“It’s dead,” Withdrawal said. His smile was visible behind the bright green mask he wore over his lower face.

“Wooooohooooo!” Finale cheered, as she ran up.

Five scanned the ground with his eyes, searching. The Machines had a design, and that design was to impregnate the ground with seeds that would erupt into full Machine Army installations if left unattended. The problem was that they were hard to make out, partially extradimensional. But if he found them soon enough…

“Wooo!” Finale continued cheering, running up to Withdrawal, hopping up to give a high five to the ‘J’ shaped metal bar that extended from his machine frame. She hurled herself at Five, and he spun on the spot, evading and ducking away from her hold.

She put her hands on his shoulders, instead of hugging him. “Wooo! Be excited!”

“Woo.”

“Woo! Come on! We did it!”

“Yeah. There’s—” he pointed.

Withdrawal was already on it, spraying down a section of ground where one seed lay.

“A seed there. You didn’t need my help.”

“Any help is appreciated,” Withdrawal said. “You saved me from a close call.”

“I was ordering Finale around, but… she knew where to place her shots.”

“You got me to keep shooting. I forget in the heat of the moment,” she explained.

Still, it wasn’t what he’d told himself to expect. He watched as Caryatid picked her way over the hot scrap.

The fight against the Machine Army was seemingly endless, but they were making fractions of a percent of progress. It was the same mentality that drove the cleaning up of the time bubbles and Gray Boy loops, taking preemptive action where possible. If someone let any of those people out, they would trigger or second trigger, and they weren’t mentally fit.

Every week, it seemed like there were new initiatives. New steps to get things under control.

“You don’t need to make the team perfect,” Sveta told him.

“Ha!” Finale laughed. “Hahahaha! Good luck trying!”

“I’m good at perfect.”

“Let them show you what they’re good at,” Sveta said.

“Ooh. We can start with giving a crap when we destroy a giant robot,” Finale said. “Be excited!”

“I’m glad everyone’s okay.”

“We’ll work on that,” Finale said.

“Help keep them safe. They’d return the favor, I think they’d show you what it means to carve out a place for yourself in the world,” Sveta said. “To make family.”

He drew in a breath, then sighed.

“You don’t have to,” Sveta said. “But if you wanted… there’s a spot for you on the team, for as long as you want it. We talked to the people who matter.”

She pulled a badly creased bit of paper out of one of her coat pockets, unfolding it.