I could understand why Foil would be reluctant to put holes that big in something she was using for cover, especially with the concentration of gunfire.

I handed her the gun I’d taken. I saw the moment of reservation, knew exactly what she was thinking, but she took the weapon.

My dad created glowing orbs. He threw one to my mother, tossing another around the corner. My mother caught and threw the orb, tossing it around her corner.

They were heavy detonations, pitched to cut into the earth, to kick up dirt, dust, and moisture. A shower of mud and moisture.

Visual cover, but when it came to the bullets, there were too many. I didn’t trust the Wretch and I had the impression the dogs would just get gunned down.

The front landing that Prancer had gone under. A three-foot by three-foot square of wooden boards with perforated metal textured for walking laid over top.

I had to step out into danger to get to it, though.

I made use of the cover and I flew low enough to the ground that the Wretch cut grooves into the ground. My own cloud of kicked-up mud and ice followed behind me.

A bullet clipped the Wretch, striking the very same hand that Cradle’s power had clipped. Much like my mom’s ball had been cut and then was intact after the fact, my own power had recovered when it had been knocked out and turned back on.

But I was left momentarily exposed, my back to the enemy, nearly blind in the loose rain of flecks of mud.

I flew to the underside of the square-shaped porch, my back hugging it, and the moment the Wretch returned, I used her to haul it up and away from the wall.

It was connected well enough that one plank was left affixed to the base of the door. The rest came apart in more or less one piece.

A shield, impractical in dimension, but it was a way to shield others just a bit more reliably than the Wretch could.

“Tenor of the fight changed,” Tattletale was saying, back at the main group. “Someone accepted someone’s deal.”

Had it? I’d been busy with property damage. I flew to a position where I could guard the others, head ducked down, Wretch clinging to my ‘shield’ that had to weigh a hundred and fifty pounds. I felt the first bullets strike it, impacts harder than the swing of a baseball bat, but diffuse enough it didn’t crack the Wretch. I knew I was buying seconds, because the Wretch was digging into the cracks between the thick boards and the posts that framed it, crushing and stabbing into metal.

People used the dogs, far too many hanging onto the side or riding on top, heads ducked low. I flew up higher to shield better.