A guy with the proportions of an older teenager that hadn’t quite grown to match his lanky frame was advancing, arms out to his sides. A hood of what looked like flesh was wrapped around a hard mask or helmet. It looked like two human faces with distorted features had been cut away from their owner’s heads, carved into strips, and then bound together, with gaps in both the skin-strips and helmet for him to peer through. A ‘mouth’ yawned open around one eye, and a diagonal slash of a gap between two other strips provided an opening for the other. His eyes were blue sparks of light.

I could see the range of his power. He was the source of the dark smoke and blue arcs of lightning that danced over every surface, Beast of Burden included. Everything in his field of view was affected, and wooden fences, weeds, and bits of wood on the road sparked and ignited. Things closer to him seemed more affected. At about thirty meters, the effect seemed negligible.

Nailbiter backed away, moving with some agitation as her pointed feet stuck into the softer dirt of the road, her mobility hampered. Light arced briefly and fiercely between two of her extended fingers, and she shook her hand.

I could see Sidepiece and Disjoint as part of the group. Beast of Burden’s clique, separated from Prancer’s and now matched in number.

There were other Fallen. A young woman, with a face-concealing hood and scarf that was wound around her hair and down her back, voluminous sleeves around her arms, and no actual torso section to her costume. A black belt at her chest covered only what was essential, and tattoos decorated the tanned skin of her stomach and sides. She was guarding the one with the electric sight.

Evacuating the innocents in the camp was one step. Chances were that they’d go back to the Fallen after. There was no way to get them to cooperate and refuse them that freedom, and the amnesty, as much as it sucked, protected them, even if their leaders were apparently breaking rules.

Anarchy was the word, really. We had to deal with the really problematic ones.

Fallen-aligned capes on dirt bikes tore around a corner, kicking up dust behind them as they joined the fray. Some of that dust reached up to the edges of roofs on two story buildings behind them. Hoodlums, tattooed and wearing cheap demon masks. Boys and girls.

Maybe they were older than I was, but it was hard to see them and assign any kind of maturity. I could hear them whooping as they split up, half of them racing along the right perimeter the darkness and electricity, half along the left perimeter.