Foil. I shifted direction. Foil had leaped off a building as Oberon sent a shockwave rippling toward it. Gundeck had fired a salvo of ten missiles at her with some weird, fucky targeting. She stepped on each missile in turn, buying herself seconds. Buying me seconds to get to her.

Oberon punched out another shockwave, heavy with his breaker energy. I put myself between Foil and the blast, and felt it saturate the forcefield, making it pull apart.

I felt something tug on my forcefield with immense strength. The shockwave. I canceled the forcefield, dismissing it and letting that clingy energy fall away.

Behind me, on either side of Foil, dust, snow, gas, and other airborne material was glowing gold-green, before that same tug threw it into the face of the nearest building. The shockwave, delayed, and extra effective against a material that had been made even more weightless, even more vulnerable to outside forces. The force with which it struck the building made the building creak. People on the ground used shaker powers and changer forms to survive the impact.

Re-enabling my forcefield, I caught Foil, bracing her head and back with multiple hands. Off to the side, the missile barrage turned in the air and chased Titan Oberon.

I followed her gaze. She was less concerned for her own welfare than on the damage that had just been done to our artillery line.

On the ground, the gap in the line was being reinforced by Parian’s dolls. A giant doll with a smiling daisy for a head was the only one of the original batch. Three more just looked like giant, naked babies, no eyes, no hair, no clothes, no features. Conserving cloth now.

Another kind of frontline combatant. The expendable sort.

The Titan leaped back, dodging. Solarstare was standing on another rooftop, and directed a blast from her eyes to the Titan’s leg. It looked like molten gold or magma, moving too fast for how solid it appeared to be, a column that was a good five feet around. Chunks of Titan Oberon flew free with the blast.

The intention was clearly to slow the Titan down so the missiles could catch up. Instead, the Titan rolled with the blast, ducking and almost twirling as it was driven back. Two of the ten missiles were caught up in Solarstare’s blast. The Titan’s sweep of an arm produced a shockwave that disrupted the remainder, and broke up the flow of Solarstare’s power enough he could hop a good distance away.

Other capes were there to meet him.

Solarstare stopped her output. What had been near-solid material became white flame, hot enough to do more damage to Oberon just from the residual stuff that clung to where she’d hit him, and to turn the road and the rubble of fallen buildings to a glassy texture.

Flame became sparks, heavy in the air, and those white sparks glowed bright, brighter, too bright—