A group of people were blocking the road. Students. It reminded me of the situation we’d expected with the construction workers planning the demonstration, but this… it was a little more insane. The students were blocking the highway and interrupting movement across the city, and people were pissed. Capes were already on scene, guarding the narrow no-man’s land between the groups.

The shouting between the two groups drowned even the howling of car horns as I got closer to the scene. I chose one place where the divide was especially narrow to set down. No cape-erected barriers here to keep the peace, no master pets, no effects. The mob was held at bay by people in costume who couldn’t or wouldn’t use their power on civilians, and by police who were stretched too thin. Stretched thinner, I could see, because they were trying to get the student protesters to break up. Too few, and the students too stubborn.

Some cars had left the road and were trying to drive around, but students were putting themselves in front of the vehicles. Some of those vehicles inched forward, students sitting or sprawling on the hoods, and others had been stopped from running through the crowd by capes.

Capes, combative already, flinched as I descended, even though I’d cut my speed to a crawl. They relaxed slightly as I raised my good hand.

It was a dangerous position, because the gap between the students and the mob was only a matter of ten or so feet. The Wretch could extend out far enough that I was liable to clip one side or the other. I couldn’t keep my forcefield up, and I was wearing nice clothes.

It was hard to breathe here, between the thin line of students—roughly three deep, locked elbow to elbow—and the mob of over a hundred people that I couldn’t see around or past. I couldn’t see everything of importance at the same time, and I couldn’t hear because protester and irate bystanders shouted at each other with neither group showing any inclination to listen.

In a lot of places, here in particular, it was only costume and uniform that kept people at bay. Fear, and the threat of the unknown—just about every cape present serving as that unknown, with powers or capabilities the crowd couldn’t know. Some of the ex-drivers were close enough for me to touch with my fingertips, had I extended my arm fully. I stood with my body twisted, injured arm turned away from them, my arm half-raised, and they backed off some, men and women studying me and figuring out if they could get past me to get what they wanted.