I was barely touched, as it washed over me like hot air from a hair dryer. Others were dragged a hundred feet down the road, pushed back and away from the bottleneck. Bluestocking’s blue stocking was shredded by the contact with the road, stained red.

They were a jumbled heap. They hadn’t pushed past the bottleneck or delivered a serious blow to Advance Guard before the bizarre siege weapon hit.

I flew back to our side.

“Let’s end this!” Mayday called out.

“Are you surrendering? Six of you and your two helpers,” Prancer said. “And—”

Behind him, Beast of Burden was arriving with reinforcements. The leader of the violent clique. No blood, no barbs or spikes, but the armor he wore was steel, and it looked like slabs had been cut off of tank armor. Helmet blended into body armor, so broad and heavy it didn’t leave a hint of a neck. The helmet had bull’s horns longer and thicker around than my leg and only slits for eyeholes. The chest armor was a slab shaped roughly like chest armor, and similar measures had been taken for the metal segments that encircled parts of his arms and legs. Cleat was with him, and Cleat was spiky in a way I’d anticipated Beast of Burden being.

Beast of Burden, ‘Bob’, was quick for a guy wearing armor as heavy as his.

But we had reinforcements too.

At our rear, Capricorn, Rain, and Looksee were arriving. Looksee had her armor on, much as she’d designed it. Four spheres at the back of her head, to encapsulate hair buns, five lenses at her face, lime green and gray color scheme.

Rain had gone with something relatively simple—a combination of loose clothing with a hood, a mask that made his face look like a robot’s, and gloves that did much the same. He wasn’t wearing extra arms.

Did he look sufficiently different to mask him for Love Lost and Snag? Nothing about their expressions suggested anything.

We were gathered. All together, or as together as we could reasonably be. Chris had run off, and Ashley was on the other side, walking the fine line of being hard to manage and believable.

“Hey, Mayday,” Looksee said.

He was silent, as he turned to look at her. She had her flash gun out.

“Aw shit no,” Mayday said.

Shadow 5.5

Orange motes began dancing around the trucks and railing that were serving to slow Prancer’s group down. The people who hadn’t been pushed very far back actually backed away from the motes.

Glowing particles from one parahuman could be harmless or negligible, they could be concentrated points of energy that cut through flesh like a hot knife through butter, or they could be concentrated points of energy that un-concentrated into sizable explosions, given an excuse.