She would be resistant, like Snag was. Still, I refused to believe that she could deal with my aura, scream, at me, and take evasive action against my charge while thirty feet above the rooftops.

Nailbiter lashed out. Teeth. My forcefield took the hit, and I carried forward. Love Lost lost her footing, teetering, then leaped hard off of the fingers.

I flew straight down, to put myself out of Nailbiter’s reach, while Love Lost leaped sideways.

She touched the side of Prancer’s headquarters, the claws of her hands and feet finding traction on the surface, and she moved like she was running, claws catching and helping to propel her.

There was the wall-running power. She moved fluidly along a vertical surface, claws helping. Her hand went to her mask, and a hand reached up from below, grabbing her ankle.

Sveta.

Love Lost was pulled away from the building. No longer able to make contact with the surface, she fell at a diagonal, in the direction of the rooftop she’d originally been falling down to. I could see her reorient herself in the air, twisting to put feet beneath her, but she couldn’t stop falling.

Not a terminal fall, most likely, but it’d be a hard one.

In the distance, I could hear Chris screaming as he ran. He covered a lot of ground, apparently, because the scream faded with each passing second.

Good job, Sveta, I thought. Not showing her hand, catching Love Lost by surprise, and staying clear of that scream were perfect. It had taken her a while, but I didn’t blame her for moving carefully and having trouble finding the right position and moment to act.

No, that was exactly what I was wanting to do. It was energizing, in a way, exciting. For all my doubts, I liked that at least one person was on my wavelength.

Chris had done his thing too. Not bad, but he’d shown himself to Nailbiter, and it worried me that he could have been stabbed if Nailbiter had been a little more willing to pull the trigger and impale him.

I flew in Sveta’s direction, and found her waiting, her back to the wall, phone out.

She jumped when I floated over to her.

“Good,” I said. “I’ll tell you how good after.”

She smiled. She showed me the phone.

Ls:
prance lost sprite. sprite on roof to W of u
we here at edge of town. mob splitting up. some headed ur way

As I read the messages, a new alert popped up.

Ls:
nail dam comin

I grabbed Sveta’s hand, and prepared to fly away when Damsel appeared in the alleyway. I could have called her Ashley, but she didn’t give me the impression of ‘Ashley’. Shadows fell across her face, accented by the mask and makeup, her eyes were eerily white, her hair was white, and it made for an attention-grabbing profile. If I hadn’t known better, I might have been intimidated.