Vaughn, for example, hit him with lightning again, and Power Burst’s slower speed made that easier. And Vaughn didn’t only target Power Burst. He targeted all of them—Scream Eagle and the two others speeding after them.

The hit on Scream Eagle was, if anything, a disappointment. Whatever designers the military had used for Scream Eagle’s armor before he stole it (or Rook after that), they’d thought ahead about lightning. The suit sparked, but he didn’t fall over.

Put bluntly, Camille’s gravity already held him to the ground, where Sean’s balls pummeled him from all sides (heh).

Sure, he was stumbling and batting at the balls with his hands, but the lightning didn’t add much to it.

The question of what Vaughn’s lightning did to the two, possibly supernatural beings behind them, turned out to be more interesting. Both “Artemis,” a possible avatar for the Greek goddess, and the being flying next to her, a person of indeterminate gender with a golden glow, and massive, white wings.

For lack of a better name, I’d resolved to think of the person as “Amnesia Angel” and called them that enough in my report that everyone else knew who I was talking about.

In any case, the lightning didn’t faze Artemis at all. Even as the electricity stabbed out of the clouds above her to meet the lawn below, she didn’t take evasive action. She pulled out her bow and started shouting at it, making dramatic arm movements as if performing a Shakespearean play.

If I’d been in range to hear her, my gut told me that I’d be hearing the kind of bold, declarative explanations you heard in a Thor comic. Something like, “By the power of Artemis, the goddess within me, I have power over natural forces! You shall not hurt me, but serve me!”

Of course, I couldn’t hear her, so I could only speculate, but the lightning didn’t hurt her. In defiance of how I’d always understood electricity worked, it detoured around her and disappeared into the bow she’d pulled from her back.

You could call it a miracle. You could call it frightening.

At the moment, I’d have called it worrisome because I was thinking that energy doesn’t disappear. It changes form or it goes somewhere. For example, if it disappeared into the bow, I assumed that it would have to come out of the bow again in some form.

Beyond that, I felt the crack of thunder through the Rocket suit. It didn’t hurt. The protections against sonic control saw to that, but I felt it through the suit and my feet as the tower trembled.

Of course, that might not have been the thunder. Izzy’s clone or cousin also threw blasts of sonic power around.

Either way, it sucked.

Anyway, I still haven’t described what happened to Amnesia Angel. The being pulled a flaming sword out of nowhere, swung it toward the lightning, and for lack of a better word, the lightning shattered, throwing sparks everywhere.

It should have been in a children’s cartoon, the kind that paid no attention to physics at all.

But never mind, I didn’t have time to dwell on it. Haley had directed Jaclyn, Izzy, and me to engage in hand-to-hand, and we did it.

The nearest windows to the fight swung open. Izzy and I flew out. Jaclyn ran and jumped, using the anti-gravity pack within her suit to aim herself around Camille’s gravity anomalies toward the questionably divine combatants now entering the fight.

Izzy shot forward at Power Blast, hitting him in the air with a smack that I could feel as I passed.

If I’d felt a need to go Mano a Mano against the nearest person in powered armor, I’d have dropped to the ground to fight Scream Eagle. At that moment, however, Sean and Camille had taken him out of the fight. He wasn’t down, but he couldn’t do much.

Plus, if I had, I’d have been caught in one of Camille’s gravity wells until I took Scream Eagle down or she let go. Either way, I was more worried about Artemis and Amnesia Angel, as was Jaclyn.

Exactly what speed she reached as she ran and jumped out the open window, I hadn’t checked, but she flew toward Artemis at more than 600 miles per hour.

Artemis saw her coming, but not soon enough. Hitting close to the speed of sound has a way of surprising people even when you’re flying straight at them, making no attempt to fool them into thinking you’re doing something else.

The wannabe goddess whipped the bow around, drawing back her bowstring, which sparked with lightning as did the bow. When she let go, lightning exploded outward in a cone, hitting not only Jaclyn and me, but also Izzy, Power Burst, and the tower.

As I said, the energy had to go somewhere.

All of my suits not only led the electricity around the outside, but also included devices that absorbed what they could of it. In short, Jaclyn, Izzy, and I were fine, even though sparks covered my suit. Power Burst didn’t go down, but his spasm did allow Izzy to get another hit in.

It threw Power Burst backward without knocking him out. They closed again, throwing punches too quickly to follow.

Jacklyn, meanwhile, had closed on Artemis, punching her with a shattering series of blows, which didn’t shatter Artemis even if they did throw her backward.

I didn’t have time to reflect on that as it happened because I’d closed on Amnesia Angel.