The black-haired teenager was trouncing Kitchen Sink, despite Kitchen Sink’s relative size and weaponry. Sink’s swings were wide and reckless, and he almost seemed to forget he had the weapons in his haste to get in close and hurt the teen.

That changed in a flash. One item fell into his hands, and he hurled it. It produced a cloud as it hurtled through the air, and that cloud left the black-haired boy coughing.

Kitchen Sink slammed his face into the boy’s. Sink’s face had a heavy porcelain mask strapped to it. The boy had nothing, and dropped to his knees, one hand to his face. A second later, veins stood out across his face, more intense than before, and the blood loss accelerated. He lunged forward, and didn’t quite manage to get off his knees before Sink started pressuring him down toward the ground. Sink looked pretty affected, almost frothing at the mouth now.

Colt staggered back, an arm encircling her neck. Her first thought was that it was one of Love Lost’s mercenaries, and that she’d somehow crossed a line or gotten her just desserts.

Her other thought was that Love Lost was stalking toward her. Her right claw extended into whips with sharp metal caps at the end.

Colt tried to bring her gun up to shoot at the guy who had her. When her hand raised, however, there was no weight in it and no gun.

She felt a gun press against her back. Though it was a heavy, hairy man’s arm that held her, the voice in her ear was feminine. “You just shot my friend, you fucking lunatic.”

Damsel was using her power more, skipping ahead, while Nailbiter was trying to catch up. Forgetting the strangulation for a second, Colt twisted to try and see what was happening.

She was just in time to see Damsel arrive at the corner where Disjoint was waiting. He had no arms by which to defend himself, so Damsel was free to use her power to deliver a flying knee-strike, as he doubled over, trying to shield himself with truncated arms. When he flew back, he had hands again.

Which freed Lookout, who he had been restraining.

Colt screwed her eyes shut, saw Love Lost doing the same, as Lookout raised her gun.

The flash hurt, even with her eyes forced as shut as she could get, her face turned away. It made her mind adjust light and dark in a funny way, as if she’d always scaled it from one to ten and she’d just found a new, higher bar for ten.

Her mom was always in the hospital for hip pain, she thought. She’d heard a lot about pain scales, had heard her mother complain about how arbitrary a ten was.