“I’m his age and I put that projection together, you know,” Looksee said. “I had to look really closely at the images I was rendering. This is good work!”

“You appear to have mentors who are fine with exposing you to that kind of thing, Looksee,” Tattletale’s reply was as smooth as anything.

“Maybe I’m a badass,” Looksee said. “I took out Mama Mathers.”

“Speaking of,” Tattletale said, perking up and looking past Looksee to Capricorn. “She’s dead? No. Contained?”

“She’s contained with physical constraints and some power stuff,” Capricorn said.

“Partially phased into another reality,” Rain clarified. “I talked to the heroes. She’s kept an eye on the Crowley clan for years, twenty-four seven. She might not sleep.”

“Tranquilizers don’t work, she’ll fake it,” Tattletale said. “You figured that out. Good. Phasing her out should break the connection as long as it lasts, if it can be maintained. It might even force her to reset all the connections.”

“That was the line of thinking,” I said.

Rain spoke up, taking advantage of the fact he’d had an opening in the conversation again, “I’d really like to hear how you can know how she works, know how she keeps people under her thumb, and then sign off on hurting the innocents caught in the mix. Doing this to me.”

“I’d like to hear that too, Tattletale,” Foil said.

“Please,” Parian said.

“Please,” I said, echoing Parian’s word, but in my brightest, nicest tone of voice. I smiled at Tattletale.

Tattletale fixed me with her best ‘are you serious’ look.

“You said you’d help Cradle, but you didn’t want to know what happened to the kid,” I said. “We thought you needed to see the consequences of your actions.”

“That is pretty ripe, coming from the princess of damage and her troupe of walking disaster areas,” Tattletale said. “I have looked you guys up, read files, you know.”

“Deflecting?” Tristan asked.

“A bit, yeah. But I think it’s important for context, because you guys don’t get to act high and mighty here. The Fallen kid locked people inside a mall and let them die from trampling, fire and smoke. The junior half of Team Reach crashed and burned after you got up to your antics, Capricorn. Damsel of Distress had an invite to the Slaughterhouse Nine.”

“So did I,” Rachel said.

“Shh,” Tattletale said.

“Are you saying you’d do the same for any of us?” I asked.

“I’m saying you guys are really not the ones who should be throwing stones here. I know how you got together, even if I don’t have all the individual details. The institution that looks after Creepy Kid barely sees him and they’re scared enough of him when he’s there to let him do what he wants. There’s a story there.”

Something to look into, then.