Swansong couldn’t advance while the ground was littered with cooling masses of glass.

“She doesn’t care about hurting kids. She hit Lookout because she can’t aim,” Swansong said. “Embarrassed an entire neighborhood of supervillains.”

“You want to see how good my aim is?” Etna asked.

“Are you suggesting you weren’t trying before?” Swansong asked. “Because you saying that doesn’t intimidate me. It suggests you’re a lazy supervillain halfwit.”

Etna threw more globes, floating and doing her own moonwalk. Swansong ducked, wove, started to close the distance, and then was forced to back off again as Paris threw more darts.

They had everything they needed to ward us off. The globes were just too menacing in terms of the sheer damage they promised to inflict if she could actually hit us with one, the aerial assassin had the ability to create a fence of slashes, and Paris produced the geysers, though he seemed more focused on capitalizing on momentary weaknesses.

Contender—he’d dispatched the second Harbinger, knocking the kid out.

For the time being, we were two against one.

I glanced back at the other group. It would have been nice if that wolf came charging in, but it was staying close to its master.

“Don’t turn your back on the enemy,” Contender said.

I was fully aware of him, as he joined the aerial assassin, standing beside the guy. I was aware of Paris, and of Etna. Of Sveta, who had fluid running down her face, but who was at least holding her own, against another Case Fifty-Three who seemed implacable.

Swansong was bleeding in multiple places from the geyser, and the bandage at her neck was soaked through. Something had pulled at the injury.

It couldn’t be easy.

“We should end this,” Paris said, very quiet.

“Why?” Contender asked.

“Do you disagree?”

Contender shook his head, as if exasperated. “Vulturehawk, you and I take down goldie.”

“Not confident you can do it alone, Contender?” I asked, taunting.

“I’m very confident we can manage it as a pair,” he said.

“You call yourself Contender and there’s no fight in you,” I said. I pushed out with my aura, full strength, and even at that it felt like I was outputting a three on my normal one to ten scale.

The taunts were borne of nervousness, and a little bit of it was the conscious awareness that powers tended to make sense. Contender’s name, his power, his assured cockiness, and the way he tended to go after people he thought he could beat, it painted a bigger picture.

Whether he was a prize athlete who’d hit hard times or someone who’d never been able to score a win before he had powers, whether it was a school that had exerted pressure… I felt like being called out for cowardice would get to him.