Blindside was pressing against my back, and my aura was stronger the closer people were to me. I controlled the aura’s expression to keep it small and more concentrated.

Awe. Catch them on an emotional level.

Blindside stumbled back.

I spun around in the other direction, and bludgeoned them with the weight of my vest, using it like a flail. They bounced off of the logging truck and collapsed.

Destroy was my usual third step. I hoped I’d held back enough. I’d wanted to disable only, but it was hard to know my own strength.

“You conscious?” I asked the villain. My own voice sounded far away, distorted, hard to hear over the ringing.

I should have heard any response. I didn’t. Silence.

Blindside’s power didn’t let me check their condition, visually or otherwise.

I bent over them, fumbling, tracing their outline with the back of my hand, and finding walls even there, somehow. I found their head, medium length hair, and tried to press the back of my hand against their ear. My arm muscles seized.

I tried to use my knuckles to get into the ear, since I couldn’t use my fingertips without pointing or driving them toward Blindside, and I still hit the wall.

Blindside had been using something to communicate with others. If it was a walkie-talkie, phone, or earpiece, it wasn’t anywhere I could access it. Blindside’s power protected them.

The movement in the corner of my eye caught me off guard. The bus. The front corner was badly damaged, but it was chugging along somehow. I hadn’t heard it approaching. Where the paint had been black, it had broken away, revealing some of the bright yellow paint that it had once had, when it had been a school bus.

Jasper was waving his arm out the window, pointing. I could hear his shouts, but the words were muted.

Incoming.

The villains would have heard the shots.

I looked up, and I saw Lord of Loss at the roof’s edge. He’d turned himself into something resembling a tree. A static emplacement, less able to move, but with roots that would extend into the building and secure his position so he could leverage his full strength.

He was growing by the second, smoke billowing out and solidifying into branching points. He might just have the reach to hit us down on the street level, big as he was.

There were two entry points that weren’t windows. Two courses of action stood out to me. The first was to simply fly to a window, abandon Jasper. I’d lose my job, but I would have to trust they would leave and be safe while I did what I could to help Fume Hood.

But I had something I wanted to ask.

I motioned for them to come, to hurry.