Cradle’s mech crashed through a building, maze and all. Cradle wasn’t on it. It reached forward, and the distortion made the arm and fingers bend at right angles. They dug into grass and dirt, forcing Sveta to scramble out of the way.

“What did you do to me!?”

I heard Rain’s response, but I didn’t make out the words.

The voice shook me, because I was pretty sure I knew who it was. Cradle. Confronting Rain.

I expected the Undersiders and Breakthrough to be scattered. It wasn’t the case. Cradle had done what I liked to do in certain situations, when I was fighting something or someone bigger. Throwing myself into the midst of it all and using my enemy’s disorganization and shock against them. A lot of powers and weapons couldn’t be used in that situation if someone cared about hurting their allies.

The place was a clearing, a square of grass with buildings folded in to form walls, four narrow corridors leading out of the place, and those corridors were lit with explosions and the light from flashlights. They were boxed in, high walls surrounding them.

Cradle was a matter of feet from Rain, whip-chain out and spinning in a circle, crackling with red electricity. With soldiers approaching from multiple sides, a lot of the people who could have done something were stuck keeping the soldiers at bay. My dad, my mom, Capricorn, the dogs, and Foil. To do otherwise was to be surrounded on three or four sides and gunned down. Like this, at least, the soldiers and the associated capes were left hiding behind cover.

The percussive explosions from the constant grenades was my dad’s act in this, keeping one ‘corridor’ between buildings inaccessible, pinning down the squadron on the far side of it. It looked like Mukade’s people. The initial movements of the centipedes was being shaken, thrown off, and interrupted.

My mom had her weapons out in bright yellow fans. The fans narrowed into blades when she needed something that would crackle and burn, and expanded out into fan shapes when she wanted something more diffuse.

A sweep of a fan burned one soldier my mom was fighting, making him drop his assault rifle. She kicked it backward, in the direction of the Harbingers.

Cradle’s glowing line appeared in the path. The weapon slid right into it, and was cut in two.

Whatever calculations the Harbingers were using, Cradle wasn’t sitting still long enough for them to apply. He moved here and there, at one moment approaching Rain with arm held high, chain circling overhead, ready to strike down, the other hand pointed at Rain—

“Everything I am! I was well and I’ve tried to be better, even after all this. After you.”

“I’ve heard all this before, Cradle. Every fucking night,” Rain said.