating wasn’t. People were more spread out, and I suspected from their arrangement that some had crossed the street, approaching the building. There were more emergency vehicles, more capes, and there was a large clearing in the center of the crowd.

Eight people were gathered toward the center of that clearing, with more scattered across the more open area. Among them, several had eyes that glowed, or glows emanating from their mouths. Shapes I couldn’t quite make out moved around them. A power at work, like the outline of something that glowed slightly in the dark, too abstract to make out.

I watched as two people broke from the edge of the clearing and ran toward the center group. A man and a woman, holding hands.