When she started to take off her headphones, I held up a finger, then navigated to the second video. It showed same events, but a better view of Houndstooth’s group, and then expanded out to show how Hookline and Sink were closing in.

Natalie watched the fight and the follow-up, with Sveta and I retreating. Moose did the work of freeing Hookline from underneath the car I’d blocked in.

It was hard to see in the noonday sun, especially when I was half-standing, my arm out to help shade the screen, but I could see Hookline’s reaction, slapping away Moose’s hand. He stalked off, and Sink belatedly followed, something held to his bleeding nose.

“Clear intent to injure,” Natalie said.

“That’s what I said. I did mention the weapons.”

“There’s a view, and it isn’t my view,” Natalie said, reaching for her salad, “that if you have a power then you’re armed at all times. Sometimes judges hold that view. I would rather assume that you would have a judge that held that perspective and be wrong, than to assume the opposite and be wrong.”

“Right,” I said.

“A better option would be to inform the heroes.”

“Couldn’t. Clairvoyants with some clairaudience,” I said. I opened a sub-folder, clicked an image, and let it pop up. A boy in a wheelchair, a woman pushing it. He wore a helmet with a fake brain under glass at the top. She wore a bird mask. “They’d hear anything we communicated, so it was radio silence.”

“You could have dropped down in front of Houndstooth and told him about the situation.”

“Similar risk. We don’t want to hint at the prior relationship and we do want to suggest there’s a growing presence of heroes, to give them reason to second-guess.”

Natalie sighed. “I’m not a very conservative person in reality, but I do think your situation needs a conservative eye.”

“I can agree with that,” I said.

“With a citizen’s arrest, there needs to be an actual arrest. I recognize you had to leave after the other villains showed up, but normally the process of performing an arrest like that needs clear indication of a crime in progress or one just committed, and it needs the authorities to be involved.”

“Citizen’s arrest?” I asked. “Capes get a lot more leeway with those.”

“One second. The process would be for you to contact me and contact the authorities, before anything happened.”

I opened my mouth to respond.

“Where possible, and it wasn’t possible here. I get that.”

“Yes.”

“You would, with my counsel and go-ahead, step in, take action, and then wait for the authorities to arrive.”

“Authorities who are only acting on nine percent of the cases,” I said. “Why a citizen’s arrest and not an arrest with standing?”