A second passed. Two seconds. I saw it all play out in my imagination, the mental images of my whole team laying broken and dead mingling with the actual memories of what Casura had done to Hyperkey and the rest of the Vicearious gang. I kept getting flashes of those mutilated bodies being replaced with the faces of Peyton, Wren, and the rest. I saw them. I saw them. I knew, as much as I had ever known anything, that it was about to come true. We had fucked up. We had never considered the idea that Casura might not physically be here herself. I… oh God, oh no.

There were other people around, of course. I could hear them shouting, mostly at me. The entire population of the arena hadn't vanished. But it might as well have. In that second, nothing else mattered. Nothing but Irelyn, as she straightened up and reached for something on her wrist. The teleporter. She was going back. Or rather, Casura was puppeting her to go back. She was about to be teleported out of here, which would kick off everything I'd seen flash through my mind. It was over. My whole team was about to die.

The noise that escaped me in that moment probably couldn't have been described as human. It was the sound of a cornered, desperate, broken animal, the wail of some sort of beast. I had no conscious thought about what I was doing. I didn't intentionally move or use any paint. But I did. My body did. I didn't plan anything. I was incapable of planning, incapable of thinking. I just did.

Without any thought, I was flying through the air. A shot of rainbow paint went sailing that way as Irelyn started to disappear. Her form was right in the midst of becoming insubstantial when my paint hit that spot, and I disappeared. I teleported over to where she was. Or where she had been. Or where she was going. My paint hit her form and disappeared with her, so I was dragged along for the ride. I was liquid. I was paint. I was me. I was nothing. I was everywhere and nowhere. I was scattered droplets surrounding the figure that was Flea, as she vanished.

And just like that, I was taken along with her. My liquid, teleporting, scattered form was pulled along through miles and miles of space before I had even come close to solidifying. I had lost all control by that point. My mind was as faded as the rest of me. I barely understood what I was, the concept of human as hard to grasp right then as advanced calculus. I was… I was a person. I was alive. I was me. I was this. Who was this? How was this? What-- where-- how was I me?

It couldn't have lasted long. It must've been instantaneous. But in that moment, in that instant, it seemed to last forever. As my liquid body was dragged along through the teleportation, yanked across miles of space to reach that far distant building, I seemed to feel every nanosecond. I saw the arena full of confused, scared, screaming people. I saw the building where Casura had been keeping the others. I saw the entire city in between, stretched out around me. I saw Flea in front of me, behind me, within me. We were everywhere and nowhere, for a second and a year.

Walls sprang up around us. Walls of the building. Walls of energy. Walls of the teleport shield my team had put into place. I was yanked back the way I'd come, yanked toward a spot far to the south, toward a third spot to the east. I was left right where I was, and torn in every possible direction at once. I saw Flea being taken to that southern spot. I saw vague impressions of many uniformed and costumed people waiting there. I saw a few half-formed figures in that first building being catapulted out of there and sent to that eastern spot. I saw all of it happening.

I saw her. I saw Casura. She was the single most defined and clear form amongst that group. Was that because she was so angry, because I was so focused on her, because she was the main source of the teleportation to begin with? I didn't know. I barely knew what those words even meant as they bounced around through the scattered droplets that should have been my mind. All I knew, all I felt, was that she was evil. She was bad. She was going to hurt my friends.

Stop her. Get her. Go to her. Be in her way. Surround and envelop her. Cover her. Make her stay here. Block her. Those thoughts, and more like them, impulses more than an actual plan, came to me as I put everything I had into doing just that. It was like my life had been building to this. Every wild stunt, every time I jumped off a building, every time I skated my way through a trick. Everything I had ever done, every time I so much as moved, had led me to making the dozens of scattered bits of myself pull against that teleportation shield and go toward that evil bitch.

It was a vague hope, this idea that I could somehow do anything at all to stop Casura from killing everyone. Our whole plan had hinged on her being ambushed by every single waiting and ready Star-Touched and heavily-armed Prev that Caishen had been able to put together. Even then, we had mostly been focused on making her give up and retreat. That had been with all those people. I was alone here. It was just me. What the hell could I possibly do to stop her now?

I had no idea, and I didn't care. I just had to do it. I had to find a way to stop her. It didn't matter how impossible it should've been. It didn't matter how outgunned and overpowered I was. In that single instant, all I knew was that somehow I absolutely would stop her. Logistics and reality be damned, I was going to fucking stop her. I wouldn't let her hurt my team. Not today. Not now.

I was there. I let myself be pulled all the way to that waiting spot, where the team was waiting for Casura's hostages. All of them standing right there, with no idea what was about to happen to them, no idea that the vicious, evil monster they were trying to save the others from was being brought right to them. They were waiting, completely helpless to even know what was coming, let alone stop it. She would kill all of them before they actually managed to process the threat.

No sooner had my disparate, liquefied mind parts managed to piece that together than the scene around me changed. Everything was moving so fast, Casura was moving so fast, it was like I was seeing snapshots of events. She was there, right in the middle of the group. She had turned, her hand moving to the nearest figure. A very familiar figure. Paige. Her hand was there, around Paige's throat as she lifted her off the ground like she was grabbing a bag of groceries.

The teleportation effect hadn't even finished fading. This was still happening in the same brief couple of seconds since the puppeted Irelyn had triggered the transport in the first place. Forget even the idea of having any chance to stop her, Casura was going to kill all of them before they'd even fully finished teleporting in the first place! And she was going to start with Paige.

Another flash came, another change in the frozen snapshot. Paige had kicked out, feet slamming into Casura to no avail. The evil woman's hand had tightened on her throat, her other hand pulling back. A new flash, a new snapshot. Her second hand had transformed into some sort of metal claw. A claw she was already driving forward, clearly with the intention of ripping into Paige's body to grab her orb and crush it. I saw it coming. I saw exactly what she was planning to do. I saw Paige dying, her orb broken and scattered into tiny metal pieces while her body lay on the ground with a hole in its chest. In another half-second, that image would be real.

It wasn't until that moment that I realized I'd never stopped screaming. Or maybe I had simply screamed so loudly back in the arena that the sound followed me through the teleport. Either way, the animalistic wail was there too. It came in that second, as I saw what was coming. I was still liquid, still scattered droplets of paint. But all of me threw itself at Casura. She hadn't even finished solidifying yet. The transport was still half-finished. She was reacting so quickly to all of it, she would have killed Paige before either of them had even fully appeared in this new spot.

I had no real physical form. Between my liquid self and the teleportation effect that still hadn't finished wearing off for me either, I was barely anything then. But that didn't matter. The only thing that mattered, the only thought I had, the only thing that existed in the universe, was saving Paige. My scream literally echoed through the city that I had been dragged through in that moment, filling the area around us as I hurled myself with everything I had directly at Casura.

Physical form be damned, I sent myself at that bitch at full force. I put everything into that, my frustration over the past week, my rage that she was trying to kill Paige, my despair about how helpless I was to stop that, every single feeling I had in that moment and all the ones I'd felt in these few days. I felt the absolute fury over just how much she had ruined what should have been one of the most fun times of my life. I had been part of the LEAT games. I was here with my family, I was participating in something I loved. It should have been incredible, but she ruined that. She killed those people because they knew me, and she was going to kill Paige.

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It was going to be like Anthony. It was just like those days, in that moment at his party when I had walked into his backyard just in time to see that man kill my best friend. She was going to take Paige away and leave me alone again. Nothing had changed. I was still a helpless child.

No. Not this time. I would die first before I let it happen. I would break. I would shatter. I would fall. I would kill. I would break her. I would shatter her. I would end her. I threw myself at her and didn't care what happened to either of us. Paige. Paige mattered. Paige was all that mattered, the only thing. As my echoing animal scream reverberated through the air, my liquid self collided with her.

I felt… nothing, at least in that second. I didn't feel myself hit that woman. I didn't feel us collide with the ground. I didn't feel myself reconstitute into a single, solid form. I certainly didn't feel us move however many miles it would take to reach a garbage dump, because that sure wasn't the area the others had chosen to have Paige and the others teleported to. And yet, all of that did happen, somehow. When my eyes opened, I was myself again. I was back in my solid body, laying facedown in the dirt. I had to lift my head and brush a thick coating of dust off my visor.

Yup, I was in a dump. There were piles upon piles of garbage all around me. It probably stank badly, but with my helmet on, it was fine. Even without my helmet, that would hardly have been my first worry. As soon as I processed the fact that I was laying there in one piece, I was already jerking upright. I rose so fast I almost fell over again, kicking up dirt around me as I spun one way, then the other. The others, where were the others? Where was Casura? Where the hell was I!? What the fuck was going on? How-- what-- why was I… alone here? How did I get here? Did the teleport thing get screwed up so much I'd actually ended up somewhere totally different?

More importantly, did Casura get dragged along with me? Was she here somewhere, just invisible? Was she on the other side of that pile of garbage? Was she somewhere else in town, just dropped in some other spot by the disrupted teleport? Please, please don't let her be back there with Paige and the rest. If I went through all that and the only thing I'd managed to do was put myself far away from them while they were… while Casura killed… no, that couldn't be it. No, no, no, please, please! She had to be here, or at least somewhere far from the others.

My shaking hands grabbed for my phone, tugging it out to stare at the screen almost blindly. No service. I didn't have any bars. No internet either. My other phone was the same way. Did the disrupted teleport screw that up too? Maybe it was part of the plan, a side effect of making sure any Touched-Tech she had on her wouldn't work? I didn't know. Maybe they'd said something about that, but I couldn't remember. I couldn't think at all. I was in little more than a blind panic.

Height. I needed height to see where I was, and what was around me. For all I knew, everyone else was like fifty feet away or something. I focused on making some blue paint to launch myself into the air. As soon as I got a good look around, I'd know where I was and what I should do.

Except it didn't work. My paint didn't come. I tried again, then I pointed and tried to shoot red paint, blue, green, anything. Nothing happened. There was no reaction at all. But it wasn't like when I was out of paint because I'd used too much. This felt different. There was just nothing. It was like I didn't have those powers at all. Which would've been terrifying if I'd had any room left in me for more fear. Instead, all my brain did was switch to a new way of finding out where I was.

The nearby pile of garbage. My eyes fell on that, and I was already moving by the time I actually registered what I was planning to do. Namely, climb that pile of junk. I didn't care about how filthy this was, or anything else. It was something I could stand on to see where I was. So, with the crap shifting right under my feet the whole time, I scrambled, crawled, and climbed up that mountain of garbage. I could hear myself panting. The strange urge to take my helmet off kept coming up, but I really didn't even want to think about how horrible the smell would be if I did.

My coordination was off too, like I didn't have my sensory power helping me instinctively know where everything was. I kept slipping and sliding as I struggled to make my way up to the top of that garbage pile. Panicked as I was, it took several tries to get anywhere. But persistence finally paid off, as I managed to pull myself all the way to the top. Now I could definitely hear my own panting breaths. I was willing to bet anyone within a few miles could hear them. But none of that mattered. If I could see where I was, I'd find the others, even if I had to run all the way to them.

Picking myself up at the top, with one foot on a crushed DVD player and the other crushing an empty milk carton, I looked around desperately. How far out was I? How-- wait… wait… what? I had to blink at what I was looking at. Or rather, what I wasn't looking at. Phoenix. I wasn't looking at Phoenix. There was a city in the distance, but I didn't recognize it. Sure, I'd only been in Arizona for a week, but the skyline I was staring at from this dump definitely wasn't that one.

For a long moment, I just stood there and stared in absolute bewilderment. Where the hell was I? How fucking far did that redirected teleport take me? Could it really have sent me to a whole new city, maybe even to a whole new state? What-- where-- how? What the hell was going on?

But, but, maybe this was good news? It could be good, right? If I had been transported this far, all the way to some new city I didn't even recognize, then surely Casura had been hurled pretty far away too. That was the only thing that made sense, wasn't it? That had to be it. I wasn't even willing to entertain the possibility that I had come all this way by myself while she was left back there with my team, my friends and all the time in the world to do anything she wanted to them.

Except my powers weren't working. Why weren't they working? The teleport redirection shield was supposed to disable movement powers. Was it possible that all of mine fell under that because my paint was projected? But I couldn't even shift into my paint form. And my spatial sense wasn't working either. None of my powers were doing anything. Was this just Amanda's upgrades working better than she'd advertised? Could that possibly mean Casura didn't have access to all of her stolen powers either? Was this whole thing actually going to be that easy?

No, there was no way it would be that simple. It shouldn't even have been possible to disable all powers to begin with. The authorities had been trying to come up with ways to do that basically since Touched had started being a thing at all. I refused to believe Amanda Sanvers had cracked that all by herself. Even blocking the movement powers was apparently just about completely overwhelming them with a barrage of conflicting information about exactly where they physically were. It was a bit more complicated than that, but that was the general gist. And Amanda had made it clear the effect would only last for a few minutes. Not to mention the fact that she hadn't said anything about it disabling all powers. Not that it was beyond her to make that a surprise if she thought it'd be funny, but Wren hadn't said anything either. So what now?

My phone wasn't connecting to anything, so I couldn't check my location that way. I didn't have my powers right now. My only choice, as far as I could tell, was to start walking toward those buildings while constantly checking to see if my paint was working again. Or my phone actually connected properly. I didn't-- there was nothing else I could-- fuck. This was really all I could do?

With a heavy, worried sigh, I scrambled down that hill of garbage and started walking. This felt wrong. It was slow and agonizingly simple. Even when I started running, it was still wrong. I could be stuck like this while my friends were… while Casura was-- no, no, no, I had to get back to civilization. I had to find a car or something, there had to be someone on the other side of this dump, a place for employees or something, right? I could find someone with a phone and call--

A figure stood in front of me as I rounded a pile of trash, like she was waiting. I stumbled, almost falling in surprise before catching myself. Then I just stared that way, taking in what I was looking at. She was a Touched, that was obvious enough. The woman was just slightly taller than me, wearing dark blue leggings with yellow stripes, black and yellow boots, a dark yellow shirt with a faint blue smiley face, dark gloves, and a deceptively simple-looking cloth mask.

As soon as I took that in, the woman was already calling out, "Hey, you have color!"

I stared blankly, before jolting a bit with realization. I knew this costume, it was one of the most famous in the world, even if the person who wore it hadn't been… active, exactly, for a long time. Rather, she had been active, but not as herself. "What-- wait, how-- what-- M-Mingle?"

It was Mingle. One half of Casura. The whole reason Casura existed was because the Star-Touched Mingle, who had the ability to possess people, enhance their powers, and control them, had possessed Bloodfall, a Fell with the ability to manipulate… well, blood. Bloodfall gave herself a stroke or something to stop Mingle from controlling her, and the result created Casura. She was a combined version of both of them, with the ability to draw blood into herself to use the powers, skills and knowledge of the person it belonged to.

That was Casura. She was both of them. But this was… this was Mingle.

"Oh my God… the teleport shield separated you!?" My heart leapt, the realization of just how good this could be, just how amazing it was, swept over me.

And then came crashing down with Mingle's next words. "Separated us? I… kid, we're not separated. I didn't go out, you came in.

"You're inside Casura's mind. Trapped here, just like us."

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