I shook my head, focusing more on the battlefield than anything. Lord of Loss was pulling himself together, his thugs gathered around him. Nursery had her own backup, but she wasn’t doing so well with them or at all. Half my reason for hanging back in the now was to see if any cracks formed that we could exploit, there.

Then again, we had to keep the cracks from forming on our side too. Foil was focused on Parian, the kids were scared. Precipice was about as unsure of himself as any teenage boy would be, dealing with mercenaries hired by the woman who wanted to kill him, after having spent the latter part of the evening having his head screwed with by an attractive girl. I tried to reach out, “Precipice, if you’re agreeing with Aroa, the girl who said she laughs when old people get hurt—”

“Babies or old people, really,” Candy supplied. Aroa pointed a finger at her cousin without looking at her, nodding.

“—then you might be being a little hard on yourself,” I said.

“I’m an expert at being hard on myself,” Precipice said. “It’s either that, or I’m the biggest asshole alive, and I’d rather hate myself than be an asshole.”

Well, not a lot I could say to that.

Chastity, though, was entirely on the ball when it came to rebuttals. “Alternative, Precipice mon chou? Find someone else and show them how hard you can be for them. Having an external pressure release can be very nice.”

Precipice turned his head her way.

“I did not mean me, but I’m flattered,” she said, laying a hand over the triangle of cleavage she’d left strategically in place, with an amused tone that told me she’d wholly meant to imply herself. “I meant our big man there, or the sea of horrific baby-makers that are waggling themselves at us as we speak.”

“Sorry,” Precipice said, apparently one hundred percent believing her. “Yeah, that sounds like a good temporary plan.”

“It helps that Lord of Loss has a punchable face,” I said. “Help me punch it.”

He created a silver blade in his hand.

“That’s part of it,” I told him. “What we just talked about? I need you to use your power. We’ll try it out.”

“Are you fucking serious?” he asked. “Now?”

“When else?”

“In a safe, controlled training environment?” he asked, with a tone like he was almost angry. Incredulous. A part of it was probably that I was reversing course on things I’d told him again and again.

“Fun fact,” I said. “Powers don’t tend to jibe with safe and controlled environments. For every cape that I know who picked up a trick in PRT labs or whatever, there are ten more who figured their tricks out because they had to. You want to make it work? Field test, be confident, be creative.”

“How many tried to pull something inventive and got their asses kicked?” Precipice asked.