She used her power on him. He could feel the pressure in his shoulder as the damage healed.

“Best if you don’t, whilst you’re not feeling your best,” he murmured.

She stopped, leaving the work undone. He’d seen her like this before. Broken.

He put a hand over her ear so he could raise his voice. “Retreat! Shin Defense Initiative, everyone to me and away! Leave the giants to it!”

Lab Rat was there, barely recognizable as a hulking, fifteen-foot tall rat-like figure with a conical face formed of tumors like clusters of giant blood-gorged ticks. He had four of the clones clinging to his fur and to the blankets that covered them, and what looked like half of a workshop besides, machines as large as cars hanging from chains.

The others… Marquis looked. He counted heads, saw the trickle of evacuees.

He was so thirsty. It was something that always got to him in battles, if they ran long enough that the adrenaline faded. The thirst, the human needs. Once he reached that point, he tended to make his exit. It was the point that things started getting sloppy.

“I don’t think I can do this,” Amelia mewled.

“I think you must. There is no question,” Marquis answered.

He knew from experience that she didn’t tend to respond to that kind of prodding or absolute, even though it was part of what drove him. Rigid codes and obligations he set up around himself.

He had no idea what else to say.

Instead, he focused on helping. He extended and expanded bone before hardening it, because this new Hunter hit hard enough to demand he use bones harder than steel. He created blade-like growths and set them into the ground with extended roots of bone penetrating frozen soil. Walls to shield those running for safety.

Flashbang, he saw, was one of the last ones out. Of course. Flashbang turned to look at Hunter, created a large orb in his hand, and hurled it skyward. He created another orb while it was airborne, tossed it up.

Ah. The newer orb had a shorter fuse. It detonated and launched the first orb almost straight at Hunter. Detonating in her face.

Doing far too little damage. Cracks, a gushing of blood like a bathtub of blood had been emptied from the opening, next to nothing in the way of blood after the initial burst, and then no bleeding at all. It wasn’t that the wound had closed up, but that she bled differently. Still laughing, she turned her face toward them.

Marquis threw up a shield just in time to protect them from the retaliation.

By the time he had backed away enough to see over the top of the shield, the wound at her face had disappeared.