I looked down. Some of the images reflected people in the crowd, people we’d sent down there. I saw Love Lost eviscerating Teacher’s cape in Teacher’s old base.

Some of the people there, or the way they stood together, were a reflection of the images. Pulling back, helping less, grouping together. Talking.

Wondering just who they were working with. What they were doing.

I’d bid them to come and they’d seen some monstrous parts of me. Monstrous when devoid of context.

Monstrous even with context, too.

The Nemean Titan tried to leap to get closer to a cape. Forcefields barred his way.

It was my opening. I chased, flying over the gap, mindful of the marker Kenzie had put around the Nemean Titan that let me and the rest of the team see the estimated range.

I could only hope that a stray blast wouldn’t hit the gun before I got there.

In my haste, I tackled the thing, flying right into it, finding handholds, and using momentum to get it moving by scraping the topside of it against the ground. Heels, feet, forcefield faces and other parts of me dug into the ground and snow to find leverage more than I aimed to stop outright. Even though I was skidding toward the Nemean Titan’s range.

I found the leverage, lifted the thing up, and started flying. I waited until I was more or less out of range of the Nemean Titan before I started shooting him.

The Titan whipped something at me. Three somethings—I could see amid the orange and yellow of fiery explosions. I veered to one side, and pulled back on the trigger, shooting somewhat blind in an effort to hit the incoming projectiles. I hit one, and shifted direction, turning my back to things, while putting my body between the gun and the incoming chunks of rubble.

I heard them but didn’t see them. No contact.

Without turning back around, I flew forward, over the crack.

IN FIVE.

Three seconds.

FOUR…

That tremor caught my finger again. I held my breath.

THREE…

The bombs they’d planted in the crystal landscape went off. Three points below.

It felt like the world stopped. A shudder ran through me, in a way I hadn’t ever felt. Like feeling your stomach drop during a rollercoaster when you’d never felt your stomach drop before. Feeling your bones rattle from an impact, when you’d never been that close to an earth-rattling explosion or collision.

Not my bones, not my body, and not my flesh.

NEED MORE. TWO…

The horizon was pink flesh illuminated by a hundred different powers with different lighting around them, if they had any lighting at all. Titans fighting, capes fighting with everything they had.