The triple-bonks. She turned, making sure she timed them. Delaying, accelerating. Watching where each person was, judging how they’d move. Knocking two into each other, the third over the heap of the two fallen people.

She worked her way backward, getting about twelve good shots in before everything desynchronized. People who had been knocked out already who wouldn’t move the way she needed them to. People blasted this way and that.

“Sorry, had to!” she called out.

“Don’t apologize if it’s a gun on you!” Caryatid said, before turning around and resuming her breaker form, her face peeling back, hands shimmering in their puffy yellow floofs. “Geez!”

“Geez,” Finale said. She bent down, and she picked up the gun. She tossed the thing of bullets away.

“Peeeew,” she said, before hurling the gun itself skyward.

The impact wasn’t as great. It was best if she gave her power time to breathe. But it was a hole in the center of the gun’s outside.

“That was Antares,” Withdrawal said. “She says she has a bad feeling about the anti-parahuman stuff. Thinks it’s going to get out of control or set up something bad.”

“Y’think!?” Fume Hood asked. “Fuck me, fuck this!”

“Said she had a bad feeling in general, and I can’t say I disagree. Feels like something bigger’s going to happen. Gave us the example of the portal thing, but she doesn’t think it’s that.”

“Hear you,” Fume Hood said.

Bad feeling in general.

Yeah. Finale couldn’t help but agree. Her entire life had been a long slew of accidents and fuckups that she hadn’t been able to see coming. Her entire life, it felt like everyone else had the ability to put on the brakes or see the bad stuff coming and steer clear, while she stumbled into it. She was getting better. She had to be better, doing stuff like this. But ‘better’ for her was still pretty fucky-upy.

This, right now, felt bad. Bad like she finally realized what other people tended to feel in their guts before they decided not to do stuff.

“I have a bad feeling too,” Finale said. “I don’t even know how to put it into words.”

“Okay!” Fume Hood said. “Okay, let’s listen to that feeling. Fall back, let’s regroup before anyone gets shot!”

“Falling back!” Withdrawal called out, extra loud so others would hear. “Cheit! Bar your doors, we’ll handle this soon! Everyone else, back off, calm down!”

Not everyone could disengage as easily. Withdrawal shot his gun thing again, aiming for an area where people were especially intense, grabbing onto a cape and pulling on his costume, dragging him to the ground. The disruption of the blast let the guy in costume tear his way free.

“Antares said we should watch out for—” Withdrawal said. He stopped.

Cheit wasn’t closing its doors. It was opening them wider.