“I was,” Crystalclear said. “I wasn’t in a position to do much.”

“This situation here follows from that. We’ve got visitors, and we want to keep things calm and safe. Foresight said we should make use of you and Relay to help keep an eye on things.”

“Ah,” Crystalclear said. “Alright.”

There was a pause. “Are you okay to do this?”

“Yeah,” Crystalclear said. He realized he didn’t sound confident, and tried again. “Yeah.”

He wasn’t sure it was alright. He’d been volunteered for something and he hadn’t explicitly been told. It was a level of disconnection from the authority that felt uncomfortably familiar and disconcerting.

It made him think of his aunt. It also made him think of Big Picture’s statements about it being better to wait.

“We’re bodyguards and protection for the Gimel side of things. The other guys brought their own protection.”

The other guys? Crystalclear thought.

All thinkers had their weaknesses. Most hated not knowing things. Most, by way of how their powers gave them an edge in one respect, had a way of missing other things. Crystalclear’s vision gave him a lot, but it made some obvious things impossible to grasp.

Crystalclear’s focus broadened as he tried to take in everything necessary to keep an eye on things. He looked at the crowd, noted who was reacting to the shutters being closed, and tried to keep tabs on them. He watched the other heroes, tracked the officers, and tried to wrap his head around the fractured messes that were their heads and the ever-shifting contents of those heads.

“Ratcatcher seemed to take to you,” Relay commented.

“Did she?” Crystalclear asked.

“That’s the impression I got. You didn’t seem too bothered, either.”

“She seemed like a nice kid. Weird but good.”

Relay made a small sound. “Don’t, uh, say that around her. She’s older than you. Heh.”

Crystalclear smiled, but he felt just a little anxious. There were things he had liked about the NNH group with Tempera, Longscratch and Fume Hood. Big Picture had talked about the merits of simplicity.

Thinker issues. He hated being out of the loop. It constantly felt like he was. Even when it was with things that pertained to himself.

“Sorry,” Relay said. He’d apparently picked something up.

“It’s okay,” Crystalclear said.

The group was departing the train, now.

“We’ll be using the emergency stairwell,” Relay said. “We go upstairs, we’ll find a vantage point, they’ll have their meeting with the people who are already waiting there, then a few of them are going to go tour Gimel. Things are out of our hands once they do, they’ve been warned about that. The newcomers want to see the city they’ve been helping to build.”

“I heard about some of this,” Crystalclear said. “These are people from an alternate Earth?”

He didn’t get his answer, as the people approached.