A bit of my own flight gave me the ability to focus my movement and make it more effective—I couldn’t swing punches with my arms still spasming, so I had to kick. With flight, a roundhouse kick could hit that much harder.

He slid out of the way, hands coming around in parallel slashes toward my middle. With forcefield up, I met the blurs that followed in the aftermath of the slashes, and I was shoved almost five feet away.

All one power, it seemed. Swoop and slash, he created the blurs that propelled, drove movement, slid. When he used them, they facilitated movement. For others, it was a focused kind of pressure. I imagined that if he cut me, the blur would open up the cut.

Swansong, meanwhile, was entirely preoccupied as Etna hurled a glass globe, which was shot, but Paris immediately followed up, timing his hurling of a long, thin black dart for the moment Swansong wasn’t able to strike.

It sliced her as it passed her, and carved a divot into the ground. The divot began spraying out a geyser of frozen dirt and ice, cutting Swansong’s cheek. She had to move out of the way—and Etna was already cutting off retreat, hurling another globe. The same Swansong blast that consumed the globe also arrested momentum, kept Swansong in the area of the spray. Paris followed up, throwing another two darts—

Fuck.

I tried to get by, running footsteps and lunges augmented by flight, like moonwalking, but tighter, faster. The Case Fifty-Three was right there, to cut me off. When I tried to slip by, they somersaulted in the air, changing direction while mid-slide, and slashed a flurry into the air. Left hand cut a zig-zag, foot struck up…

Not aimed at me, but at another purpose. A barrier of the high-pressure blurs cut me off from getting to either Swansong or Sveta.

I kicked the ground, hard, and sent a spray of crud directly at them.

“Kicking dirt?” Etna asked. “Really? That’s what you heroes have sunk to?”

I kicked again, aiming at her, the kick aimed for a mound with a rounder shape within it. Dirt and ice flew, and a flat stone six inches across flew past the barrier, clipping her on the hip.

Paris hurled darts my way. One hit the forcefield and was destroyed on impact, but the other missed, and that one was an issue.

Another barrier, a geyser of pellets flying like tiny bullets.

“You’re working for people who cut up kids and you’re calling us low?” I growled.

Swansong was lunging in to take advantage of Etna being distracted, reaching out. Balance off from the stone’s impact, Etna had a panicked response, throwing the half-formed globe, then a glob rather than a globe, barely a handful, all while floating backward.

Still holding onto that phone with the one hand.