“We need to do something about her,” Tattletale put emphasis on the ‘need’.

I nodded, floating higher.

I would have to figure something out.

I heard the buzz of her communications device, the five pound cell phone. I hesitated.

“Can you get that?” she asked Ms. Dragon Feathers.

I hesitated, listening. Ms. Dragon Feathers held the device to her ear, though.

“The group fighting Auger lost,” the heroine reported.

“He was fighting the Machine Army?”

“He still is. The giants that the Red Queen made are holding him back, but he’s taking the machines apart and using them.”

“Using how?” Tattletale asked, fishing the maggot out. It looked like she was struggling to keep from cutting it in half, using suturing needles to hook it, while grabbing at its ichor-slick body with a gloved hand.

“Tinkertech,” Dragon Feathers said.

“Auger was a tinker?” I said.

“He’s one now,” Tattletale glanced up at me.

“It’s the full package,” I remarked. “When people become Titans, every possible power that agent could have handed out goes to the Titan.”

I gestured in the direction of Titan Oberon. Surrounded by breaker-ized chunks of building.

“Mm,” Tattletale grunted, focusing on her task as the only really able-bodied, able person in this little group. “What’s the bad news?”

“The heroes on the scene were blindsided by Titan Skadi.”

“Anyone we know?” I asked, tense.

“No,” Tattletale said, before the heroine could answer. “That’s not why it’s bad news. The Auger Titan beat Titan Skadi.”

“Yeah,” the heroine said.

“Stay on guard,” Tattletale told me. “This just got about five times harder.”

I nodded, then wasted no time in flying away. If there were updates to be had, I’d get them from others.

Skadi was one of the Titans who didn’t have any connection to any of the others. Now she’s networked to Oberon and Auger?

How much of his decision to do this floating shockwave stomp had been because that battle had turned? Was energy shared between them? Had he been contributing something to Auger? What did a connection mean?

“You guys managing!?” I called out to Capricorn, as I got close enough.

“Is anyone!?” Rain called back.

I could see Deathchester now. Ashley was using blasts to ascend a series of Gibbet-made bits of rubble that stuck out the side of a building. Getting closer and closer to Oberon.

Oberon leaped, getting out of the way of a plume of gas, while simultaneously putting about three hundred feet of distance between Damsel and himself. Damsel blasted a wall, was nearly knocked off her perch by the recoil, then blasted with two hands to fling herself into the hole before the gas swept over her.