Lookout talked double-speed as she finished, “I have a strong guess and I can refine it. With what we saw down there.”

“Do it,” I said.

“Yes! Projector disc, Capricorn?”

He handed it over.

There was an outright war going on near the front door of the prison. I could hear the succession of noises, of distant detonation, pause, detonation, pause, rumble of something collapsing. The pauses were becoming fewer and shorter, and there were more noises that overlapped. Here and there, gunshots could be heard.

“We get to the terminal for the bombs, and we end this,” I said, keeping my voice low. “We sound off an alert for every ankle bracelet, and they’ll notice. Neither Goddess nor Teacher want to lose the prisoners. We can put an end to this fighting and make the prisoners stay put.”

“Some of the prisoners,” Monokeros said. “Some are leaving with Goddess. No negotiation.”

“Sure,” I said. I met Monokeros’s cold eyes, and I felt my skin crawl.

“I missed out on the Tweens Between,” Monokeros said, wistfully. “I liked them, from what little I saw of them. They had moxie.”

“Oh hey! Another fan! Moxie is a great way of—” Lookout said. She stopped working for a second, looking up. “No, wait, hey. That’s awful, haha! No!”

“Work,” Rain said, putting his hand on her shoulder. “Tress and Swansong are counting on you.”

“Right.”

She was a kid, in the end. She was, as much as any of us, trying to wrestle with conflicting feelings, with tension.

I wrestled with my own feelings, trying to anticipate what came next, without letting my thoughts get muddled by the blood-and-bodily-fluid streaked elephant that was occupying one large segment of my thoughts.

For a moment, it was all I could do to just keep my equilibrium, stay calm, and try not to think.

One hundred and ten percent. It’s not about being the Warrior Monk. It’s about being all of it, getting to where every part of me functions and functions well.

“Got it,” Lookout said. She held up the disc, and lines sprung out, painting a fuzzy rectangle on dirt and grass.

Something struck with a sound like cymbals as large as a building, loud enough that every single one of us bent over, hands at or near our ears, wincing in pain.

“That’s Advance Guard,” Kenzie said, barely audible as my ears rang.

The heroes at the portal. If they were coming in, that was because the people they were trying to stall had gotten through, and the heroes were following after.

If the heroes were following after… Then Goddess had yet another massive advantage. Teacher might be losing this, and if he thought he was losing while he had control of the ankle bombs…

“Damsel, Rain, can you use your powers? Get us through the ground.”

“I’ll do what I can,” Rain said. “But I sever, I don’t really dig.”