My aura back on blast, I flew across the street, then back toward the fighting. March and her band of oddballs had been on the far side of Valefor’s cluster of capes.

The large thing had fallen over, one hand planted on the ground near some of the civilians. March ran up its arm, ducking and using momentum to slide up the slope of the arm as a bony claw reached for her.

She ran along the shoulders, cutting as she went, leaped as the head sank into the morass of the body and became two avian skulls that pecked at the air, and then came down, stabbing her rapier into the chest and dragging the point against the giant thing’s torso, cutting as she went down. The blue-purple-black watercolor spread in the wake of the blade’s tip.

She pulled it free, stabbed at a reaching hand, and used it to reorient her fall. She landed hard, her feet planted on either side of a screaming teenage girls’ head. A slight misstep, and she would have caved in the poor girl’s face.

March snapped her fingers and flicked with her blade.

At the shoulder, where the long cut had started, there was a flare of the watercolor spray. Purple and blue, with deep shadow in the midst of it.

Her rapier swept out, pointing. She called out, “Rain!”

The flare was tracing along the line she’d cut like a flame down a cartoon bomb’s fuse.

“I can’t!” Rain called out.

The ‘fuse’ reached its terminus. What had been a flare became a fierce explosion, right down at the base of the breaker.

I flew toward it, bringing out the Wretch, so I could catch it if it toppled onto March and the civilians. It didn’t, falling backward and dissolving as it did.

The breaker form dissipated, and there was only the Fallen with the demon themed skull mask, tipping backward to land on his ass. March plunged her rapier into his chest, then flicked it up, toward his throat.

“It would have been perfect if that had also cut it in two, Rain,” March said. “It was still perfect, but in a lesser way.”

“Can you not use my name?” he asked. “And Amaymon nullified my power.”

The Fallen was patting his chest where he’d been stabbed. He touched his throat. Intact, but the line of watercolor marked him.

“Valefor used your name,” she said. She snapped her fingers. “And you didn’t give me another one.”

Still floating in the air, I could see the flare appear at the breaker Fallen’s chest. He brought his hands to it, quick, frantic, then tried to pat it out.

“Hey!” the Fallen cried out. He lurched to his feet. “Stop!”

March was walking away.

“Hey! Fuck! Help me!”