“Stop ignoring me!” the caricature screamed. Sidepiece laughed every time it talked or tried to fly and hit a car instead, the laughter completely new each time.

Torso and Mockument were hanging back, watching. For how ludicrous their costumes were and how Mockument’s power worked, neither seemed to find much humor in this.

Ashley stared me down, pupils narrowing and then disappearing entirely, until her eyes were pure white. She wasn’t trying to bluff. She was challenging me on my convictions, with the implicit threat that she would slash me or use her power to annihilate me.

I called her Ashley in my head because in this moment, in that dangerous frozen position, her mannerisms were one, the same, and both.

“I just noticed, the tattoo says Amy,” Sidepiece cackled.

“Amy!” the thing screeched, abrasive. “Amy, I love you!”

“I wouldn’t have thought, Antares!” Sidepiece jeered.

“How I love you, let me count the ways!” It was demolishing a car in the process of trying to drag its bulk onto the trunk. The strength seemed to come and go, as did the flight and the aura. “Sweet sexy sister of mine!”

Sidepiece, already mid-laugh, stopped mid-laugh, dragging in a wheezing breath, before collapsing against the side of a car. She made a sound that might have been her saying, “Oh my god!” while wheeze-laughing at the same time.

It was all I could do not to use every power I had to wipe that thing from the face of this earth. Sidepiece a close second. Mockument third.

I shot Mockument a look that made it unambiguously clear what I was thinking.

“No truce?” Damsel asked.

“Truce yes, but I’m not stupid enough to come down there and shake your hand. Besides,” I said. I pointed to the mask I wore on my lower face. “Cold.”

“You’re cold!?” the caricature asked. “I’m naked and I’ve got ten different tits pressed against icy pavement and I’m also sick!”

“Yeah!” Sidepiece called out. “Have some consideration, you pious, sister-fucking bitch!”

“Those were the happiest days of my life,” the caricature said. “Because she forced me to be happy. But they were still the happiest. I might go back if I could. Things were simpler then. I had everything I wanted. Because she made herself the only thing I wanted.”

“Ooh,” Sidepiece said, “Oh. That recontextualizes a lot.”

“If you had an ounce of decency in you, you’d kill that thing right now,” I said. I turned in the air to face Mockument and say, “Or unmake it, send it back to where it came.”

Sidepiece retorted, “If you had an ounce of decency, you wouldn’t be a sister-sexual and a sister-romantic! You think you have the right to preach morality and tell us what to do!? Hypocrite! Sister fucker!”