Rain threw some blades too. An injured Sarah was blasting, and Withdrawal, perched on the top of the damaged filtration system, had his syringe out. He tried squirting some neon yellow juice at them, and the halo zapped it.

The halo zapped everything. Nothing got through.

The winged craft had loaded another power cell, and produced more barriers, slicing at catwalk and cutting off lines of fire. One collapsing catwalk was stopped as Stonewall created a shield and planted it in the side of the structure.

I saw a light flicker, and for a moment, I thought it was a warning or a sign of an imminent attack or trick. Another cartridge.

But it wasn’t. Just a flicker. It was the winged mech, and the winged mech wasn’t damaged.

Why? What did we do? What was working? Was it Imp, onboard somehow? No. Because if it was, I wouldn’t remember her to know it.

The warrior angel moved, using both hands to raise and level its sword. Aiming at the other structure, where Sveta and Rain were.

I flew to intercept. To do it, I had to take a beam from the halo. I pushed out with my aura, in case the pilots were actually in the craft, and took the hit. As I put the warrior angel between myself and the haloed one, the angel with the halo used thrusters and flight devices. The air reacted violently around me as it lunged, keeping me in its line of fire.

Even following the length of the sword to try to disrupt the continuity of incoming fire, I wasn’t able to avoid the beam’s continuity.

By the time I got where I needed to be, I wasn’t in a position to use it. The beam fired, cleaving into the water filtration structure that my teammates were using as a stage to fight from. The beam cut through the upper segment, raked along the side, and then swept along the ground, toward capes who were wading through water. Some got hit.

But I was close enough to see things. The gas from Fume Hood’s power flowing into ventilation ducts. I was close enough to hear. The whir, the thrum of machinery, of fans working overtime.

It didn’t seem to me that it fit Dragon’s level of talent, to have that kind of struggle.

“Capricorn!” I called out, working to keep the warrior angel between myself and the halo while the Wretch recovered. “Drench the halo! We can suffocate them! Try not to wash away the gas!”

I heard him make some vague reply, but at this stage the structures were shaky enough that it was taking all their concentration to keep from falling.