But by the time he reached Moose, Moose was already on his way to matching and exceeding his old friend’s stature. On his own way down the same road Prancer had just traveled.

The thing that had been Prancer didn’t deliver the strike with any force. Instead, with the lightness of a feather landing, it came to perch atop the broad back of the thing that had once been his and Velvet’s mutual friend and lover.

And the world around them dissolved into black-lightning cracks, the small refuge they had built falling to pieces.

[Consolidate]

[Consolidate]

Two became one, damaged, broken, and haphazard, because many of the needed connections weren’t there.

Still more than the sum of their parts.

⊙

“That makes two in the pocket world, I think,” Larue said. “With more confirmed reports coming in and the initial effect fading, I think we’re getting a final tally.”

“How bad is it?” Armstrong asked.

“Between ten and twelve. Um, Armstrong, Sir. Eric…”

Eric sat back, shocked. There were only a few answers that would really merit that kind of awkward opening, aimed at both ex-Director Armstrong and himself.

“Cinereal,” Larue said. “We’re getting cameras in for a better view, but…”

But there was a screen mounted on the wall that showed her from a distance. Everything within a city block of the figure was dissolving into gray ash.

If Cinereal’s power held true, that ash could heat up to temperatures like thermite.

Gone, turned against them.

Eric’s mentor, patron, supporter. His partner in a way. She’d elevated him with the implication she’d drop him if he didn’t keep up with her, and he’d kept up. The one person he’d been able to count on to back him up, and he was going to be feeling the lack of that backup if his heated spat with Antares came up.

Above all else, she’d been a friend. Someone he’d respected and liked.

He glanced back at Antares, half expecting the girl to be gloating, lording it over him.

He caught her with moisture in her eyes, using her sleeve to dab at the corners.

Larue was busy bringing up images, picking out the best shots of each of the Titans they knew about. Armstrong had other preoccupations. Other staff members were busy, reeling in their own ways, or pretending not to notice others’ grief.

“I lost a friend,” Antares told Eric. “The rest of my teams seem to have made it out okay. This time. They’ll probably expand the damage on purpose or gather power for another breaking like this, until they’ve broken everything.”

But she still had the bulk of her ‘teams’ intact. He could see the marker for the Major Malfunctions with the three in the bottom right corner. Her tears might have been ones of relief, after a hell of tension.

Eric nodded, his jaw too set to actually respond.