Narwhal raised her voice. I double checked what I could see of the woods, to make sure nobody was coming or passing by our flanks, then dropped from my lookout position.

I hung up my phone as I descended.

“—of you showing off?” Narwhal asked. I’d missed the start of the sentence.

“No,” Capricorn said. He was back to being Tristan, and he was drawing out the wall even as Narwhal grilled him.

“This is a serious mission. Your team posed it as such, and you were there—you saw how high the stakes are.”

“Absolutely,” Capricorn said.

“Yes ma’am,” Vista said.

“What were you doing?” Narwhal asked.

“Trying something,” Capricorn said. “Vista saved me time earlier, I thought we could afford to lose some to try this, because it could save us a lot of time.”

“Capricorn, I get the impression you’re a good cape, the walls are good, you’ve kept a level head. But the people back there—they’re the ones who can’t afford for us to screw up or let the Fallen catch up with us.”

Rain was standing a bit off to the side. He’d been with Narwhal before, and he’d approached, because Capricorn was his friend. He looked at me as Narwhal said the last bit.

Soon, I pledged mentally, without saying it out loud.

“Yes ma’am,” Capricorn said.

“What were you trying to do, powerwise?” I asked.

“Seeing what translates when I change out, if there’s a way to have her help make it bigger, not just move the sparks around faster, and keep it big even after she withdraws her space warping.”

“You were trying other stuff before,” I said.

“Yeah. Flubbed this one, I think something went wrong. The plan was to swap out, swap back a second later, so the wall mostly held… one second.”

He turned blue. Byron.

“Didn’t go according to plan,” I concluded.

“There was a resistance to swapping back,” Byron said. “Had to push in a way I never have.”

“Okay,” I said.

Back to Tristan.

“Scary,” Tristan noted. I was already listening for the sound difference between the pair of them, so I wasn’t relying on sight alone, and I didn’t miss that he’d said the word in a voice that didn’t sound like either of them. Or maybe it was the voice that fell in the venn-diagram overlap of how they were the same, in the middle of their Case Seventy situation.

Narwhal gave me a long look. As if I was some kind of judge or voice for the weirdness of the team.

“It’s a tricky power,” I tried answering the look. “If they did figure out a way to save time and let them put up taller, thicker walls, I think you and I would be complimenting them on their ingenuity. This didn’t cost us much.”