The guy who I’d hit first had fallen atop someone with a gun that wasn’t a rifle—or it was, but it was an automatic. I punched him in the face as I threw myself on top of him, grabbing the weapon. He fought me, wrestling with me over it, and I couldn’t afford to take the seconds to try and win.

I pushed out with my aura, and I saw his expression change—bewilderment, not fear. He didn’t let go, though, and I had to turn to using the Wretch.

Just a burst of power, taking a moment of strength. As far as I’d been able to tell, when I activated my forcefield, it came from me. It hugged me, but only for the one tenth of a second that it was in contact with my skin and costume. The trick was using it in the moments before it unfurled. One instant of strength that could lift a car or punch through sheet metal.

I tore the rifle from his hands, then gave it back to him—one of my hands gripped the barrel, the other the stock, and I smashed the middle part into his face.

Couldn’t go forward without going into the firing line. Couldn’t go back without the same issue. People were turning on me, concerned with the immediate threat in their ranks. I saw some backing away from the line of people that had formed alongside the parked cars, trying to get a clear shot, and I saw them get shoved or pulled aside.

Two capes. A man and a woman, in dark costumes with utilitarian masks—hard white, covering mouth and nose, bridge of the nose, and the brow. Both masks outlined the eye sockets but didn’t block peripheral vision.

She had a cloth scarf wound around her head and neck, white armor built into her gloves and an otherwise black uniform with body armor. He had the same look, but no gloves, his hat was a simple beanie, and he had a neck warmer on. His body armor had shoulder pads and bracers that extended over the back of his hands, and he carried a long-handled axe, like the kind emergency workers used to chop through doors.

I didn’t want to get involved with that. Unable to go forward or back, unwilling to go up in case it exposed me to them, I decided to go the Manton route. Powers came encoded with limitations, and the most common limitation that laymen and bottom-tier cape geeks associated with the term was that powers worked on inorganic things only, or they worked on organic things only. The chief example of a hundred possibilities, but it was what I decided to use.

In brief: through.

I threw myself into the mob.