The circle of rotating metal doom in the air fell apart as Scream Eagle shot across the room, knocking into a section of shelving as he took off. A bunch of things fell, most of them glittering. They might have been trophies.

One of them looked like a YouTube award. I didn’t even know they had a channel.

Also, speakers around the room had started blasting music. I didn’t have time to pay attention, but it sounded like reggae, something about “one love.”

Scream Eagle, though, had changed up the fight. He’d landed in front of Sydney, who’d been fighting Zola, who leapt away to fight Haley. Art jumped toward me—except not really toward me. He’d jumped toward Jody. I moved to block.

That wasn’t hard. I needed to take a step sideways to stand between him and Jody. Knowing his speed, I tried something I couldn’t with Scream Eagle, I fired off a burst of goobots.

Still powered up, Art moved too quickly for me to see it happen, but I did see the connections wink out as he sliced into each one, destroying them. He didn’t stop coming either.

I went with Plan B—sonics, pumping up the volume, and blasting out a wide range of tones. Knowing how quickly he moved, I wasn’t narrowcasting either—very much the opposite.

It turned out to be a good day for collateral damage or a bad one, depending on whether you cared about the property. With the power-up they’d had, I knew I couldn’t be subtle. Plus, I knew that I’d given our people good soundproofing, and none of Justice Fist were directly in the way of the blast.

I didn’t want to blow out their eardrums.

I did worry about that just a little, though, because the sonic blast shattered every bit of glass I could see—cupboard doors, mugs, cups, and decorations. Whoever their designer had been, they’d gone all in on metal and see-through materials. The metal rang out with the blast, but didn’t break. The clear materials did, and it wasn’t limited to the intended cone in front of me.

Some clear objects exploded, throwing shiny shards across the floor.

The great thing was that at least I also hit the intended targets–Art, Zola, and Scream Eagle. Art dove sideways out of the main blast while Zola dove behind a bookcase/room divider on the far end of the room.

Scream Eagle had the most interesting response. He’d been next to Sydney as the blast hit, and had pulled away bits of metal from her armor, which had begun to orbit him.

When it hit, the floating bits of metal fell and rolled across the floor to rejoin Sydney’s malleable, metal shell.

She, in turn, demonstrating that I’d done a decent job at protecting the wearer of my suits from blasts of noise, punched Scream Eagle hard enough that he fell on his back and slid halfway across the room.

I focused the sonics on Scream Eagle since he was the only one I could see. Art had flipped himself behind the same bookshelf/room divider as Zola. Still, I could take advantage of the moment to maybe take Scream Eagle’s armor out of the picture. I’d set one of the sonics to concentrate on frequencies that worked against electronics and the other to frequencies that would resonate with structural components.

The sword sparked and flared in my right hand, somehow still burning even though I hadn’t been concentrating on it at all.

Over the comm, I heard Haley say, “Cover me,” to Sydney and jump behind the bookcase. Sydney laid down a rain of missiles through the divider, repositioning herself to the side of the bookshelf where she could stand and fire at people on either side of the wall.

I didn’t have time to pay any more attention than that because Scream Eagle had decided that he had to take me out immediately. He pointed both of his arms at me, and the front half of his suit’s forearms unsheathed, revealing holes that I knew would be releasing something unpleasant soon.

I was not wrong.

Swarms of mini-missiles similar to my bots shot out of them in a cloud. I’d have been impressed and terrified if they’d all flown straight at me, but they didn’t. Even if I hadn’t disabled his armor, the sonics had done some good.

Many of the bots didn’t even fly in my direction. They kept going at the angle they’d been pointed when they fired off, hitting the ceiling, the floor, and random spots throughout the room, exploding on contact. The explosions weren’t massive, maybe two feet in diameter. They’d have been devastating if they’d gotten through armor, but whatever was supposed to be guiding them wasn’t guiding.

One or two did hit me, and while they did knock me back, the damage was minimal.

English accent gone, he shouted at me, cursing, ending with, “What did you do? If you’re going to damage my armor, the least you can do is give me yours.”

Then error messages began running down the screen, all of them reporting attempts to connect to the control systems of my suit.