My team was arriving, but in the heat of the moment, in the fray and maintaining a formation, I couldn’t quite break away. The artillery cape with us was distraction and devastation in equal measure, forcing people to scramble, to abandon cover, or punishing them if they didn’t—sometimes. Balk just wanted support to do what he needed to do, and to his credit, he used it. With us, he didn’t have to worry about his flanks and communication was reduced down to key formations and phrases like ‘breach’ and ‘draw’, speeding up how fast we could operate.

Balk did his thing, the artillery cape had her own focus. As defensive flanks, it was the forcefield cape and I working together in a weird synchronicity. Working together with a minimum of distracting communication, relying on practiced PRTCJ formation that I hadn’t practiced because I’d never been a part of the PRTCJ. At best I’d gone over it once with Crystal. I was a good student but I wasn’t that good.

But it worked, and that it worked situated me in a kind of weird mental state. It felt like the horrible fatigue of Shin and that room with Amy was catching up to me and I was almost dreaming, and yet I felt hyperfocused, not tired at all. The only dream was the surreal cast to this whole thing.

I would have almost called out master–stranger, except it wasn’t. My hand hurt where it had been flayed, my chest hurt in a way that made it hard to breathe because the breastplate had taken a heavy impact. Not a broken rib, only a bruised everything from the diffuse impact.

The situation was real.

My team and the subordinate teams needed help.

I fought almost back to back with the forcefield cape, or we would have been back to back if we didn’t have Balk between us. I called out, “Moving three!”

“Heard!” the forcefield cape replied.

“And Balk, I need to go. My teams are here!”

“Heard,” he replied. He didn’t sound happy. “What’s the sitrep?”

“Getting a weird vibe, can’t share too much—”

“Then go to your fucking team, help, explain after!”

I opened my mouth to respond, stopped. Hours of this? Of holding positions, attacked from all sides?

Maybe I’d be cranky too.

“Flying over.”

“Section,” the forcefield cape called out. “Balk.”

“Section,” he agreed. He hurled his ball. “Now or never!”

We opted for now. Section was ‘Group up. All together.’

They flew me back, escorting me home, for lack of a better way of putting it. Still in the formation flanking Balk. He threw his ball at capes who were working on Stonewall, while Stonewall beat a fighting retreat toward our squads, shield raised.