Naturally, we mobilized to get behind or around that wall.

Crystal pointed my attention to Titan Skadi, who had engaged with another group of villains, including Little Midas’s cronies. Lung wasn’t as big as he had been, which suggested he hadn’t been able to build up steam consistently enough before his opponent had disengaged from the fight. Couldn’t keep that fire burning.

I shot her until she moved out of view, then immediately switched to general fire toward the Stranger Titan, pacing out my shots to avoid overheating my weapon, ever mindful of the ammunition count.

I knew I was spending ammunition, but I did have something of an agenda. I couldn’t call it a plan, because it was selfish. Aunt Sarah was right, we had accomplished our initial goal. Being able to shoot Titans and potentially have that shot matter had been essential. But it wasn’t good enough now.

The weapon notified me when I was at 15%. Then again, at 7%.

Narwhal shouted. Capes hurried to the one side. Ophion’s creation was attacking. A tide of flesh.

I added my gunfire to the response, flying up for a vantage point that didn’t risk shooting some cape in the back of the head, then putting shots in the thing.

Until I pulled the trigger and nothing came out.

I dropped it, undid the clasps, and hauled out the power cell.

“Can someone fling this at one of the Titans?” I asked. “I don’t know if it’ll do anything, but it can’t hurt?”

“Let me tinker it,” someone said. “It’ll do something.”

I let them. “Find someone to do something with it after.”

“Got it,” the tinker said. “Shit, is this Dragon’s?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Cool.”

I wasn’t sure I was in a place where I could have uttered a ‘cool’. The Nemean Titan was prowling at the periphery, looking for an excuse to lunge into our midst, at which point there’d be nothing we could do. But even a few forcefields in his way were enough to discourage him.

Skadi was out there too, sometimes, and was currently scuffling with the tide of flesh that scraped buildings from foundations. It wasn’t durable, but there was so much of it there wasn’t a lot she could do, and she was far stronger than we were, on average.

The gun was lighter without the energy core. I flew around more, careful to stay out of the Stranger’s possible line of sight, making a general retreat with my gun as a shield of sorts.

The capes on foot jogged through the ruined city, leaped over cracks, and hurried toward our ‘wall’, the curled-up lip of one large crack.

I flew over the crack, looking down, and Kenzie’s ‘night vision’ didn’t do a good job of peering through the distortion and noise of it.