Bringing him closer to the ground came with a danger, though. If he touched the ground, he could kick off of it. I tangled my legs with his, moving us in the air so those tangled feet weren’t anywhere near the floor.

Chastity stalked closer. She raised her right hand up over her left shoulder as she advanced, and it glowed nebulously with a dark blue energy. She had to make a small hop to give herself the height to make contact—a backhand swing that caught the air hockey puck across the face of the helmet.

He was torn from my arms, slapped down against the ground. He didn’t bounce or rebound. The floor cracked beneath him, far more fragile than it should have been.

My foe groaned, as he slumped down to the ground, hands going to his helmet, so he could hold his head up. The sound he made was a long groan like every single involuntary utterance I’d made while cringing about middle school me, except with the duration and volume dialed to the maximum.

Chastity raised her hand up near her face, covering the smile she wore. One of her fingernails was glowing, and a ring at one of her other fingers was catching that light in a way more intense than normal. “Bitch slap delivered.”

“Not the reaction I expected,” I said, as I floated away from the air hockey puck. “Distilled defeat, you said?”

“It looks different for everyone, but everyone reaches a point where their body can’t take anymore and shuts down, whatever the mind thinks it wants. I hurry things along,” she said. She gave the ceiling a dubious look. “Let’s get outside. Outside has to be better.”

I nodded.

“You’re going to need to protect me,” she said, waggling her hand in my general direction, the glowing fingernail in focus. Then, like she was just now remembering, “And I’m going to need to protect Precipice.”

She hurried back toward Precipice with a kind of urgency. The bitch slap target was ignored, assumed out of commission. She had a body sense, too, which apparently mapped out to anyone she’d used her power on, while also helping her aim her attacks by keeping her aware of where her potential slap targets were.

Her ‘bitch slap’ was a dangerous weapon, but a fragile one. One shot, and if the target wasn’t immune or resistant to emotion powers, then they were out of the fight. If she was more confident or powerful in her target’s eyes, it hit harder and lasted longer. The fragility, though, was that the second she was taken down a peg, the effects all broke, everyone she’d slapped down was back in play, and she ate some of the backlash.

It wouldn’t be too bad so long as she only had one foe she’d slapped down.