I used my forcefield to pick it up, checking my strength. Was I stronger? If I was, even a bit, then it might help me connect my thought about the changes to our powers.

The hands clawed into metal for a grip. I saw the teenager and older guy cringing.

“It’s not going to blow up, is it?” I asked.

“No, probably not,” the teenager said. “But if Dragon gave me something like that, I wouldn’t even be here. I’d run off to some lost corner of the world and run my face up and down the housing. I’d open it up in a hermetic environment and stare lovingly at the layout.”

“Tell me he’s being ridiculous,” I told the older guy, pinching tears closed with my one free forcefield hand, that couldn’t quite reach a handhold.

“He’s being ridiculous,” the guy said. “But it’s nice.”

“Cool,” I said, floating up.

“I wouldn’t be tearing holes in it and dropping it!” the teenager raised his voice.

Then I was mercifully out of earshot.

I watched as the Undersiders made their late arrival by way of portals. Tattletale stepped out of the portal, saying something to the older Heartbroken. Then she took a long look at the situation, reversed direction, and left. The portal closed behind her.

Okay.

Below, Tristan had swapped out for Byron. He made a few experimental uses of his power. I stared at the constellations, now closer to Sveta’s camera-eye in color than truly ‘blue’.

I watched as they came manifest. A glittering cloud that expanded out from the point it manifested. It seemed to freeze everything it touched, before consolidating into an abstract shape, the deepest portions of the smoke turned to a swirling ice sculpture.

He created another, and then swapped out.

The cloud of freezing gas didn’t go away. Instead, something lurched out of the gas, a pillar of what looked like damaged concrete. It hit a nearby wall and broke.

In the distance, the Nemean Titan was getting closer. Victor. Several capes who weren’t quite as long ranged as Legend were now starting to shoot at him.

I looked again. Tristan had made his construction, which was still manifesting when he swapped to Byron. It became a plume of the gas, reckless and all over the place, coming perilously close to some people further away before he changed again. The block of concrete that formed in it weighed down the cloud enough that it didn’t touch the people. It hit the wooden bridge below it before crumbling, some of the pieces so weak the end result looked more like sand, with broken glass and bits of metal in the mix.

Okay.

Tristan was nodding to himself. He said something, and it might have been meant for Byron’s benefit. I wasn’t sure that Byron was even awake in there, though.

Okay.