The man pounded on the forcefield. Crystal placed another right in front of it, for the added security.

The old woman, hunched over, was gripping her forearms. Fingers bent, twisted, and then dug in, tearing at flesh. She broke her own bones, and the gray shit flowed through the open wounds as she pulled forearms away from elbows.

The gray junk crawled through the stringy mess that extended from the two parts of the arm, inflating and extending it. She lurched to her feet, her legs bound up in a skirt of the mess, and when she let go of her forearms, the gray stuff was solid enough that they remained extended.

“Brandish!” someone from one of the other camps had run over. “Luck?”

Carol shook her head.

The cape remained where he was. There were sounds of distant chaos.

Crystal focused on keeping her forcefield up.

She could still hear Carol, who wasn’t going out of her way to keep the conversation quiet. “That’s your decision. We’ve covered our bases. You decide. Did you cover yours?”

Crystal saw the old woman staggering toward a group of the rookies, and took flight. She shot at the ground to get the woman’s attention, a red-tinted beam flashing beside her.

The woman lunged, hurling herself at the corner of a building, then using the strength of her elongated arms to hurl herself out in Crystal’s direction.

Spheres were a strong shape. There was no weak point at which the forcefield had more or less tension. The matrix was even. As the old woman collided with it, slamming a claw into it, Crystal could feel the force extend all the way around the bubble. Airborne attacks didn’t tend to have a lot of oomph to them, even when the target was strong. Sparring with Victoria had taught her that.

Heavy hits needed leverage and this old woman that was caked in the gray stuff didn’t know how to use hers.

The woman dropped, and the impact of her hitting the ground saw about three bathtubs worth of uniformly gray oatmeal pour out of her ass, vagina, ears, nose, and mouth, decorated with rivulets of blood.

“We have permission!” Carol called out. “We’re good to go!”

Below, everyone jumped into action. The cape that had gone to Carol to ask was running back to his group, shouting. Mark threw one of his ‘grenades’ at Carol, who took a casual step to the side, still within a foot of the glowing orb.

“Laserdream, Trin, Band, Longhorn, Vault!” Carol raised her voice. “The woman’s yours!”

She shifted to her ball form just in time for the blast behind her to go off. With the sidestep, she flew directly at the man with the giant mouth for a midsection. She exited her breaker state while still hurtling through the air, slashing out at him with a scythe of hard orange energy.