“—your permission to fight!” she finished.

He hunched over, back to the wheel rim, reloading. He called back, “I’m not going to do that!”

“It’s not easy for me to ask! I’m trying to respect—”

He looked at me, not her, and interrupted, “You don’t need my permission to fight!”

I didn’t hear the start of her sentence, as someone else on our side fired a gun. A Fallen returned fire and shot the bus.

“—want it,” she said.

“Too bad!” he called out. “You choose, I’ll be a witness and I’ll testify how you handled it, good or bad!”

I looked across the far ditch, furthest from the Fallen, and saw where a stone had been rolled away to make way for the dirt road. It was large enough a tractor or team of horses would have been involved.

They’d be close in a matter of seconds. I put one hand out, pressing it against the stone, and brought out the Wretch. I pulled back, and the Wretch held on. Together, we heaved the stone free from the earth that surrounded it.

“Don’t fuck me,” I whispered to the Wretch. I could hear the fingers and teeth biting into the stone, arms wrapping around it and squeezing until it threatened to break.

Two hundred and fifty, three hundred pounds of rock. The dirt road was constructed so it formed a hump, with vehicles traveling along the raised portion, with rainwater flowing into the ditches on either side, to be reabsorbed or to run off into some larger water source. It was the cover the Patrol block people were using, and it was cover I could use, albeit in a different way.

I left the scene, flying low and hauling the rock with me. The Wretch continued to wrestle with it, mindless, carving into it. I worried it would break in half.

Once I was far enough away I couldn’t see the people, I flew over the road, and flew at them from the sides.

Fights were about information first, positioning second, action third. It was why I studied parahumans, and it was why I favored the faux thinker-one power I had in my bird’s eye view, when I could use it without being shot.

Without information, people couldn’t know where they needed to be. If they weren’t in the right place at the right time, they couldn’t act. Positioning was second.

I was fast, silent, and approaching from an unexpected angle. I looked for where the people with guns were, and I released the stone. It hit the ground with no sound but an impact that saw them react. I pushed out with my aura for good measure.

With momentum, it rolled a short distance. It rolled into the group, and four people toppled, a stone that came up to almost hip height hitting their legs with crushing force.