There was a flanking group of the Fallen who’d fallen back and were taking cover by a building. Some Clan capes were mixed into the group. Guns were pointed in our general direction as we emerged, but the guns immediately pointed skyward as they realized who we had with us.

That effect seemed to sweep over the Fallen. I made special note of the Fallen who weren’t immediately going still and quiet. There were ones in elaborate costumes, many with tattoos of text or numbers down their arms. They’d be the leadership.

The one with the horse head mask wasn’t backing off, either. He just gathered his shadowy clones around him.

I kept my distance from the rest of the group, floating out in front, the Wretch active. March was doing much the same, but without the benefit of invincibility. The rapier was extended out, pointing at the people with guns.

Hollow Point’s capes were on the fringes, gathered like they had when Advance Guard had turned up in Cedar Point, with a divide marking the distinction between Prancer’s side of things and the others. Beast of Burden’s group, minus both Beast of Burden and Damsel, a twenty foot gap with only three capes in it, and then Prancer’s assembly, with an injured Moose, an injured Velvet, Bitter Pill’s group with Bluestocking frothing at the mouth, and the Speedrunners.

I recognized the three capes in the no man’s land as Love Lost, Snag, and Cradle. The clients who’d paid for this whole thing, with the aim of getting Rain in the midst of the chaos. If they had an assassin, I couldn’t tell who it was. Nobody seemed especially out of place.

It was my first proper sighting of Cradle. He wore a bodysuit and an elaborate sculpted mask with a hand worked into it, fingers and thumb curled into claws, worked into his face and around his eyes and nose as if seen from the side. His bodysuit had much the same design, white hands against black mesh fabric.

More noticeable was the mech, if it could be called that. He stood on a platform that looked like an outstretched hand. A framework of six mechanical arms and four giant hands extended out and around the platform.

With our arrival, the gunfire had stopped. The heroes’ side wasn’t sending any volleys or attacks out, now that the Fallen seemed more subdued.

Someone on the Fallen side said something, and guns were put down.

“It’s over!” Capricorn shouted. “Stand down!”

They were rule-breakers, killers, child kidnappers, addicts, and worse. They included racists in their number without flinching, because it served their ends. They’d celebrated the end of the world, where billions had died. Maybe tens of billions or more, depending on how much damage Scion had done to parallel worlds.

If they didn’t listen—if they even got desperate, this would be a disaster.