“Smart thing to do would be to lay a trap. Watch from a distance. There would be almost nothing we could do about it. But she doesn’t think that way. She thinks the impressive part of her power is what she does when she’s used it for a while. Not the weird things that happen while she uses it. She’s not going to do the smart thing and lie in wait. She’ll get ready to drop a mountain on us or something. That’s the teenager approach. Reach for the big guns.”

“I don’t think that’s a teenage girl thing,” Tori said. “You were a teenage girl not that long ago.”

“And I am impatient. I’m reckless, and I don’t dwell on the quiet parts of my power as much as I could. But she was younger when she started, and she still has a way to go. If she lived another ten years, I think she’d settle into it.”

There was a length of road with a hole in it that a car could disappear into. March swerved around it, coming close as the wheels skidded on an invisible patch of ice. She checked the rear-view mirror to make sure the others were fine. They were going a little slower, a little wary, and were following her path fairly closely.

“Not that little Vista is going to live that long,” March said.

There was no argument from her megacluster. Ixnay fixed his gloves, one looser-fitting than the other.

Off the highway. Onto the side road. They had an incline to go up, and with the ice on the roads, it was a tricky route to take.

The signs indicated the destination. ‘Brockton Bay’.

As they made their way down the road, the view between the mountains and hills became clear.

A city folded into itself, a landscape from half a continent away pulled close. Another side of the city raised up. An end result like a cardboard box turned on its side, just the one side open. Inside, buildings ran horizontally, vertically, upside-down, even diagonally in places, where they jutted from corners. None collided with any others, and water, parks, and hills all factored into the architecture.

March broke into laughter, seeing it. She let their ride coast to a stop while they still had the view.

Too dangerous to go forward. There would be traps. Pits, divots, uneven ground. The ground could be raised into spikes, or a wall could suddenly appear in their paths. She hit the hazards to notify the other team, then pulled over, before putting their ride into park.

She couldn’t let go of her amusement over the sight.

“You really think the quiet stuff is what makes her strong?” Ixnay asked.

March managed to stop laughing, uttering a gleeful, “I really do! But this is great! I can’t wait!”

The others climbed out. Ixnay, Dino, Enyo. Tori lingered behind.