The screaming I’d come to take as steady background noise ceased. My brain felt like my body did in the stillness after a hard workout, blood pulsing through it, shaky, and a bit vulnerable.

I flew down to be closer to my team. Just in case.

Dragon’s spherical craft was crackling, sending out spherical waves that rippled over the crowd, over parts of the battlefield. A whole section of the dust cleared away, stripped of the Simurgh’s telekinetic hold.

She chose that moment to emerge, while our eyes were searching the gap for any sign. She wasn’t even that far from me. From Breakthrough.

The scream tore through my senses, everyone’s senses, delaying our response. The countdown timer in the corner of my vision whirred, a speedometer flying by, costing me tens of seconds with every moment.

Byron had motes ready to go. Dark blue motes consolidated into something like coral, between stone, organic, and ice, with a faint spiral to it. A spear, thrust at the Endbringer, who took the blow to one shoulder. A scar to join a dozen others. Light blue motes hung in the air, fat blue fireflies with trails left behind them.

She leaned back away from it, changed direction, plunging into another group. Villains from Semiramis’s faction.

We had others nearby. I could hear Finale’s voice, distant, setting up her attack. Withdrawal was perched nearby, Sveta beside him.

Gibbet was creating a barrier, a cluster of metal barricades and fencing that emerged in different sizes and angles.

The Dragon-craft drew nearer. The Bakunawa Zero, with its pulses that disrupted powers and power effects. I knew the idea was to throw as much chaos as possible at the Simurgh, to disrupt her reads, to scramble her signal and her information gathering as she screamed.

She used the chunk of Machine Army tech she’d brought with her. Flung it out with telekinesis, so fast I thought it would be dashed to pieces. The size of a washing machine, it flew straight at one of the pieces of antigravity tech, was pushed away, and between the velocity and the pushback, came to a stop, a foot or two from the glowing panel.

It latched on.

I aimed, leveraging my forcefield to bring the gun around, ready to shoot the thing off of her. She was already taking evasive action, trying to shake it off, the pulses rippling out with more violence than before.

Couldn’t take the shot without risking I’d do more damage. If she was backing off like this… she had to trust it.

The information that was coming through the tech at my eye went dark. No outlines, no labels.

The world was dark, cold, and filled with an endless scream.

The Simurgh was wading through everything and everyone, her wings acting as shields, her telekinesis deflecting incoming projectiles. Caryatid blocked one. I could hear Damsel using her power.

Chevalier, nowhere nearby, fired his cannon again. The Simurgh flew back, her shoulder torn open, the interior revealed to be hollow, the edges of the wound frayed and lace-like.