Are you weaker? Smaller? What happened to you?

The Stranger drew ever closer, and I felt a bit of panic. I didn’t want to leave my gun behind, but if I gave him another twenty seconds, he’d be on top of me or my gun, and I wouldn’t be able to turn my attention or reaching hands toward my weapon.

Forcefield fingernails dug into the gun’s housing, The hands that needed to be in certain places to pull triggers and hold the thing found those places.

Sorry, Gun, I thought.

I lifted it, and metal creaked. I didn’t trust myself to fire it like this.

But I brought it with me, and I scrammed, flying into the shallowest parts of the crack for visual cover from the Stranger Titan.

I could hear the fighting resuming. Powers partially or wholly back. Titans, as far as I knew, still limping. People in the landscape below were moving now, and they were fortunate in that they hadn’t really stopped while the rest of us had been reeling. Helicopters and trucks were audible, all in the one direction.

I kept an eye on them. I’d make sure they were safe to evacuate, distract any of the other Titans, and then reunite with my team.

Crystal and Aunt Sarah found me, falling into loose formation with me. It made me feel a hell of a lot better.

ALL TITANS EXCEPT TWO WERE HIT BY TAHT.

“Arachne,” I whispered. One of the ones who wasn’t linked in. Hunter. “And?”

TITAN FORTUNA DISCONNECTED JUST BEFORE THE BLAST, RECONNECTED. UNTOUCHED.

TITAN FORTUNA IS HEADING TOWARD SHIN. TOWARD CHRIS.

Interlude 19.a

The problem with betrayals was that they were a poison that touched everything.

His heart ached in his chest, seeing faces familiar and foreign. There were some who came today who hadn’t, two years ago. He had to suppress the hard feelings that, ironically, had zero ability to be hard as they bubbled through him.

“Hey, Egg. You grew up some.”

Egg turned. Whippersnap. One of the ones who hadn’t come. Whippersnap touched fist to heart, or the closest approximation to where his heart would be. If regular humans were rottweilers, then Whippersnap was a greyhound. Thin enough he looked like he could be snapped as easily as a pencil, with easy, fluid movements that made his joints look less angular than they were. His eyes didn’t really fit in his head, and the lack of real estate around them made his expressions hard to read.

It would have been really nice to read those emotions, for things to be clearer. Was it nervousness? Aggressiveness, with the fist bump being an implicit threat?

“Brother,” Egg said.