“Miscellaneous tools. Managing projections, eyes as cursors, drone management, not that I have a lot of drones. Onboard computing. I can keep tabs on all of you while you’re wearing my projection stuff. Monitor vitals, cause, y’know, I’m doing that.” She’d trailed off to a mumble by the time she was done with that.

“Onboard computing? Using your brain?” Rain quizzed her.

“No, that’s array three. This is just, y’know, like having a laptop with me, except it’s way easier to jam it in my eyeball instead of carrying it around.”

“Can we get rid of array one and array three, do you think?” Rain asked.

“But… I want to keep an eye on everything.”

“Can you trust us?” Tristan asked. “We have your back. You don’t need to watch all of our backs for us.”

“We have your back,” Candy said. “Both of your teams.”

“Put on some music,” I said. “Tune out, focus on your stuff. If you still want to do it.”

“I do. I have to.”

I drew in a breath, ready to say the hard truth.

“We have to,” she said.

I deflated.

“They’re going to bust a hole in the city,” Kenzie said. “Teacher’s going to try to control it. We need to get there first. Head him off, see what he’s doing. We have to see if we can’t slow down the damage.”

“We can’t do all of that tonight,” Rain said. “Set expectations lower. This is exploratory. Figuring out the tools we have at our disposal.”

I waited, tense, ready to tell Kenzie this whole thing was off. Embarrassing, with Tattletale and Deathchester here, but I could deal with a little embarrassment, if our heads weren’t on relatively straight.

Kenzie sighed, then nodded. “Exploratory. We see if we can get Rain in there.”

“Put on some music?” Candy asked. “Can I show you what I’ve been listening to, while you work?”

Kenzie looked at me, then at the rest of the group. Sveta. Tristan. Rain. Natalie stood off to the side.

I snuck a glance at Tattletale, and saw a small nod.

“Saw that,” Kenzie muttered, giving me a look. “You had to check.”

“A bit, yeah.”

“Good to go?” she asked.

“If you remove one and three,” Rain cut in.

“Can I keep three?” Kenzie asked. “I have my notes and stuff in there, some processes running math that I’d have to start over from scratch…”

“Yeah. Keep two, three, and four, then.”

Things settled from there. Kenzie extracted the lengthy antennae from her eyes using a tool to find the right frequency and dig into the orbs for a grip, then laid them out by her computer. Then she set to work.

Damsel came back in, while Sidepiece remained outside, smoking up a storm. Snuff checked in, then left to run an errand.