A part of me had been hoping that things had settled down after Gold Morning because they’d gone home, or they’d retired. The big evil world-destroyer was gone, things were peaceful, maybe they’d just hung up the cape or cut back how much they were doing.

Maybe some had.

But enough had found their way to Teacher to make a difference here.

Enough that on one monitor, Chevalier lay on the ground, his sword dropped. For every cape on his side, each now unconscious and lying on the ground, there were three on the opposing side, standing over limp forms, or securing restraints. Narwhal was with him, wrapped in a sheet that had absorbed the blood from the floor, her forcefields down—no horn or scales.

On one monitor, I could see Valkyrie being carried by members of what might have been her flock. On the monitor next to it, I could see Undersiders. Bitch, Parian, Foil, working in concert with the Shepherds.

I could see Vista working with Golem and Cinereal. Cinereal was breaker, producing waves of dark gray ash that converted the parts of the building it touched into more ash. Vista made the expanses of ash wider. Golem made hands reach up out of it. A uniform environment for a power that was very environment dependent.

She hadn’t made nearly as much progress as I’d hoped, but from the bodies in that camera’s view, it looked like she’d had to wade through a hell of a lot of shit. She had said her power wasn’t very good on the offense. Too slow to apply.

It felt like being in a schoolyard game, the kids being picked one by one by the team captains. The teams had finished picking.

“Imp,” Chastity said. “The screens.”

“We should go,” Byron said.

“Really, Imp, look at the screens,” Chastity insisted.

Imp’s face leaned into my peripheral vision, making me jump. She reached for a screen, and for a moment, I thought it was for the Undersiders.

But it was for the image of Valkyrie, and for the revived people that carried her. I had my suspicions as to why, but the hand blocked my view, and the group moved out of the camera’s frame, and when the monitor switched to another group, it wasn’t Valkyrie or the flock.

I looked at Imp.

“She has good taste in minions.”

“Yeah?” I asked.

“Some cute guys in there who look like they have dark senses of humor. Did you see the guy with the red costume and the wide smile? You have to love a guy who can smile in the shittiest circumstances.”

“I think that’s Roucouler the Liar. And I think the smile is built in.”

“I can work with that,” Imp said, making an amused sound.

Then she was moving forward again.