I saw the violence, heard the impact of change striking car doors and icy road. I’d been plunging toward my caricature and now I changed course. My caricature was dead. A coin dropped from the top of the tallest building in the world wouldn’t kill someone. A handful thrown with the kind of strength and force that could lift trucks had a treatment like a low-impact shotgun.

Fuck the ‘wretch’, I thought, the thought punctuating the full collapse of her body onto the road.

I blindsided Sidepiece’s caricature, flying up close until the forcefield got a grip on her, then let the forcefield do its thing. All around that same area of the road, everything was transforming. Telephone-pole thick gallows were lurching and spearing up out of the ground, ropes snagging and pulling at my teammate’s arms, legs, and in Rain’s case, neck. He slashed the rope twice before a full-body kick jerked it enough to trigger the silver lines. He dropped ten feet to the ground.

“Holy,” Sidepiece said, as I disengaged from her other self’s remains. I reached for the Sidepiece caricature’s lower rib, then hurled it at Gibbet, finishing the action before I fully realized I wasn’t grabbing it with my hand.

It hadn’t been my idea, I was pretty sure.

The rib detonated, more of a focused blast in two directions, that seemed to punch through a nearby bit of metal construction fencing by the side of the road. The rattle of it knocked Gibbet from her perch atop the tallest and sturdiest of the gallows, and she fell into the darkness beneath a sea of structures that loomed over parked, dark, and snow-colored cars.

Rain was cutting a piece off of a car that had been demolished by one of the attackers. Tristan picked it up to use as a shield, while beating a retreat. Most of the aggression was targeted in a way that meant he couldn’t run or the flying bits might hit people at the very fringes of things, so he just ran straight for Sidepiece, trying to limit how far her power could reach or what she could do in the motions of her arm or reaching down. He began to bend the metal around.

Sveta was almost at full capacity. Her ‘power’ was always on. Her focus was Nailbiter, who was much the same. As with Crock o’ Shit, Sveta showed her stuff when faced with enemies who were too big and tough to take down in any normal way. I imagined they became accustomed to being too big to wrestle or crush, and let their focus and skills slip when someone like her effectively tried.

Torso charged into our group’s back line, and our guys scattered for the most part. That wasn’t the focus here. I turned around, spotted Mockument, and flew toward him.

He was already creating another minion. Pillar raised from the ground, already cracking.