“Tried to stir them up,” Rain said, rejoining us now that Foil had taken his place. “Got two groups hanging back, one’s backed up to go talk to Cradle.”

“Which?” Tattletale asked.

“Chugalug and a guy with a white hood, sword, robey sort of look. Second guy went.”

“Condemner,” Tattletale said. “Not hanging back. He’s a thinker and sound blaster… can communicate messages. He’s listening in, communicating something between Cradle and Blue. You’ll want to stop him.”

I want to stop all of them.

“Well fucking great,” Rain said. He visibly stopped himself, visibly forcing himself to relax. Capricorn set a scalemail glove on his shoulder.

The noises of the fighting were escalating. What had been an initial spatter of gunfire was being answered.

“What do I tell Blue?” Prancer asked. “Yes or no?”

“Tell her if she accepts some leeway, gets maybe one of us on loan as a penalty clause, fine, I’ll try to make it happen. Also, tell her I said fuck her. Not—”

An eruption of MYOSHA’s power sent debris flying. Most of that debris was paper thin, but it stirred into the air.

Prancer was adopting his breaker form. He nodded, and he ducked low as he slipped around the corner, sliding beneath the raised platform, too small to be a porch, by one front door. He sprung up on the other side, hurdling a vehicle, heading to the station.

Byron’s power produced a flood of water. I wasn’t in a position to see, my back to the wall and everything that was going on, more of my attention on the station, but I saw the constellation change, dots and lines becoming flowing water, I felt the fine mist of droplets that wind or clashing sprays of water sent into the air, and I heard the moment that all gunfire momentarily ceased.

“I shot her in the leg,” Foil reported. “But her people gathered around her. I’d shoot them, but—”

But the answering gunfire was more persistent than a slingshot could be.

“She doesn’t need to see where she’s creating the machine splashes,” I said. “There’s a chance she tries hitting us.”

“Not until there’s a final word from Blue.”

“Which might be now,” I said. “We move.”

An order, and one people thankfully listened to without bickering or issue.

“Brand,” my dad said, voice low. “Kick up some dust. Catch and toss.”

My mom nodded, backing up. Foil was pulling back because the bullets were too heavy. My mom ducked beneath the firing line of Foil’s slingshot as Foil aimed at the corner of the building.

Her power wasn’t Shadow Stalker’s, from back in Brockton Bay. It went through everything, yes. Shadow Stalker could do something similar. But it left a hole, where Shadow Stalker’s hadn’t. One shot, then two—it created an aperture with the same diameter as the bullet.