I flew up and over, saw the group that was standing tallest, and Red was the backbone of it. Gun in hand, held shoulder-height and held sideways in front of me, I flew at them, aiming to bowl them over. My arm was in agony for every step of the maneuver.

All for nothing. A buzzsaw erupted just at the roof’s edge, barring my way. I was forced to stop, stuck where I was while multiple people in her contingent got their bearings and aimed at me.

Grip shifting, flying with the circular saw as a kind of cover, I brought the gun around and pulled back on the trigger.

The vibration shook my body and reminded me that I had two massive gashes in my arm. Someone could have dug their fingers into the gashes and cuts and it probably wouldn’t have hurt so much.

But I’d used guns before as part of the Patrol. This time, however, I aimed at legs and lower bodies instead of paper cutouts. Their disorganization was compounded by the fact they’d been under fire, some being mangled or blinded, and they were maneuvering around a damaged rooftop. It put more people into a smaller area.

When I mowed into them with a single burst of gunfire, they collapsed into one another, if they didn’t collapse forward.

Except Red had been shielded by the people between her and I, and I still had to deal with her. I saw the telltale splashes, and I got out of there.

I thought I got out of there. I went low, closer to the base of the building, hugging the wall to minimize the chance that someone would be able to catch me off guard.

I had the Wretch active, and that likely saved my life. Red’s industrial tool this time was a crane mount, spearing sky high and bringing cable and wrecking ball with it. That wrecking ball slammed into me and the wall I was hugging. The wall below them, that was holding their section of the roof up.

Putting me through concrete and brick, partially indoors. I narrowly avoided having the cabling of the wrecking ball catch me and pull me into the ground as the whole apparatus sank back into the earth, just as fluidly as it had emerged.

Red, it seemed, had hopped over onto a piston she was using as an elevator back toward the ground. More industrial tools were appearing to push broken concrete and dirt up against the walls, shoring them up as the building came to pieces.

I didn’t press the fight. It wasn’t a priority. Our goal was stopping Cradle, and Cradle wasn’t even here anymore.

The siege was ongoing now. The grenade shots shook the building and people were hurrying outside. The momentum barrier was a one-way screen for them to open fire.