Amy and Morgan had worked throughout the afternoon, tweaking, modifying, enhancing, and brainstorming tools and weapons for Amy to use on her suit. Their argument, the flashes of near-blinding rage she’d felt, and the thought that Morgan had rejected her were still fresh in her memory. But the realization of what had happened, and their intimacy afterward, had been like a firehose quenching that flame. It left her warm, tingly, and cautiously optimistic in ways she rarely was.

  But that argument and subsequent resolution had done nothing for the other thing that was lurking in her mind, glutting itself and growing larger as the hands on the clock swirled around. The anxiety of being on the front line for the very first time. Of putting herself in the crossfire intentionally. To try to fight with the others in the defense of their home, and the others living here. The lurking certainty that she’d fail, that she’d fuck it up, that she’d be a disappointment to her friends, and to prove her mom right. Carol loomed in her mind. The look on her face after she failed, and the demand she’d make to stop this folly and return to her life as Panacea.

  Amy had been training nonstop for a bit over a month now. Every day, she worked out, nearly to the point of exhaustion. She pushed herself hard. She had to succeed. She needed this. She’d poured herself into abusing her body in the gym before Leviathan, and then on the equipment at the Station after. Running on treadmills before, and then running daily with Taylor after.

  She’d also done sessions with Morgan three days a week on hand-to-hand combat. Morgan was a hard teacher, but she was a good one. Between days of training with Morgan, she trained with Uncle Neil. Uncle Neil had very different styles and approaches from Morgan.

  Morgan would hold back, assess, stress-test, and then overwhelm, like a switch being thrown. Instruction before, during, and after. She never gave easy wins. She didn’t pull punches and certainly didn’t pull throws to the mat. If Amy hesitated, she paid for it. If she folded, Morgan reset and made her do it again. And again. Until Amy got it right. She didn’t allow Amy to give up.

  At times, it felt cruel. Morgain said it was faith. That she believed Amy could be better, and should be better. That she placed that faith in her. She taught her like someone working a forge, stoking the flame hotter, higher, until Amy was primed for reshaping.

  Uncle Neil had a different rhythm.

  He didn’t go easy on her, not exactly, but there was a softness to it. A sense of care folded into each lesson, a muscle memory wrapped in familial compassion. He knew when to push her and when to pull back. When her hands were shaking too much, he calmed her down and talked her through things. When her stance faltered, he was there, not snapping orders, just steadying her elbow, guiding her knee.

  Morgan drilled her to endure pressure, and Neil showed her how to move through it.

  Morgan sharpened her like a blade, and Neil helped her find a grip on it.

  He was still the same man who trained the rest of New Wave in CQB. Still the career fighter with an easy smile. But with her, he never forgot he was family first.

  Her suit felt too tight around her. She knew that wasn’t possible. It was built and grown specifically to fit her. Her chest was tight. The skin-tight and paper-thin one-piece she wore under the suit was slick with her sweat, the space between and under her breasts and on her lower back downright drenched. The synthetic material helped absorb and wick the moisture. The suit maintained an internal homeostasis for her as part of its core functions. It was sealed, insulated, and self-regulating. So she knew it was she who was the problem, not the suit. She didn’t need to use her power on it to check. She did anyway. It filtered the air she breathed, and it absorbed, consumed, and recycled any bodily wastes she produced, like her sweat.

  She sincerely hoped that she wouldn’t have to experience any other kinds of waste products in her suit, but it was theoretically perfectly capable of metabolizing those, too. The suit had its own storage reservoirs. Some of these were filled with metabolic fuel gel for the suit. Some stored biomass slurry as material to use with her power. She could use it to grow or add tools, weapons, or other implements as needed, using her power. There were several bladders filled with mineral-dense precursors that either she or the suit could use for repairs to the defensive structures and layers. There was even a plain old water reservoir that she could drink from, and that the suit used for metabolic processes.

  Her mouth was dry, and she took a drink of water from the chitin straw positioned near her jaw in her helmet. She tried not to visualize or think about the implications too much. The suit was efficient. Frighteningly so. Far, far more efficient than she herself was. She designed it to be that way. When she put it to sleep, it hibernated and barely consumed any fuel to survive.

  Earlier… Morgan had done something to her and to the suit as well. She’d pushed her ability to change herself to change Amy. Amy now had a blue mandala tattoo that she was going to have to explain on her neck. But it wasn’t just a tattoo, and she knew that. She thought she’d be more scared at the prospect of being changed, of someone else tinkering with her body and her biology. But the thought… excited her more than anything. One of her biggest gripes with her power was that she couldn’t use it on herself. Life would be so much easier if she could. It’s why Morgan’s power was so amazing.

  So she didn’t have a single clue about the details of what was on her neck and in her body now. She could see what Morgan had done to her suit, and the tattoo that was present on the inside, but she also knew that the ‘matching’ part was different from hers. It had to be. The suit had a radically different nervous system than she did.

  What she did know was that when she got into the suit now, having gotten her tattoo, it had changed everything. She’d labored for weeks on how to solve issues with the suit. It was too slow, too sluggish, and it made her clumsy. She’d devised hack upon hack, modifying the way the controls worked, how she interfaced with it, and how the nervous system was laid out to reduce that latency. She’d gotten it to a good place, but then she’d hit a brick wall. She couldn’t improve it further.

  In came Morgan like a wrecking ball, smashing down that wall. She’d sat on a stool, chewed on her lower lip, and drummed her fingers on her lap. Then she’d just up and said, “Oh, I have an idea,” and had dropped a solution out of nowhere. A solution that didn’t just wind up working, it was a giant evolution in Amy’s ability to interface with the suit.

  Just like that. No sweat. No tears. She just went “I’m going to do a thing,” grew an entire surgical suite of tools out of her arm, and then operated on both Amy and her suit simultaneously like it was no big deal. Then she changed back and dusted her hands off.

  At one point in her life, even a handful of months ago, Amy would have raged and seethed at someone, anyone, even her friend, doing that to her. To have come in after countless hours, dump all her work off the table and into the trash bin, and to effortlessly fix the problem in five minutes flat. But things had changed. She had changed. For the better. She was less depressed. Less bitter, less angry all the time. She was using her power more now than ever before, and she wasn’t using it to heal people, but to make entirely new things to solve problems.

  She had giant hydroponic trays and troughs linked together, filled to the brim with seaweed and aquatic plants she’d had Morgan gather samples of. She’d turned around and completely genetically re-engineered those plants and algae into a robust water recycling and purification system. Now those trays were on the roof, and filthy, toxic water from the streets and sewers, as well as gray water they generated, was pumped into one end, and perfectly clean potable water came out the other. It not only worked, it was far faster than the water purification systems that had been shipped and flown in. All it needed was sunlight, and for someone to stop in once or twice a week and pick the fruit-like bulbs of byproducts and waste that couldn’t be processed.

  And as for Morgan? Morgan couldn’t stop blabbering about how amazing Amy's power was. Or Taylor’s power. Or other parahumans in their group. She said that she was deeply envious of Amy’s power, and not just her power, but her ability to wield it as a person. Had it been anyone else, she would have thought they were lying to her. Giving her praise to cover their true feelings. That she was inadequate, a failure, and doomed to reside in the shadows of others. But not Morgan.

  Amy felt a brief guilty twinge because, at one point in the past, she had thought that Morgan was manipulating her, and she’d used her ability on Morgan without asking. Observed her neurotransmitter levels and brain activity. She thought maybe she had been lying to her to make her feel better. She wasn’t, and Amy had violated the trust of her friend and her own principles in a moment of weakness.

  “Hey, Ames,” Victoria whispered to her from her side. Amy looked over at her; her view was like looking through slightly tinted glass. Vicky held her hand out, and Amy reached out through her suit and took it into the gauntleted hand she was wearing over her own. For a fraction of a second, she activated her power, looking through the glove and into Victoria. Vicky was healthy. A little excited. A little nervous.

  Figuring out how to use her power through her suit had been tricky. What she’d wound up doing was something she really didn’t want to talk to others about. The leather that made up the palms of her gauntlets was only sort-of-leather; it was alive, like the rest of the suit. And it was only sort-of-suit, because the skin was her skin, but modified some. She wasn’t going to tell anyone that the suit had parts of her body, parts of her genetic code, and bits and bobs of human biology and structure sprinkled throughout it. That would be… probably super duper illegal, or something.

  “You’re going to be fine, Amy. I know you’re probably nervous as heck. I know I was, my first time out. Don’t worry. You’re not alone, we’ll have your back if you need it.”

  Amy swallowed. She kept her voice low as well. “I don’t… Please don’t baby me. If I fail, if I fall, if I get hurt. I… I know I will, but let me. I want to learn to do this, so I can do it on my own and not have to have a team or backup. Vicky, I– I need to figure this out, if I can do this by myself.”

  Several expressions flickered over Vicky’s face as Amy spoke, but at the end, she smiled. “You got it. I’ll keep an eye on you, and keep others from getting involved, and I’ll only step in if things look really bad, okay?”

  Amy nodded, her suit replicating the motion.

  The group of capes, mostly her family, was huddled together in a closed container outside the walls of the Station, waiting for the word to move out. They didn’t want to clue off the Chosen before they could snap the jaws of the trap shut on them.

  Taylor–Skitter–whispered loudly enough for the entire group to hear. And it was all of them. Lady Photon, Manpower, Flashbang, Brandish, Glory Girl, Laserdream, Skitter, and Eclipse. Apex was outside the perimeter, hidden, but watching and waiting. Menja was in the Station itself, keeping an eye on the civilians. Half of Chess team was in their usual posted positions and patrolling, and the other half was ‘off duty.’

  “Okay,” Taylor said. “They’re two blocks out now. Confirming: Hookwolf, Stormtiger, Cricket, Rune, Othala, and Victor. Apex relayed they have sixteen others on foot tailing about a quarter of a block back. A bunch of Empire flunkies with chains, bats, and a few dangerous weapons. Several guns. They’re also strapped with backpacks, tote bags, ropes, and tarps. She says she thinks it’s for packing up the loot.”

  Lady Photon spoke next. “That’s more than we were expecting, but that’s not going to give us any trouble, is it, New Wave?” “And friends,” she hastily added.

  Cracking knuckles, grinning teeth, and murmured affirmations went all around.

  “I have you all tagged with bugs,” Skitter said. Grumbles went around. “They’re harmless, and they won’t hurt you. Ladybugs aren’t terrible, right?” A few heads nodded. “I have them sticking onto you in places they shouldn’t wind up getting killed. If anyone gets grabbed, I can use them to track you or to find you if you get separated. Try not to smash them if you feel them, please.”

  “Good thinking,” Brandish said. “Relay it to one of us, or on the radio if something happens.”

  “Of course,” Skitter replied. “One block now. Get ready.”

  Amy’s stomach dropped. Her breathing was fast and shallow. She heard Morgan’s voice in her head, telling her to get it under control. She fought to do so. Her fingers felt ice cold and clammy in her gauntlets; she was soaked with sweat and could feel droplets running down her neck from her scalp. Her face was too hot, and she was thirsty again.

  She focused on her breathing and took another sip of water. The sound of her breathing was in her ears, too loud within the tight confines of her helmet.

  Skitter reached out to Brandish’s upper arm, squeezed it, and nodded to her.

  “Alright, it’s time to move out. Remember the plan. Manpower, Skitter, Eclipse, Panacea: You’re all with me, we stand and meet them in front of the gates.” Brandish said, addressing the group at a near-normal volume.

  Lady Photon spoke up next: “Laserdream, Flashbang, Glory Girl, you’re all with me. We’re hopping over the wall out of sight and staying inside the gate. The moment they engage, we are popping out, and the four of us and Apex attack from both front and rear. We’ve trained for this; this isn’t anything new. You know what to do. I’ll see you all after the fight. Good luck!”

  The shipping container was opened from both ends, Brandish and her group going out one side, Lady Photon and her group going out the other.

  Not me, Amy thought to herself. I haven’t trained for this. I don’t know the drills. I don’t fight with the team like this.

  The five of them walked around the corner of the wall, over in front of the gate, and then twenty feet outwards from the gate, heading down the street towards their enemy. The Station had set up giant LED floodlight arrays on rooftops and strapped to streetlights and traffic poles surrounding all the streets and intersections around the Station. They lit the streets as bright as high noon, aimed outwards from the central hub of the Station. More floodlights, consisting of construction site lights and some salvaged stadium lights, lit the interior of the walls and the streets immediately bordering the station where the expansions were being built.

  It lit up the sky like a pillar above them, blasting light pollution into the airspace above the station. It was both a beacon for people to orient themselves and to find their way home if they got lost or were coming home from a shift at the docks, and a safety system to provide early warning. Not just for them, but for any who went to and from the station during the night.

  It was after sunset, and the sky was dark, but despite that, the streets were bright and clear as day. Except unlike daytime, there were long, spooky shadows being cast, dancing on the standing waters on the streets and the sides of buildings.

  Amy saw them as her small group came to a stop in the middle of the intersection. Between a quarter to a third of a block away from them, and strolling directly to meet them.

  Hookwolf’s glinting, sparkling, hulking mass, all blades, spikes, spears, knives, hooks, and barbs in constant motion, constrained within the general shape of a giant wolf the size of a full-size van. He was a changer, just like Morgan, but like most changers, also very different. Most capes weren’t similar even within the same classification, but Changers were notoriously a broad and diverse classification. Vicky had told Amy that it used to be multiple classes, but was combined. Something she’d learned in her early college classes for Parahuman Studies.

  Cricket, wearing ragged jeans, a dirty shirt, a horrible metal lower-face mask made from metal mesh and grills, and the scars and tattoos that covered her exposed skin. She was spinning a pair of kama attached by a long chain wrapped and woven around her shoulders and torso. The deadly weapons spun and whistled around her like she was in some kind of death metal color guard. Cricket was a combat thinker, a type of thinker that specialized in being extremely aware in a battle and using it to predict opponents, figure out their weaknesses, and conserve their strength because they knew how things were going to play out.

  On Hookwolf’s other flank, Stormtiger. A burly, heavily muscled man, wearing baggy jeans with chains and tiger-stripe patches crudely sewn on. He was topless, also heavily scarred, and wearing a bright blue and white tiger mask that matched the white patches over his blue jeans. Two sets of massive, paw-like claws extended from the backs of his hands, made entirely from air, and only visible because of the dust, dirt, and water mist trapped in the vortexes around the air-blades. Amy’s dad had told her how dangerous he was from the battles New Wave had with him in the past. Aerokinesis was his ability, and he used it to form invisible weapons, vicious invisible blades and claws that could flay someone with no indication it was even coming. He could do all manner of other things, up to and including making large explosions with his power.

  Rune was in the second row. A young woman with long blonde hair hanging out and visible. She was wearing a blue robe with silver runes all over it, and looked like a very stereotypical wizard. The deep hood of the robe mostly obscured her face in shadow, and her hair hung out of the neckline. The wide sleeves of her robe slid up to her elbows, and she had her bare hands sticking out, making strange symbols with them and gesturing about. She was standing, floating along on a manhole cover, and a number of bricks, rocks, and broken farming tools were lazily circling around her in a slanted ring. Rune was a telekinetic, capable of interacting with things she touched. She took a little while to ‘lock in’ to an object, after which she could manipulate it around. She used the objects for both offense and defense.

  In the middle of the second row was Victor. A younger, blue-eyed, blonde-haired man. He was tall, solidly built, and extremely fit. He’d be considered very traditionally handsome, the kind of guy with the rocking body and lantern jaw that posed half-dressed on women’s magazines. He didn’t do anything for Amy, but she could certainly understand the appeal. Victor’s costume was pretty basic. He wore black fingerless gloves, black boots, black tactical pants, and a bright red shirt. Over the shirt, he wore a jet black medieval-style metal breastplate, but it appeared to be a modernized version that kept the overall design aesthetic. Straps on his chest and thighs were filled with throwing knives; he wore a fighting belt with several knives stuffed into it, and he had a tomahawk hanging from slings on each hip.

  He was supposedly some kind of CQB fighting wiz and extremely good martial artist. Probably another combat thinker. He also had the ability to drain others through touch to empower himself, but Amy didn’t know the details of it. Just that fighting him up close was dangerous.

  The last of the Chosen capes, standing on the other side of Victor from Rune, was Othala. She wore a full-coverage stretch-fit bodysuit. It was a look that was a little outdated and overdone at this point, but she wore it well enough. It was the same red color as Victor’s shirt, a bright blood red. In the center of her chest, she had a big black rune, the same rune as her name.

  Amy hated Othala. Because of all the other capes in Brockton Bay, Othala was the only other healer. Healers were exceptionally rare and often extremely prized by their teams, and coveted by others. It wasn’t a stretch to say that out of the hundreds or thousands of known capes in the United States, those with healing abilities were so few and far between to be low double digits.

  But healing was only one thing Othala did. She was technically a Trump. A classification for capes who could manipulate parahuman abilities themselves. Othala could touch others and temporarily grant them any number of abilities, from throwing fireballs to lifting cars, bouncing bullets off themselves, and regeneration. Amy hated white nationalists. And Amy loathed the fact that Othala’s name would often come up in uncomfortably close proximity to her own cape name, Panacea.

  We are not the same. I’m nothing like you, you two-bit hack of a healer. Regeneration? Really? Oh wow, you can make bullet holes close and have someone reattach a limb, or grow a new one if you use your power long enough. Bitch, I can cure cancer with a touch. I can reprogram a patient’s body to cure itself of diabetes. I can cure infectious diseases and bring people back from wounds and illnesses others dream about. I–

  “Well, well, well. If it isn’t the sad excuse for a hero team, New Wave.” Hookwolf’s voice carried easily over the distance between the two groups and over the hissing background noise of his body’s many implements of dismemberment. “I’ll make this easy for you, out of respect for the fights we’ve had in the past. Step aside. Find somewhere else to be, and we’ll have a little party and help ourselves to that stockpile you’re sitting on. Let us do as we please, and we’ll make this quick and painless.”

  Brandish waved a sword made out of energy back and forth like she was waggling a finger at Hookwolf. “Counter proposal: You come peacefully, obey the rules of our house, work for what it is you want, and we won’t have to send you back to where you come from licking your wounds.”

  Hookwolf started laughing, and the rest of the gang quickly joined in. Cricket held up an electrolarynx to her throat, and contributed along with the rest, going: “Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha.” Amy thought it sounded like a robot malfunctioning from one of her classic movies. Rune was laughing from her floating pedestal, her voice loud, shrill, and scratchy, clearly standing out from the rest.

  Hookwolf raised a metal paw and pointed it at Brandish. The other Chosen piped right down. “I won’t tell you again. Get out of our way, or we’ll make you get out of our way.”

  Their large squad of backup goons, looking like homeless bikers in a mix of motorcycle leathers and sports armor, filed in behind the group of Fenrir’s Chosen capes. All were brandishing weapons, and the addition quadrupled their numbers. A rough crew of able-bodied thugs, both men and women, all of them leering and mean-mugging.

  “You don’t have the numbers, New Wave,” Hookwolf called out across the intersection.

  Skitter stepped forward from Amy’s side, reaching behind her back and pulling out a metal collapsible baton, extending it with a flick of her wrist and a loud snap.

  Shit, Amy thought. Shit, shit, shit! I forgot to do a final check back in the container! SHIT!

  She tried to remember the mental checklist she’d made. Prior to the modifications that Morgan had made earlier, Amy would have to use her power on the suit, filter through the various organs and systems in the suit, and check each thing one at a time. Now, with the modification of her tattoo, all she had to do was think about it, and she could check all the things off her checklist at the speed of thought. The problem was remembering all of it!

  Neural network… good.

  Damage… none.

  Taylor’s voice rang out, and she was doing that freaky buzzing thing with her insects that made her sound extra creepy. “You can do as we ask to get what you want, you can leave now, or you can be broken and tossed aside. Save what face you have left.”

  Biofuel… full.

  Biomass slurry… full.

  “The bug girl talks a big game. Enough stalling for time!” Hookwolf looked over to his assembled crew. “Show them we’re capable of!” Hookwolf prowled forward while the rest of his crew splashed across the intersection alongside him.

  Fuckfuckfuckfuck I have time still!

  Mineral mix, full!

  Darts, full!

  The rest of her team had waited for the fight to come to them and then leapt into action. Amy just stood there, inside her suit, as the battle began.

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  I’m freezing up! Go, go!

  Her chest heaved inside her suit as all her anxieties crashed into her like a rogue wave and swamped her under the surface.

  I don’t belong out here.

  This isn’t me. I’m not Victoria. I’m not Taylor. I’m not Morgan.

  I made this suit because I knew I couldn’t hack it out here, and I still can’t.

  Skitter was directing a swarming mass of bugs from above towards the Chosen’s capes, but Cricket did something, the water rippling between her legs and outward, and the bugs fell from the sky like a million tiny raindrops hitting the street water.

  Her mom was ducking and rolling between attacks from Stormtiger, flashing in and out of her energy sphere form to avoid the worst of the attacks.

  Eclipse had a gun or something out and was shooting it at a building on the corner of the intersection.

  I shouldn’t be out here. Morgan was wrong. This isn’t me!

  Mom was right that I’m better as support! I’m just a liability to my team!

  Manpower was trading huge blows back and forth with Hookwolf, but was steadily getting pushed back. Each time Manpower landed a punch or kick on Hookwolf, chunks of metal would break off and go flying through the air, but it regrew nearly instantly. Hookwolf landed shots on Manpower, and Manpower could take them easily with his shielding, but he was at a raw mass disadvantage, and was having to use his super strength just to try and brace.

  This was always going to fail. I’m pathetic. I’m too weak to even admit it.

  A big woman with a mohawk and too many facial piercings ran straight at Amy, winding up a baseball bat. Amy stood there, paralyzed, as the woman brought it down from a high overhead strike, hitting Amy square in the helmet.

  A thunderous CRACK and shockwave hit Amy, transmitted through the suit, and shook her body. She screamed out and tried to recoil back, and instead toppled straight backwards like a falling piece of timber. Water splashed over her helmet’s faceplate. Her attacker jumped forward, taking up a position over top of her, and raised her bat for another blow.

  “Hey dummy,” Amy heard Morgan’s voice in her head. “Getting hit in the head really sucks, you know? And taking shots to the face is a good way to lose a fight, so don’t do that. What are you supposed to do?”

  “I’m supposed to… protect…my face?” Amy had said, wondering if it was a trick question.

  “Right. So do that. Like this–”

  Amy brought both of her arms up and together in front of her face, protecting herself with her forearms. The bat came down and smashed into her arms with yet another wicked crack! Amy screamed again, in… agony?

  Wait, no. I’m feeling the impact on the suit through its nerves and my link. I’m, I’m… I’m fine!

  Another dreadful blow hit her arms, and Amy laughed out loud.

  I’m fine! It doesn’t hurt at all!

  Uncle Neil’s voice echoed in her mind. “If someone’s attacking you with a melee weapon in their hands, that means they are dedicating a lot of their upper body to using it, and they’re using their legs to stabilize themselves and drive their attacks. They’re concentrating on their weapon, their form, and guard with it, so what do you do?”

  “Try not to get hit first, uh… block second, look for an opening to counterattack third.”

  “Right, but where in this instance?”

  “Their legs?”

  Amy glanced down as her attacker wound up for a third hit. She brought her knee up and then kicked out the woman's rear leg just above her foot. The woman’s eyes flared to a comical extent as she suddenly pitched forward mid-downswing. Amy rolled to the side, and her attacker went straight to the street. Her bat hit the street before she did, rebounded off the pavement as she was mid-faceplant, and hit her straight in the upper forehead. The woman was out cold by the time her entire body landed facedown in the water.

  I won? I…won. I WON!

  Her elation was suddenly cut off as she looked over at the unconscious woman.

  Shit!

  Amy scrambled to her feet and stood up, grabbing her attacker by the shoulders and flipping her over, then dragged her to the sidewalk, where she wouldn’t be partially floating. She flickered her power quickly on the person as she dragged her. She had a mild concussion and several scrapes and cuts from flopping on the pavement under the filthy water. Some pretty nasty microbes had gotten into her system. With a thought, she killed them, then severely boosted the woman’s immune system and triggered a blanket response. She’d feel like she had the flu for half a week, but she wouldn’t be dying of gangrene, either.

  Triage done, so the idiot wasn’t going to drown or die, Amy tried to capitalize on her remaining euphoria. The other half of the team had deployed from their hiding spot, flying up and over the wall and into the massive scrum filling the four-way intersection. Vicky and Crystal were flying overhead and making attacks of opportunity. Her dad was ducking and weaving between two armed gangsters, holding an energy ball in each hand. Having evaded their attacks with a chain and a pipe, he brought his hands up towards their faces, and two bright flashes and muffled bangs sent both of the two he was fighting straight to the street on all fours, blindly feeling around in the water.

  Her mom had traded off at some point and was fighting Cricket, and both she and her energy weapons were on the defensive from a flurry of non-stop attacks from Cricket’s kama. Her dad threw a hand signal to her mom, formed a ball of energy in one hand, and overhand pitched it at Cricket’s back like it was a baseball. Brandish baited Cricket into a nasty strike, partially slipping in the water and lowering her defenses. As Cricket’s kama was about to pierce her mom's thigh, Carol snapped into a ball of light, and her dad’s attack detonated behind Cricket with a resounding THUMP!

  Cricket covered her ears, her kama still in her hands, and staggered towards the side of the street, where she proceeded to double over and projectile vomit into the standing water. She’d need a bit to recover from that. The downside of having enhanced senses like Cricket: having them turned against you was very effective.

  Where do I need to be? I don’t want to get in anyone’s way and throw them off…

  Amy saw Skitter jousting back and forth with her baton, swinging it at someone wielding a bat. Skitter and the baton were faster, but her opponent had a good reach advantage, and the bat was light enough to flip around for another attack. Another of the biker gear-wearing gangsters was swinging a chain around their head and approaching Skitter from behind.

  Amy didn’t really think about what she was doing; she just knew that she needed to help Taylor. So she brought her forearm up, angled her fist downwards, and fired a dart from the launcher on her forearm at the back of the chain guy. It hit the person in the back, piercing through their jacket. She wasn’t sure if she had hit skin successfully or not. Two swings of the chain and another step forward, and the chain guy seemed to fumble his chain. It wrapped around him, speeding up as it ran out of length, and whipped him across the abdomen. He toppled over to land in the water. He was face up, but the weight of the chain was pulling his upper half underwater.

  Fuckity fuck, fuck! This water is annoying! Amy grabbed the guy and dragged him to the sidewalk, too. She checked him out with her power. The neurotoxin in the dart Morgan had given her earlier was insane. It was strong enough to knock out a fucking horse with one dart, took effect in seconds flat, and both paralyzed and knocked the target unconscious. That wasn’t the craziest part. What was, was the fact that it was potent enough to do that, but also seemed to be absurdly non-toxic. Amy didn’t think it was possible to overdose on it, and it somehow didn’t affect autonomic functions.

  She stood back up and started to head in once again to give Skitter backup. As she approached, the water below everyone rippled and sprayed, and she saw hair and fabric gust in one direction.

  Stormtiger.

  One of the unpowered members of Fenrir’s Chosen suddenly flew up and off the street and into the night sky, manipulated by some kind of telekinesis. Their screams vanished suddenly, just like they had. It sent chills down Amy’s spine.

  Who the fuck is doing that? Did someone else join the fight?

  She looked around for the source to determine if it was friend or foe, to see Skitter whack her bat-wielding opponent square across the bridge of their nose. Blood sprayed out of their nostrils, and the person collapsed into a heap.

  Holy shit, Skitter, that’s brutal!

  The wiry girl dragged the person so they were leaning with their back against the side of a car that was missing all its windows. Skitter stood up, and Amy went to call out to her. Skitter brought a hand up and pointed at her. No, not at her. Just to the side. Behind her?

  She turned around to see yet another leather-clad person, one who had been trying to sneak up on her from behind. They were maybe five feet behind her when she turned and made eye contact. The lady held a straight knife in one hand. She slapped a hand to her chest, looking down at herself.

  There was a dart sticking through her shirt over her breast. Amy hadn’t even realized she’d aimed and fired it. The woman wobbled, abruptly sat down on the sidewalk, very slowly toppled over onto her side, and then flopped like a boneless fish onto her back.

  At least I don’t have to drag her anywhere.

  That was- this is-

  A slow realization came to the front of Amy’s mind.

  I’ve knocked out and incapacitated three armed people. And it was… really easy? Super easy.

  She put herself back into motion, heading towards the fray. The number of Chosen who were remaining standing and still fighting was low. She didn’t see a single person from their side who looked wounded or downed. Hookwolf, Rune, and Stormtiger were still in the middle of the battle, but Rune was blocking lasers with city debris, deflecting Mark’s grenades with random junk she was levitating, all while floating well out of reach of her two teammates fighting directly below her. She kept flinging bricks and rocks at the people Hookwolf and Stormtiger were fighting, to trip them up or throw them out of whack, but her two close-combat teammates were heavily outnumbered at the moment.

  Othala was at the center of another group, with three of the Chosen’s unpowered surrounding her. Othala was flicking her hands between each to make skin contact, and the three were fighting with the powers she had granted them. One was hurling fireballs and shooting jets of flame, the other was wielding what looked like a chunk of a steel beam, and waving it around like it hardly weighed anything. The third was there one second, gone the next, and then back the third, dashing around with super speed and landing hits on Amy’s team in the immediate area, and throwing objects at those in the air.

  Her sister, Skitter, and Eclipse were surrounding the four. Skitter was somehow managing to keep up a defense against the speedster, and Amy couldn’t fathom how she was doing that. Skitter had her baton out and was blocking hits with it, and was spraying some aerosol as a counterattack. Vicky kept trying to get a knockout blow on the person armed with the I-beam, and was getting hit sufficiently hard to send her straight into brick walls from it, not that it phased her in the least. Eclipse had her aura-thing up and was just… eating fire that was raining down on her.

  I can’t get near Eclipse, I’m not well equipped to deal with a speedster… I guess I’ll try and get a shot at the person with the steel beam.

  She stepped forward, off the curb and onto the street, when she heard several rapid splashes behind her. Her left knee buckled, jerking forward, and something clanged into her elbow within the space of a second. She lost her balance and fell face-first into the water, landing on all fours. A rapid sequence of blows hit her in the back of the head and across her shoulders and back. It was an alternating sequence. A screech, then a clang, repeated at a blistering pace and relentlessly thumping into her.

  The racket was intense inside her suit, and there were a few sensations of damage to the suit popping up here and there. The damage felt minor compared to the onslaught she was enduring. She tried to stand up, and her leg was knocked out from under her, and she fell back on all fours. She tried again, and this time it was her elbow. By the fourth time she tried to get up and was put right back down, she let out a furious shriek inside her helmet.

  I can’t get up to attack them, I’m getting whittled down, what do I do? What do I do!?

  Her suit’s tail bumped into something. She forgot the thing was even there. It was pretty robust and fairly strong, but she’d only designed it to solve weight distribution issues, and as a feeding tube and repair tool for the suit itself. It was one of the functions of the suit that was almost entirely autonomous. It helped her balance, and she didn’t have to pay it any attention at all while it was doing that.

  What if I…?

  Controlling a tail that she didn’t possess was weird, but she could both feel it and control it now with her interface. She swung it away from what it bumped into, then snapped it back. When it contacted what she assumed was her attacker, she wrapped it around them and squeezed. The attacks on her back halted immediately, and she stood up while they were distracted and attacking her suit’s tail instead. She turned around.

  Victor!

  He had sweat pouring off his face and was frantically stabbing at the tail with a knife he held in his one hand, and he clutched a tomahawk in the other.

  “You want to sneak attack me, Victor!? Let’s see how you like it!” Amy shouted in her helmet at him.

  Her tail had him wrapped around the waist, and his armored breastplate was keeping it from squeezing him like a tube of toothpaste. He wasn’t able to get away from her. Amy twisted and reached out, one hand going for the neck of Victor’s breastplate, and the other for his belt. She locked her grip on and released her tail-hold on him. He sneered at her faceplate and flipped his tomahawk in his hand so the spike on the back was now front-facing. Amy could see that the angular ax head had scalloped chunks of metal missing.

  He brought the spike down on her shoulder, between her pauldron and her neck. It was armored there, but not as heavily as other places, for mobility reasons. A sensation of red-hot pain flared in Amy’s head, and she screamed. A scream of rage. Hoisting him up and over her head like a sack of produce, she hurled him at a dumpster set up against the nearest building. He hit the side hard enough with his back to leave a sizeable dent in the metal and slid down, splashing ass-first into the water.

  For a moment, he started to get up, then he slumped back down, his chin resting on his chest and his arms limp at his sides.

  Amy’s chest heaved, and she was flexing her fingers open and closed repeatedly. Her shoulder hurt. She reached up to the handle jutting out and away from her face, gripped it just below the head, and yanked upwards. Another flare of pain in her shoulder, and the thing was free. For a brief moment, she wanted to fling it off, into the darkness, but she decided against it. There was a non-zero chance it could hit someone if she did that.

  She looked around the intersection. Hookwolf was still fighting, spinning around, his metal dagger-teeth gnashing, his tail of blades lashing out, and his clawed paws swiping at any who came within reach. Stormtiger was down. Cricket was missing, as was Othala. Rune was hurling insults from the side of the street, where she was planted on her butt in several inches of water and had zip-cuffs on and her hands bagged with a canvas sack that was also zip-tied to her cuffs. Stormtiger was out cold on the hood of a car.

  The gaggle of mooks that had provided backup were in various stages of knocked out, awake but groaning, or disarmed and restrained. It was just Hookwolf still fighting.

  “Surrender!” Manpower shouted at Hookwolf.

  “Not until I’m defeated!” Hookwolf snarled back, whirling around to strike at Brandish, who used her beam-sword to hack part of the paw he attacked with off, leaving glowing strips of metal behind. Hookwolf sprouted new claws and stuck his foot in the street water with a hiss and a cloud of steam. He whirled back around to face Manpower, who stood between him and the gate some thirty feet away. Hookwolf crouched, then leapt up and over Manpower, landing behind him and charging the gate.

  One of the soldiers that Morgan employed was positioned in one of the guard stations flanking the gate. He pulled up some kind of bulky gun and aimed it squarely at Hookwolf in a single motion. Before Amy could react, three thunderclaps sounded, three shockwaves jiggled the organs in her torso, and Hookwolf collapsed.

  Hunks of Hookwolf rained down all over the place. Blades, chains, big chunks, small chunks, you name it. Splashing into the water on the street with clanks, bangs, and splooshing sounds. There was a horrible screeching sound coming from Hookwolf. He started to get up, but was having an awful time of it. His wolf head, most of one shoulder, the entirety of his leg below that shoulder, and half his other front leg from the elbow down were just… gone.

  Hookwolf stood back up on two and a half legs, facing the gate. The soldier on top of the gate had kept the gun shouldered, but had lowered the barrel. He brought it right back up again as Hookwolf got up, and kept it trained on him. Hookwolf just stood there, facing the gate for several long seconds. The screeching came to a stop, and he slowly turned around towards where the rest of their team was, including Amy, and the defeated remains of his people.

  He started to hobble towards the group, and the group kept at the ready for anything, but backed away, parting and clearing a path towards the Chosen and Amy, all the way in the rear, opposite the intersection from him. Hookwolf was already starting to repair himself, or rather, his metal wolf form, but Amy could see the why and how of the fight being over. Hookwolf’s human upper torso was exposed, sticking out from where the stump of the wolf’s neck was. It was bad.

  Amy had seen worse in the hospital. She’d fixed worse, but if Hookwolf had been a human being, he’d be extremely dead right now. But he was a changer, and changers like Hookwolf and Morgan, those with cores, were notoriously difficult to kill. Most of the flesh of Hookwolf’s upper torso was either gone or hanging in bloody scraps and sheets from the tightly-wound wires, hooks, and needles that made up his true body. Half his face was blown off, chunks of scalp flapped over like a horrific combover, and his long, scraggly blonde hair hung over the remaining side of his face. His left arm was gone, as was a big chunk of his left torso.

  His left eye dangled from his partially exposed chrome skull, hanging by silver wire. His right eye was blood red except for the iris. His chest was still rising and falling, but there was no skin over most of it, and no organs under it. Just more metal, slithering around in an anatomical mockery of a functional human body.

  Hookwolf seemed to be concentrating on fixing himself and was filling out his missing leg and head with a sort of hollow skeleton of wires and thin chains. He stopped and looked around when he exited the side of the intersection closest to Amy. She could feel his gaze pass over and linger on her for a moment. Then he started to grow chains from his back, one at first, then two, five, ten, and more. Slowly, methodically, he looped a chain around each of his people and hoisted them off the ground or whatever else they were resting against or on.

  When he had all of them dangling over the surface of the water, he started walking off back in the direction they’d come from. To Amy, it looked like a weird metal umbrella with people figurines hanging from the ribs as he trudged off.

  She turned in place, looking around. Victor… was gone. She didn’t remember seeing him in Hookwolf’s grasp, but maybe she missed it. There were no other Chosen to be seen. The rest of the team was moving in to check on one another, and Amy was happy to stand off by herself for the time being to try to collect her thoughts.

  She felt like she was sort of in shock, maybe, but the symptoms didn’t fit. She was in some pain, but it didn’t feel too bad at the moment. She was mostly just… a bit dazed, and a bit confused.

  She’d fumbled. She’d messed up in a bunch of ways, at a bunch of different moments. She’d locked up, she’d gotten beaten on, her suit had been damaged, and she’d been wounded.

  But none of that mattered right now.

  Because she’d won.

  I did it.

  I won.

  Her brow furrowed, and she frowned inside her helmet.

  No, that’s not right. I didn’t win.

  She’d beaten three people armed with deadly weapons. And she had done it easily.

  Furthermore.

  She had beaten a CQB specialist villain in CQB by enduring his attacks, picking him up, hurling him like a ragdoll, and body-slamming him directly into a dumpster some dozen feet away. She didn’t beat Victor; she’d whooped his ass.

  Amy hadn’t failed.

  She hadn’t just survived.

  She hadn’t just scraped by.

  I kicked nazi ass up close and personal in my suit that I made from the ground up.

  And she didn’t just feel good, despite the pain. She felt phenomenal.

  A ladybug landed on her visor, then a small swarm of them fluttered down and landed along with their leader. Some spaced out, some clumped up, and they assumed a pattern.

  There was a giant smiley face on the outside of her viewport, with two vertical slits for eyes, and a big curved grin. She looked around, snapping out of her daze, and found Skitter standing next to her, arms akimbo and looking that strange mix of awkward and really creepy that she pulled off so well in costume.

  “Hey,” she said, and turned those yellow buglike eyes to Amy’s smiley face.

  “Hey,” Amy parroted back. She still had about ten million things happening in her head simultaneously, so witty responses weren’t even on her radar at the moment.

  “Kept an eye on you all fight. Sometimes literally. Sometimes with my power.”

  “Yeah, I uh…” Amy tried to think of a suitable apology for her terrible early performance. Watching Skitter fight, it was clear to Amy. The girl was an absolute menace all on her own, even without her bugs. She didn’t envy anyone who was on the receiving end of a telescopic baton, even if Taylor was built like a walking stick.

  “You did good, Amy. I remember my first night out. I barely survived, and that was against one person. I don’t know what I would have done if it had been a fight with like… thirty or more people screaming and swinging weapons and throwing abilities at one another.”

  “Um. Thanks.” Amy wasn’t sure what else to really say.

  “The high wears off, and then you’re left sore as heck, and if you’re like me, you can’t stop thinking about ways to fix the mistakes, to do things better, to come up with new ways of handling issues that got exposed with your plan for the fight.”

  “Mmh. I could see that, yeah,” Amy admitted.

  “Don’t beat yourself up too much over it. You’ll figure it out, and next time? They won’t be as much of a problem. You’ll find new ones that time too, but you know, it’s a process.” Taylor hesitated at the end, like she wanted to add something else, but thought better of it.

  “You want the ladybugs off?” She asked after a beat.

  “No, um, I think they’re perfect for me right now, thanks.”

  Taylor nodded. The two turned back towards their base and started to slosh through the water towards the others. Amy stopped halfway and turned to look around. Skitter stopped, too, to see what she was doing.

  “Skitter, where the hell is Apex? Or my sister, for that matter?”

  Skitter chuckled. “Your sister is chasing some stragglers as per the plan, and Laserdream is with her.”

  “And Apex?”

  Skitter rocked forwards and back on her heels and toes. “Oh, she dropped in a time or two during the fight. I’m not sure where she is now; she’s out of my range. I have a good idea of what she’s up to, though, based on what I last sensed.”

  “What’s that?” Amy asked.

  “Bit of this, bit of that,” Skitter answered vaguely. Amy was about to comment on it when she added, “You know, having some fun. I don’t know about you, but I think she could use a little break.”

  Amy sighed loudly, but she couldn’t disagree.