Kenzie picked up a device with a pad that seemed to lock to the skin between her ear and hair, with a band that went a quarter of the way around her head. A camera-eye like one of the ones that had once encased her hair-buns was mounted on it, roving around.

She wasn’t wearing her hair in buns anymore, I noted. She hadn’t as much since joining the Tenders. Her hair was in glossy kinks, parted at one side and used pins on both sides to help stay tucked behind her ears. She had grown up a hell of a lot in just the two months she’d been with us, and I felt like that was a bit of a failure on my part.

She used the eye to watch more screens, finished putting together a second, and used that to watch the ongoing battle.

“Assuming you can communicate with them,” Natalie said. “And assuming they don’t ignore you, what do you say?”

“Help.”

“Aren’t they?”

“Work with us. We can do more if we’re coordinating and not struggling to survive them too, while on the same battlefield as them.”

“If Fume Hood is in there somehow, is it possible she’s trying, but she doesn’t have the capacity?” Natalie asked. “I talked to Carol once about parahumans, and how it’s hard for them to retire. You can’t just turn it off. What if they can’t hold back?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

“If she’s in there, it would have been done already if it were that easy,” Natalie said.

“At the very least, we need her to not try to connect to other Titans. Oberon, Skadi.”

Fuck. I could see on the screen, that the fight against Ophion was going worse, now. Five monsters with a scale dwarfing most of the old Endbringers.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket, checking it had power. Still the one half-bar of service. The call might come to help manage that situation. If not a call, then a knock on the door.

“Could be an imperative,” Natalie said. “You’re driven toward conflict. They’re driven to connect.”

“We can resist our imperatives,” I said. “Or manage them.”

“She says, with a twisted muscle in her foot, a bullet wound in one arm, a burn on her hand…”

“Claw marks from an acid centipede in two places in the same arm I have the burn. Part of my hand was flayed. I… lost the fingernail on that hand this morning.”

Natalie shuddered.

“Chemical burn at my hairline,” I said, tracing the area on my scalp. It was still tender. “Noticeable?”