“I’m proposing you surrender,” she said. She flicked her hand out to the side, and her power activated, crackling at her right.

“I’m tough to hurt,” he said.

“Do you really want to test it?” she asked.

“Sure,” he said. “Why the hell not?”

She spared a momentary glance toward Angel, who ran off to the side, parallel with the forcefield. The others were already vacating. They had some stuff, but the looting of the registers and the safe in the manager’s office had been interrupted.

A forcefield appeared at knee-level, an obstacle.

She had some experience with that, having dealt with Licit. She had experience with constantly fighting to catch and maintain her balance, as external factors worked on her.

She stumbled, and when it looked like she wasn’t going to catch her balance, she used her power, blasting herself in the opposite direction.

Another forcefield had materialized in front of where she’d been about to stumble, positioned to make her landing an uncomfortable one. The blast that she fired tore the forcefield to shreds. She stumbled back into a shelf near the registers, loaded with impulse buy items, including a ridiculous number and variety of protein bars.

She hurled herself forward.

“Neil!” the forcefield woman shouted, her voice nasal with her hand still at her nose. “Get back!”

Damsel blasted. The big guy was already getting out of the way, throwing himself into the ground in a roll. He collided with another shelf, and energy arced out, connecting with the metal shelves.

“That went through my field like it was nothing,” the woman said. “You can’t take that hit.”

Damsel smiled, as the man’s expression went cold. She walked a few steps, then blasted the long forcefield that had cut their battlefield in half. The forcefield bent, distorted, and a good two thirds of it dissolved into nothing. Like plastic crinkling at the touch of fire.

In the background, Angel used the opening to get to the other side of the store and make a break in the direction the others had run.

He twisted his hand around, and the shelf snapped over, the thicker midsection of the shelf slapping into the palm of his hands, fingers gripping it.

He hurled it, and it wasn’t just that he was strong enough to treat it like it weighed nothing—he used his power to thrust it out. Damsel aimed to shoot it out of the air, but with the speed it flew, it connected with her hand a moment before the power annihilated it. Flecks of shelf struck Damsel’s face and shoulders.

Her hand stung where the shelf had hit it. She shook it at her side, and each shake made her power activate, spitting out bursts and licks of space-warping darkness.