I used eye movements and blinks to slowly navigate the menu back to the perspective where I could see Kenzie. In the course of getting there, I saw Sveta pulling herself together. Tristan wasn’t blurry or hurting anymore.

Tristan’s viewpoint looked out over toward the Titans. Skadi was off in the distance, and was hurt with one arm limp at her side, and wasn’t healing the hurt.

Ophion impaled Oberon, but the impaling spines were slower, shorter, weaker than before. The impaled Titanflesh formed tumors, but the tumors were small.

THEY WERE TRYING TO TAKE OVER EACH OTHER’S NETWORKS WHEN WE HIT ’EM. DAMAGE RIPPLED THROUGH.

Capes were mobilizing. Tristan was urged to head over toward the Stranger Titan.

I wished our side was recovering faster.

RAIN GETS A QUIET COUPLE OF MINUTES TO MESS AROUND IN THE INTERNALS.

That was good. It could be what we needed.

SKADI ISN’T PART OF OBERON NETWORK ANYMORE. INDEPENDENT.

That was the red ‘x’, I assumed.

Okay.

I gave lifting the gun a try. I was annoyed by the Stranger Titan’s approach. Moving faster.

The Fragile One was still too weak.

So I floated, mindful of the Stranger Titan’s reach and power. I kept a building between myself and my best guess of its location.

Too close.

I watched the fighting, tense, waiting for the point our side recovered, and hoping we’d bounce back to one hundred percent before the Titans did. If the Titans could.

As best as I could figure it out, we’d nuked them right in one of their capital cities, but we’d still dropped a nuclear bomb on the same continent in which we all lived.

GETTING FIRST REPORTS IN: POWERS ARE DIFFERENT.

“Different how?” I asked the night air.

SUBTLE CHANGES TO A LOT OF CAPES. WITHIN TTSE, WHATEVER THAT MEANS. MORE INFO TO COME. BE SAFE LOVE YOU.

I knew what it meant, but I wasn’t in a position to address the team.

TTSE was power testing terminology. Training, Tolerances, Sechen, Evolution. Capricorn would know it. Powers were weird, powers changed over time. They could be trained with meditation or practice, certain uses pulled out, they could be strained to certain limits, and those limits weren’t just raw power, but included duration and range. They changed as our mood did, as we got closer to certain triggers. And some were just meant to change by certain metrics.

In effect, powers were different, but not in any drastic ways that challenged baseline expectations of where a power might go with training or mood.

I reached out with the Fragile One.

I couldn’t tell, but I still had the control.

Still with me?

I could feel the Stranger getting closer. A little nervous now, I flew down to the ground, to the gun that I’d left there. I knelt atop it, and unfurled the Fragile One.

Hands didn’t reach handholds.