“May I?” Tristan asked, scooting over and shifting the laptop so it was at a middle ground where both he and Natalie could read it. Natalie gave him an annoyed look. “You wrote them down. Good.”

I leaned forward. “This attack on the Fallen? It’s villains looking for validation and a chance to show their stuff, and a lot of natural and justified hate for the Fallen. They’re an acceptable target, and the Hollow Point group wants to show they’re a force unto themselves. Part of the group will be going after our teammate, unfortunately, and we can’t control that directly. But he’s not the focus of the larger group.”

“We’ll trust him, that he knows what he’s doing, if he’s hiding,” Tristan said.

“We have to, your buddy Chris says,” Crystal said.

“I was gracefully avoiding mentioning that, Chris,” Tristan said.

I went on, “Depending on how the scenario unfolds, we may need to evacuate bystanders. The Hollow Point group is attacking the compound. They arrived in cars, they had low-tier members out gassing up the cars for a trip, so we can assume they’ll drive and they’ll arrive at the compound, taking action from there. They’ll probably split up, with teams that know each other sticking together.”

“Factions within the group,” Sveta said. “Already some infighting.”

“Yep. I emailed people my last draft of the document. It covers the groups to expect. Read it tonight or early tomorrow. In a big engagement, we can’t just throw ourselves into the skirmish and hope things will resolve themselves,” I said. “Tristan is more comfortable managing the group in the heat of the fight, I think. I can give a bird’s eye view, and I’ll communicate what I can. If I can’t solve an emerging problem myself, I’ll try to give direction to those who can.”

“Are the younger members of the group participating?” Natalie asked.

“Not directly,” I said. “We talked about it. We’ll do the same as we did in Cedar Point yesterday. Looksee as toolbox, if she participates it’ll be as a projection, and we’ll keep her removed from the Fallen. She focuses more on the Hollow Point group. C runs interference.”

“Text from Looksee,” Crystal reported. “She says her mom can drop her off with her projector. That’s an adorable image, a cape being dropped off by a parent.”

“Not so adorable,” Tristan said.

“She wants to know if you can carry her projector in.”

“You’re the one carrying it,” Tristan said, to me.

“Not in,” I said. “We’ll bring it and keep it near our retreat, so we have a point to fall back to.”

“Alright. What does Looksee think?”

“She says that’s fine,” Crystal said.

“The focus in big engagements is to identify the points we can change, and act on them,” I said. “Rescue and civilians will be a continuous one.”