The pair were making their approach. The guy had one glowing circle on his mask, now, and a crescent moon of manifested power-canceling energy that he held like a sword.

The smoke woman unleashed her power on me. I charged in, crashing into it, and shattered the first ten feet.

The Wretch threw the two feet of two-by-four, or it let go of the piece as it dissipated.

The block of wood hit the masked woman in the face hard enough to knock her off of her feet and break the horn at the right side of her chin. The smoke ceased flowing, and the forms went still.

I’d hoped it would use the weapon to break stuff before it broke down in turn.

I watched as she tried to get to her feet, stumbled, and then fell back down again. On her second attempt, she created two columns of her power, letting them solidify, before using them as leverage to stand. She slumped against one, then slowly slumped back down toward the ground.

That left me to deal with the guy who could disrupt powers with his arsenal of minor abilities. Right.

He went to the girl first, still holding his blade, and bent down by her.

“She okay?” I asked.

He didn’t respond. Slowly, he helped her get to her feet.

In the same instant, the two of them looked off to one side, as if they’d heard a loud noise.

He dismissed the sword, one of his eyes lighting up, then drew out the star thing.

He cast it down at the ground, hard. He and the girl disappeared.

The direction they’d been looking. The Fallen that had been watching the hostages.

I ran after them, trying flight when I could. It took a few running steps before I had something that was better than legging it.

Capricorn and Sveta had arrived. That was the only thing I could see as a more or less unambiguous plus.

There was a group on the scene, facing down Valefor and the other Fallen, with the power nullifier and glass-smoke woman having already rejoined them by teleport. A woman with a bunny mask and marching band outfit, ears poking up through the brim of the flat-top, feathered cap. There were three people in costumes that I didn’t recognize, and there was Rain, with the metal mask, gloves, and dark hood. He was tense, and he was tense for damn good reason.

Their arrival had precipitated something I’d seen as more or less inevitable. With as many players in this game as there were, the hostages were always going to be the last card the Fallen group could play, so a part of me had trusted and hoped that they would hold off on playing it.

Something Rain or this mystery group had done had spooked them enough that they’d played the card.