I fought to get my thoughts in order. I didn’t have Precipice’s power effect on me, which meant he probably didn’t have enough of a view of the battlefield—nobody had emerged from the toppled van. Not yet.

But Hookline was near that van, chain in hand. The disgraced ex-flunky of Beast of Burden with the invincible chain, a mask that was just chain wound around their face, with spaces for the eyes and mouth to peek through.

Another factor in play.

The biggest dog was back on its feet now, injured, and limped toward its master. She put a hand on its side. I could see the bones grow and regrow, the blood welling out with more intensity, before the wounds began to close. The weakened Yips with its flesh hanging loose looked tighter, now, like everything had drawn back in together. The wound at its face was mending.

On the other hand, Nailbiter was back on her feet. She looked battered, hunched over, but she was back on her feet, regardless. The hand with the broken wrist was hanging limp at her side.

Nailbiter was… not impossible to deal with. Except as I tried my evasive maneuvers, circling around, the breaker was putting herself between Nailbiter and me. I started toward Hookline and the van, and the breaker was quick to shift position, trying to block me off.

Slower than I was, but maneuverable, and there was a really large radius around her where I couldn’t fly, walk, or run.

Breaker, I thought. On-off power or powerset, typically a whole-body transformation. Contrasted from changers by the fact that the transition to breaker was usually sudden, instantaneous, and the forms or qualities they adopted were of the breaking-reality or powers sort. Of course, there were lots of people in the middle-ground between the two, leading to a mess of cross-classifications and mix-ups.

Breakers tended to be strong, but it was a limited strength, not in measure, but in the limited circumstances. The powers required the form, and the form didn’t come free. So it made sense that this breaker had powers on a level above Precipice and Love Lost. The compact with the alien in the breaker’s head was that they got to burn the candle at both ends, but only while in the form.

That would be why PRT advice for dealing with breakers was to catch them when they weren’t breaker. Without the form, they were often powerless or far weaker. The less PRT, more-capey sort of answer to the threat was that breaker forms came with protections, but they also came with weaknesses. My for-a-short-time teammate Shadow Stalker had been impervious to physical blows and conventional weapons, but a minor electrical shock threatened to kill her, and I’d heard that even a strong static shock had delivered actual injuries that had translated to muscle damage after she had turned human again.