I thought about it. I wasn’t sure how much help I’d be, but,“Bloodmaiden’s going to get my parents and our cat to HQ. I’ll help if she thinks she can handle it.”

“Hurry,” Vaughn said and cut the connection.

Not liking the implications of his call, I called Amy via the comm. Even though I could trust everyone in the room, it made things simpler. For one, if I wanted to I could call her Amy. Bloodmaiden was a long name. Calling her “Blood” didn’t feel right either.

“Hey,” I said, “are you okay with taking everyone to HQ alone? Storm King wants me to help Travis.”

Amy met my eyes, muttering, “I thought they were better off than that.”

I said, “I guess not.”

Amy shook her head, “I’m already tired, but I can get them to HQ.”

“Okay,” I looked over at Mom and Dad, “Bloodmaiden is going to get you somewhere safe. I have another problem to handle.”

The sirens I’d started hearing in the distance were growing closer. The group of us walked upstairs and I walked out the front door—which despite the damage I’d caused while getting in still stayed in the door frame.

As I stepped out, Amy, my parents, and Uncle Steve disappeared. At the same time, I heard Amy’s voice saying, “Wait a second and I’ll tell you when to close the door.”

I heard footsteps pass me without seeing anybody, but it took almost no time before Amy said, “We’re past you. Go ahead.”

I shut the door, wishing I had time to repair the damage. Maybe we could hire someone to do it? I’d heard of companies that specialized in repairing damage after superhumans fought. Maybe Kayla could call one.

“Is everyone clear?” I asked the unseen people around me and then, remembering what Amy had said about invisibility and magic before, I used my sensors, mapping people onto my HUD’s screen with their body heat.

They were halfway to the sidewalk, easily safe from the blast of my rockets. Amy said, “You can take off,” even as I did it, shooting upward and aiming myself toward Haley and Travis’ parents’ house, the same place where I’d picked Haley up from prom and too many dates to remember.

Technically, it was on the edge of Grand Lake, almost into one of the nearest suburbs.

As I flew, my direction must have become clear to Kayla because she called me, “I thought you were staying with your parents.”

It wasn’t exactly excitement that I was coming. “Storm King told me they needed help.”

“Look, it got worse than they expected. The Nine put a lot of people into the fight and Night Cat was relieved that you weren’t coming after you got hurt. We’re all trying to keep them off their parents. Check the bots. It will be different by the time you get there.”

She shuffled me back to the main channel and the map view showed me how many of us were there and how quickly we were moving. Switching to the bots, it showed me a war zone. I’d seen that Johnny Destruction had arrived with members of the Cabal, but I’d never seen him in action before.

Trees and swaths of grass had been burned to ash. Cars, sheds, and parts of houses were burned as well, prevented from burning down only by the constant rain that fell from the dark clouds above the block.

Some houses had holes that hadn’t been caused by fire. As I watched a Cabal soldier pulled his way out of the wreckage of a garage and the smashed car inside it. Throwing the handle of a lawn mower out onto the lawn, he jumped into the air, aiming down the block toward where the majority of the dots on the map.

As his leap ended and he began to fall toward the ground, a blur of blue shot upward from the ground and with one punch shot him back into the air, but changing his direction. Now he flew toward Lake Michigan. I didn’t know at first how much force she’d hit him with, but between my suit’s sensors, my HUD’s computer and my implant I calculated the speed he was traveling and realized that he’d be in the air for at least ten miles, putting him seven miles past the shore of the lake.

White fire shot upward from the ground at that moment, enveloping Izzy. Another person would have died in the face of that heat. The Rocket suit, though better hardened against heat, would still take damage.

Izzy rolled out of the stream of fire, shooting off to the side before he could refocus the beam on her. Then she dove toward the source of the flame, dodging it every time it swayed toward her, and hitting the ground hard enough that I thought I saw trees shake.