I would have provided some assistance, but I couldn’t take my attention off of the air hockey puck.

The puck leaped forward, but dropped like they were tripping over their own feet. The goal, though, was to make as straight a shot as he was capable of, lunging while close to the ground, striking the floor at a shallow angle and then going directly for our team.

I’d kind of expected it, though. My mom had done that a few times in sparring, trying to roll between my feet.

Pads meant vulnerability. The hard bit of plastic or metal at the wrist was meant to help him when post-power, skidding to a stop. I blocked the impact, mindful that I wasn’t too close to Heartbroken, then followed up, chasing.

They weren’t fully recovered when I crashed into them. I wrapped my arm around them, gathering them up into a full nelson.

They stomped the ground, propelling us both into a lunge, straight for the ceiling. I used my flight to reorient us in the air, denying them the follow-up contact. Then I used my aura, my chest pressed hard against their back, the feeling emanating from me and into them point blank.

I wanted to break them, to make their efforts less strategic and more flailing. I could feel it in how they jerked and kicked, now.

They grazed furniture with a kicking toe, and again, we were propelled away, hard. I twisted us in the air so it was my back that slid across the ceiling. The paint and the ceiling’s surface cracked badly with the contact, and something on the other side pushed back. It was meaty, broader across than my back was, and it slurped.

I didn’t break through that thin layer of ceiling, and neither did the thing on the other side. Not until my enemy reached up to hit it. Paint broke, cracks spread out, and we were boosted away from it, the boost no doubt being the original intent.

I was glad it wasn’t a death-ball boost, at least.

Their power had two components. The dash, the boost, the ‘kick-off’, where they moved four or five times as fast. If they could bounce off of a solid surface as they did it, then they went full death ball, becoming a whirling sphere as tall as I was.

My goal in the now was to pump them full of emotion without saturating my own team, and to keep them from achieving their move. I kept us away from the spreading break in the ceiling, with red membrane-covered flesh pressing down against the hole, too wide to penetrate.

“Bring him here!” Chastity called out.

Him, then. I’d assume the girl from the villain family who worked with villains knew who the villainous mercenary was.