Straight line, impact, straight line, impact, the pattern was ingrained. I flew toward her, the impact a damn promise I’d made, and then changed course in the air, veering away from Sidepiece, aura stopping abruptly.

She threw a rib, but it was a throw she’d been planning to throw at me while I charged at her. It went far afield, sailing in the direction of Capricorn, Mayday, and the rest of the group, and hit the road.

She didn’t have time to get another pound of flesh ready to hurl at me.

Nailbiter was getting herself situated after the adjustments she’d made to try to cling to the building, one of her hands out, fending off Spright. She saw me coming, but too late. I hooked my arm around her middle, her long torso in the crook of my elbow, and I pulled her away from the wall, successfully this time.

Once I’d pulled her away, she was flailing, searching for something to hold onto. I didn’t give her the opportunity to get a grip or find an angle to get me. I checked the coast was clear and tossed her down.

“Capricorn!” I called out.

“Okay,” I heard him say, a distance away.

Nailbiter landed across the truck, surrounded by orange motes. The motes solidified, turning into the ridged white stone with orange-yellow veins running through it.

Nailbiter was stuck, part of her torso, her butt, and one arm caught in Capricorn’s stone. The wall covered a considerable height, reaching up to the second story of the neighboring buildings, with some isolated spikes reaching up to the third.

I landed on the wall, and Spright landed right beside me. He reached out with one extended hand, flexing it.

“I love the changer forms I get to steal,” he said. “They last for so much longer than other stuff, and I get more of the offensive side of it than I do with other stuff. This is great. Thank you, Nailbiter.”

“Fuck yourself!” she screamed, voice distorted. She reached back with her one free hand. Both Spright and I leaned back and used the top edge of the wall for cover as the extended fingers stabbed upward, thin.

“Do that again, and I’ll return the favor,” Spright said.

“Stay put, Nailbiter,” I said. I looked at Spright. “You should go. I can do more against them like this, and if you wait too long you won’t be able to catch up with the others.”

“No objection,” Spright said. He somersaulted backward off of the wall.

Our group was running, now. The only reason they hadn’t run earlier was that the bottleneck had been too important, too essential to keep the villains from coming at them as a mob. Now there was a wall dividing the two groups.