Then—no footing. She was moving upward, her shoulders tense, her chest locked with no breath passing through her throat or mouth, dress and hair moving with the air, and her arms out and behind her. The building was below her.

A short blast moved her horizontally. She landed on a broad tarred shingle that wasn’t fully attached to the roof. The shingle moved under her as she came to a stop.

She stepped up to and then stood on the corner of the rooftop. Her group was in the lot below her, with twenty-five of her people rushing to fill up the trucks they’d haphazardly parked around the building. People were shouting orders, trying to harangue a disorganized mob of teenagers and twenty-somethings into order.

The building below her was a warehouse. Televisions, computers, laptops and printers. She had been informed that most were the kind that flooded stores before all the students arrived for university, cheaper, with brand names nobody had heard of.

The teenagers were nervous, and a heavy rumble had almost made them shit themselves. It had been followed by another, and then another. She had had J call the mercenaries she had stationed at either end of the warehouse lot to see if they’d seen the cause. They hadn’t.

Now she had her vantage point, and her eyes scanned the area.

A helicopter made its way through the night sky above them. She could see her people stop in their tracks at the noise, heads turning to see the helicopter-mounted spotlight roving over buildings a block away.

Not for them.

The spotlight of the helicopter illuminated the source of the rumbling, a ways off to the north, past the water.

It was taller than some four-story buildings, hunchbacked, without much of a head. It walked on two legs, using one of its arms when its balance failed it and it tipped too far forward. Its other arm wasn’t the kind that supported weight, consisting of a morass of tentacles.

As the helicopter drew nearer, the tentacles began to unfurl, expanding out to fill the area around the giant. It turned, standing straighter, clearly hostile.

The helicopter pulled back, the spotlight covering more of the giant with a lower intensity.

It made its way out into the water, and the tentacles from its arm spread out, plunging into the water around it. It stood with its back to the area.

Damsel crossed the roof, found the ladder for the fire escape, and slid down, one hand on the side, another ready to grab the rungs if something went wrong, her feet stopping her periodically.

She hopped down the last five feet, and dusted off her hands. Grime, paint chips and rust, with some abrasions. A use of her power cleared away the rust.

“Did you see what it was?” J asked her.

“Giant monster,” she said. “How are we doing?”

“Giant monster?” J asked. People nearby looked curious too.