“Yeah,” I said. Even though I didn’t like it. If Lookout hadn’t stolen the puppy earlier, I might have even kicked myself for not extending her the benefit of a doubt. As it stood, I was reserving the right to chuck Lookout back through the portal.

Someone hit the Impaler Titan with something, producing an explosion as big as the Titan’s head. She moved to retaliate, and I started firing again, targeting the Titan we were suppressing. He’d grown in just the time I’d stopped.

I focused on the most damaged areas, flying closer. The gun was beeping incessantly now.

The laser sputtered out.

Second of the new Titans is joining the fight.

Sleek, long-limbed, and uniform in color and shade, it stretched skyward, growing despite the continued assault against it from other blasters. Without the gun in the mix, we weren’t breaking even.

He dropped into the ground like it was water, producing a liquid ripple that shook buildings, street, and cracks in reality.

I heard the reactions, the shouts.

His upper body sticking out of a crack between realities, he reached out to sweep nine people and part of a fallen building off of a section of street and into the crack.

I flew after him.

I wasn’t even a quarter of the way to my destination when he dropped away, letting go of the ledge and falling.

I saw the ripples, the movement across the bridges and islands between cracks that made people lose their balance and made rubble fall.

He emerged, rising from the liquid street with chest thrust out. Capes were more ready for him this time. An Alexandria type flew in to meet him, her fist punching his fist and stopping it from reaching down to the unprotected back lines. I recognized her as Tritium, a bench cape from Advance Guard. Strong enough to punch through a building, ostensibly invincible, and unfortunately not much of an everyday cape because utilizing her invincibility, flight, and what she now termed her ‘nuke punches’ made her radioactive. Push harder, fight more, and it built up more. She was immune, but the people close to her hadn’t been. She’d lost her family, friends, dog, and coworkers and had hurt many bystanders before the issue had been discovered by accident. It hadn’t come up in the news.

I knew her in the same sense I knew who a big actress like Margery Funk was: I knew her face, general history, and general personality. Quiet, reserved, and totally ill-suited for the gung-ho Advance Guard. She spent much of the time benched, jumping in only for the big, important missions.

The attack came from the flanks. I saw the Impaler Titan’s movement in the corner of my eye, and on impulse, I pushed out with my aura, to grab attention and communicate faster than I could with a shout.

“Get—!” I started.