The dent didn’t touch me, but the impact did. A punch as heavy as any I’d taken directly, catching me while I wasn’t relying on the Wretch, due to my proximity to Crested and Crested shielding me. I felt pain rock through me, whole-body, every wound I had amplified, and a sharper pain marked my head hitting the ground. I heard Crested fall, his barrier collapsing, saw a glimpse of what might have been the three B’s—Bluestocking, Birdbrain, and Bitter Pill—falling over.

Thud fucking indeed.

My thoughts weren’t lined up exactly right as I tried to pull myself together. I flew back, and an uncharacteristic bout of motion sickness nearly sank me.

But Thud was lifting up a foot, to stomp on me like I’d done to Paris.

I flew up, and even that movement wasn’t without its wobble.

The impact of the stomp rippled out, kicking up just about every loose particle on the station platform, on the ground beyond the platform, and everything around my team, who were still huddled together. They all fell, sprawling.

Thud didn’t bleed, but there was a hole where his eye was supposed to be, and his expression, frozen in ceramic, was twisted around the edges, his face unchanging, the slimy fibers that connected the ceramic-like plates more tense and strained than I’d seen them.

He was distracted, at least for a moment, by Paris’s cry of pain. The stomp had jostled him, and he wasn’t in a state to be jostled.

I had help coming now, and Birdbrain was backing up, gun leveled at Thud.

Her shots weren’t aimed at killing, but at disabling. Three out of the four hit the meaty flesh between ceramic plates.

He didn’t slow down. He lunged forward, and it was a weird lunge, a fast initial movement, yes, but the fast didn’t taper off. He ran over Bluestocking’s group, clotheslining them and possibly breaking a collarbone, shoulder, or two.

I flew at him, kicking. He was keeping an eye out for me, though, and turned, arm moving to strike my leg aside. I tucked it in, knees close to my chest, and avoided him instead.

The way he moved—that was a precise turn for a guy moving a lot of weight. A precise movement of the arm, stopping just where he needed it.

Kinetic extension. Every impact or movement carried… maybe exactly as far as he wanted it. Every hit, kick—they involved shockwaves, either directed or rippling out. It exaggerated how he carried himself.

He chased me, with those abrupt movements that saw him almost sliding into me, a train or truck that needed only acceleration, his ability providing him the means to accelerate through it.