“For a team as huggy as yours is,” Tattletale said, “that breastplate of yours is really uncomfortable when you get mashed into it. You bruised me.”

“You mean when I was saving your life?”

“Don’t go raising your voice,” Tattletale said. “You’ll agitate this thing. Almost got it. Let me know if I’m poking anything you can feel.”

“I can’t feel much,” the guy with the head-maggot answered. “Pressure as it squeezes up against the sides.”

I looked over toward the battlefield. Titan Oberon was using the shattered, breaker-modified buildings to deflect and ‘catch’ the projectiles that Titan Eve produced.

I blinked and flicked through a few images on the heads up display, looking for context on what I was feeling elsewhere. Two camps, it seemed. Parian was gathering all the cloth she could from ruined buildings, fashioning large-size dolls that were doing the real legwork in getting people to safety and deflecting incoming attacks. On the other side of the street, some of my team had joined Rachel and her dogs in huddling behind Tristan. The context I was missing was that he was creating motes in the air.

I saw from a distance as Titan Oberon flung another chunk of building at that group. Motes of orange light coalesced into stone, melding into the flying chunk of building. The shift in weight and the weird aerodynamics of the breakered building chunks made the chunk veer off course.

Lookout was only just now getting to the room Syndicate was in. The Malfunctions were with her.

“I’m going,” I told Tattletale. “See what I can do for our teams.”

“You have to see what you can do about Eve,” Tattletale said. “She’s winning now.”

In the distance, Titan Oberon leaped skyward, disappearing into the cloud cover.

Titan Eve turned smoke into spikes, taller than her.

He landed amid the spikes, twisting his hulking form to avoid being skewered, even sliding hooves along the length of the largest spike.

Tattletale hissed as she pulled the suturing needle away from the maggot, letting the ground and the building we were on shake. “Come back here you little bastard.”

Spikes had dissolved into gas, but he was already bounding forward before that gas could touch him. A flip forward, hooves passing over his head, while he held a chunk of building like a bludgeon, crushing it into Titan Eve’s head. When she was off balance, he struck her, producing a shockwave.

Gas hardened to solid as the shockwave met it, and shattered rather than be blown away. Shattered gas became ambient gas, creeping in on him from every direction.

Even from a distance, I could see the blood weep from his arm as chunks fell free, cracks spreading up the limb.

He leaped back and away, while Titan Eve slowly rose to a standing posture.

“I’m not sure I trust this gas mask against everything she can do,” I said.