The limb extended, striking the Alexandria-type out of the air.

A second limb stabbed toward the group.

I flew, wind whistling as it whipped past my forcefield. Smoke, dust, and chill air parted as a face that wasn’t quite mine led the way.

Belated, I put my phone away. My focus was wholly on stopping that attack. I couldn’t stop it from making contact—I was too far away. But I could do other stuff. I winced as it stopped extending and collided with its target.

That wasn’t even the true danger of the attack. The longer they thrust forward, pinning the Alexandria cape against the wall, striking at their target, the stronger their offensive pressure grew.

Their target in this case was a blob of darkness. A shield that consumed and devoured the space-warped extension of the drill bit. Snuff. The Undersiders were in that crowd. Parian was.

The limbs were expanding out. The parts closest to her wrists expanded out first, the tips that were half a mile away from those wrists were last to expand. What had been a column became a cone, rotating violently, tearing at the air and whipping it into something resembling a whirlwind.

It got worse by the second, apparently with no upper limit.

I watched as whatever gave Tritium her invulnerability failed her. Or she’d turned it off because keeping it on would have made her lethal to everyone here. I saw as her body shifted from a dim silvery silhouette to a spiral of what looked like a red towel being whipped around in a spiral.

Snuff was expanding his blob of darkness, trying to ‘eat’ the incoming attack, but the drill grew just a bit faster than his blob did.

I closed the last bit of distance. My flight was jerked off course, because the spiraling ‘drill’ had suction, corrected, and slammed into the first solid bit of the Titan’s wrist.

It caved in. Blood gushed out, and poured down from the site of injury.

I still carried the gun—part of the reason my flight hadn’t been as fast as I needed. I twisted in the air, rising up and away, then plunged back down, using the gun’s barrel, javelin-throwing it down, stabbing the wound and punching through.

I threw my body and forcefield into the side of the gun, levering the barrel against the edge of the wrist. I saw the shell break, crack—

Felt her draw her wrist back.

A quick glance back showed me another bloody mess. Where there had been snow and mud, there was now a spiral of blood—several. Snuff had died, and the capes between him and the Titan had gone down with him.

She was drawing her wrist back toward her chest, aiming to smear me against it.

I kept pressing, aware of the closing distance.