“Really fucking sorry to inconvenience you, Tats,” he retorted.

I would rather have been in a tornado without my forcefield than in the midst of this. When things weren’t flying right toward my face, they were flying in from the side, the ceiling was crumbling, or stuff was happening below me. It was impossible to watch every avenue of attack, and ten seconds of this was enough to drive just about anyone to the edge of panic… let alone anyone who had a scream in their head and a shared hallucination fresh in their memory.

Most were taking cover. Only a few of us were insane enough to be out here, trying to catch people or stop her. The rubble that had been marked out earlier was flying through the air at speeds that severed body parts they hit. Sveta recoiled, dropping someone, as something hit her arm. In her case, at least, the tendrils were flexible enough to absorb the worst of the impact, but she retracted the strands and her arm hung limp at her side, red and wounded.

This feels hopeless.

The study materials they gave out said it would feel hopeless. More than any other fight against Endbringers.

But it really feels hopeless.

And all we could do was to keep fighting, keep giving our all, up until the last drops of blood had been shed.

I saw blue motes, and I had to look for Capricorn.

He was coming up the stairs with Vista, Narwhal, and others.

She’d know they were coming, which meant she was already doing something to fuck with them.

Chevalier lined up his cannonblade, then fired again, then a third time. Each shot did appreciable damage to the Simurgh. The kind of damage we needed to be doing.

“Please,” the whisper oozed out of the hiss of the gun.

“Tattletale,” I called out. I took a position between Byron’s group and the Undersiders, one eye on the dark cloud Dinah hid within.

“You did good with the syringe, kiddo. Let’s just hope the heroes have this.”

Narwhal opened with a volley of twelve forcefield spikes. They plunged into the Simurgh’s wing and stuck there.

Chevalier was recovering, reloading shots, while crouching by a pillar. He was talking to an injured guy—the injured guy with spider legs, who was wearing a hero’s costume. Who didn’t look out of his mind.

I’m losing my mind. I don’t have enough things to hold onto. Some things are working and some aren’t. The handbooks…

…The handbooks assumed if we were stuck in the fights for this long after everything had gone to shit, we were goners already.

“Talk to me. To us. What’s—why is she running laps?”

“Metaphor!” Tattletale called out.

“Metaphor? She’s running laps for a metaphor!?”

“No! There’s a metaphor for this!”