Fog meant humidity and humidity meant I could smell the chemicals of shampoos, mouthwashes and soaps, the sweat and the breath of people pressed in close to one another. There was a faint warmth, even, as if they were so heated that it had become manifest.

Through it all was the noise of them. I was pretty sure a megaphone was blaring but I couldn’t make out words in the chaos.

Someone pushed in close to the cape nearest me, a guy with a costume I didn’t recognize. That gave others the courage to join in. Every cape had been ready to act, and powers flared out. Some people stopped, and some pressed on.

I was young, I was wearing nice clothes rather than a costume, and I had my arm in a sling. People weighed their options and they pressed on, pushing in close, one grabbing my good arm. Someone else reached past me, arm brushing past my chest so they could grab the strap of my sling, which was a dickish, dickish move.

I didn’t flinch, using flight to stay upright. I made eye contact with the guy, someone with glasses, a mustache, and a khaki jacket, and saw the moment of hesitation.

I set off my aura, and drove that moment home.

Both he and the other guy let go, backing off, and others reacted as well. It got the attention of people who were trying to squeeze past a cape who had his cape draping down from wrists to ground, transformed into a fence-like barrier, and past a self-duplicator with a luminescent filament webbing connecting each copy of themselves that they’d made. It bought a moment and a moment mattered. People continued to struggle and deal, but nobody tried to grab me or press past me again.

A cape sent their minion trotting between capes and the road ragers. People backed off, seeing it coming, and in its wake, the five to ten feet of gap remained.

The crowd was cowed by the failure to push through, and with that came a lowering of volume, just enough that the megaphone could be heard. A new voice. “The situation is resolving. Return to your cars or they will be rolled off the roads!”

Some people left right away. Others lingered. They wanted to stay for the same reason the students were here, I imagined. It was for the same reasons the construction union had wanted to act.

“You okay?” someone asked me. He was tall, broad shouldered and narrow waisted, with white armor that seemed to exaggerate the facts, his shoulders flaring out into sweeping points. His helmet had the same sweep worked into the top, a man’s face worked into the front, hyper-realistic but for the lack of eyebrows and lashes, the eyes closed. The costume served to exaggerate proportions and joints in a way that made him look like he was put together wrong.