“I want to move now. Before this ends one way or the other. Have him hang up and give him the phone. We make an appearance.”

I pulled the phone away from my ear at the enthusiastic noise she made.

“I’m here,” Capricorn said, on the other line. “I spent five minutes on the phone with Natalie before giving up.”

Giving up? I remembered trying to convey the situation with Hookline and Kitchen Sink, before having to resort to video evidence. Maybe we’d need to get her access to Kenzie’s feed.

“I was talking to Foresight, they don’t know what’s going on with Advance Guard,” he added.

“Neither does Advance Guard, apparently. It’s time. We should act before things get worse.”

“Okay. On our way. E.T.A. five minutes.”

Sveta shifted her grip on me at the same moment I flew straight toward the ground. Her hand slipped from my shoulder, and I caught her.

Fucking Advance Guard, fucking Prancer’s people, fucking wretch, hospital, Mom, Amy.

It couldn’t be easy.

The thoughts flew through my mind and I left them behind as I plunged. I slowed and stopped as we reached the ground, still landing hard enough my legs bent, and I nearly dropped to one knee.

I’d put us right in the middle of Advance Guard’s group.

“They’re friendly!” Spright called out.

“You sure about that?” Shortcut asked. He was on the periphery, holding his polearm.

“Pretty sure,” Spright said.

On the other side of the bottleneck were sixteen villains with a scattered few mooks. Mooks augmented with Bitter Pill’s tinker stuff, it looked like. Foaming at the mouths, in a way.

Snag was there, in the back. Love Lost had retreated as well.

No, there was more to it. There was a division in the enemy ranks. Prancer, Moose, Velvet, Etna, and someone who might have been a thinker, in one group. They moved and talked to one another like they were cooperating. There was a faint red fog around them, heavier at the ground, at ankle height.

Bitter Pill’s group had Bluestocking, the six mooks, Crested, Birdbrain, and Foggy Idea. That group was more visually distinct, all but the mooks being tidier, and they hung back. The mark between them and Prancer’s group was subtle. They were at the edge of the fog, and they held themselves differently. Crested with his fan and Birdbrain with a bullwhip were the only ones with weapons.

Compared to that subtle distinction between Pill’s group and Prancer’s, the Nailbiter, Love Lost, Snag, Damsel, and a couple of the more violent and dangerous looking ones, like Sidepiece and Disjoint, were standing such that there was a fifteen foot gap between them and the others.

Anxiety Chris was in the distant background, perhaps a block away, screaming. His change would be fading soon, I imagined.

Eighteen of them.