I don't know if I want to cry with relief or punch someone when the beacon shines through the sky. On one hand, it's indisputably ours, but on the other hand, I don't think it could have been more conspicuous if they tried. It's a giant raised... well, I guess if I'm interpreting the human gesture correctly, it's a middle finger. If I'm not, it's the equivalent of locking eyes with a predator and announcing, silently, come at me. I think of Angel in some shack somewhere, locking eyes with Trace and Adaline. Come at me indeed. Come a little closer. I'm cold.

Red hits me in the side. "Get everyone."

"Yes, sir," I say, only half teasingly. Luckily, the others seem to be around, at the very least because the beam of light is a startling, strange presence, and when terrifying things happen we run to Red and hope for the best.

The middle kids all attack me with questions the second they see me.

"What's that?" Alex asks.

"Are we going to get the girls now? Are we? Are we?" Mary grins, grabbing my arm and pushing herself up.

"People had to see that, didn't they?" asks Damien, timidly.

Gillian lifts an eyebrow.

"Everyone calm down," I say, removing Mary from my person. "Have you all seen Kali, Elle, and Mimsy?"

Mimsy peeks out of the bushes, nose twitching in a fashion more like a rabbit than the cat she's trying to imitate. Kali and Elle are already at Red's side, looking suitably pissed for a rescue mission. "Great," I say. "So?"

"We stick together until we hit the location. Middle kids, we're going to need you on combat. Elle, you're crowd control. Expect lots of people there. It's a giant beam of light." Red's voice falters as he says it. I exchange a look with Kali, who is currently under Elle's arm (because that happened). She knows she just saw something. I know it. "Dylan, Kali, if things go south, we're going to need you to apprehend Angel."

"What combat is there going to be besides fighting Angel?" asks Mary.

"I don't... I don't know," Red says, like he does know. "Let's go."

We take the fastest forms we can, which of course leaves us in our Veritas with Red on our back. He's a terrible rider, which yes, is universal, but at least he smells better when we're in our Veritas form. (Strange as that is--usually we're most attracted to dying things.) We can sense that he's not telling us something, but more tenuous are the bronze lifelines in the air tonight. We can sense all the risk involved in this mission. It's not only that it's less than optimal, it's far worse than expected. Even Kali is in danger. The canine skull head rises to look back at Red, so that we're keeping two eyes on him and four ahead. What are you leading us into?

We stop outside the city and fall out of Veritas, letting him down. He ends up in my arms, half-collapsed onto the ground, and I give him a winning, toothed smile. "Up you go, buddy," I say, helping him back onto his feet. "Kind of a dangerous mission, huh? Angel's Veritas isn't that... bad, is it? I mean, I've never seen it but--"

"Me neither," Red says. He shakes his head, then tilts his glasses back, slipping from my klutzy boyfriend back to fearless leader in such a short time that it makes my head spin. He looks ready for battle. Red-y. I'm going to have to use that one on him later. My smile drops. If we live, of course.

He tilts his head forwards. "Follow me. We're going to need to keep as low a profile as we can until we arrive on the scene."

Mary asks, "What if I went ahead and came back with a report on the scene?"

"No," Red says, picking up the pace.

"But I--" Mary starts.

"I can not conceivably explain how bad of an idea that is," Red swings a finger forwards, and we follow him down the street.

No time like the present. "You red-y for battle?" I ask, taking his side and whispering in his ear.

"Dylan, that was so bad I think I might have an aneurysm," he says, cringing like I'm a mosquito instead of his significant other. I grip his hand, shaking it a little, and he manages to smile anyways. "Hey. You stop worrying about me, alright? Don't worry about this."

"I wasn't kidding about those readings," I say. "It's more dangerous than you're letting on, isn't it? This is Angel's Veritas we're worried about... right?"

Red stares across the street at the little houses, arranged side by side in meaningless, infinite rows. Sickening things that they are, they go out forever, sprawling into an endless urban chaos. Any one of these houses could be the one, but Red dips through a few neighborhoods like there's no problem. We pass whining cars with sirens atop them, glittering with red and blue light, and my heart freezes.

"Red, did she go Veritas in front of civilians?" I ask him.

"It's not just Angel," mutters Red beneath his breath, practically burying himself inside of his suit.

"What do you mean, 'it's not just Angel'?" Kali asks dryly.

Mary pokes up from the back, joining in the chorus. "What?"

Kali steps forwards, so that she and Red are facing each other in the street. She grabs his jacket and pulls him down to her level, a wicked scowl across her face as she goes in for the kill. Out of all times to pick a fight, Kali, this is just about the worst. "What are you not telling us, Red?"

When I hear the next click of the gun, I throw Red to the ground just as Kali ducks. A round of shots pierce the air, all of which are taken by Gillian's hide as she morphs directly into Veritas. They bleed fountains of blood from her side, tough as it is, and she grunts with pain, not fully human or beast.

The men in white jackets have us everywhere.

"Retreat on all sides, swing around and meet us back in the city," Red calls, but it's barely a plan at all.

"Where in the city?" asks Kali, which is punctuated by another round of bullets. Kali is hit right in the heart, and Elle begins speaking.

"Stand down," she says, with such ferocity that all of us still standing fall to our knees, though our opponents remain on their toes.

Whitejackets have fucking ear coverings. We're so, so stupid. This is, of course, one of my last thoughts as another round blows through us, and I yell to Red, "What do we do?"

Red takes a deep, unsteady breath, and lifts his hand. He flinches. "I-I can't do it."

"Do what?" I yell.

Gillian collapses behind us. Mary's already blowing through men, having peeled herself back off the ground, but the carnage is breached when something gets several whitejackets from behind. I look directly into the face of a beast covered in hair, almost human but with tails where her legs should be. Dozens of eyes fixate on us from the ends of her blonde hair, held in place by what look like snake mouths, and I stare on in terror at Angel's new form. With several tails, she drags whitejackets under. I don't get to see where they go.

Angel grins. "I was wondering when you'd show up. I'd imagine you're here for Trace and Addie?" She's got them in between her tails. "Don't worry. I understand everything now. How to build them the most opportune future possible... all of your most opportune futures... when I was working with my knowledge, it would have been impossible, but now I'm working with more than that, hon."

"So I'm going to assume you've calculated winning here tonight," I say to her. "Otherwise this would be a colossal waste of your time."

"Of course not. Red can't run away," Angel says, reaching out with one of her tails, which swings tauntingly in the air. "Too slow. Should I tell you all the calculations I've run out?"

Red sucks in a breath. I look him in the eyes. "Shapeshift. I'll be back for you."

"Dylan, I can't. I can't do anything right now. This has never happened before--" Elle's leaning over Kali; Trace and Adaline are incapacitated by Angel's tails. Mary's still up, Alex and Damien are moderate assistance, but if we couldn't lose anyone before, this would be a heck of a way for our group to all go out. Even out of my Veritas, I can hear the copper threads snapping in the air...

"No shit!" I yell.

Angel grabs Red in towards her by the leg, and Red closes his eyes and shifts into a direwolf, narrowly slipping out of the grip. I tear the tail of Angel's that's holding me out with my teeth as I take fox form, savoring the broken strands of flesh, the copper dulling out to nothing. I throw it to the floor and go for another, freeing Trace and Adaline. The fox can't handle this. Next time, I might as well shift into a crocodile. Thankfully, Angel doesn't have legs beneath that writhing mass of tails, so she's limp already. Mary's handled several whitejackets, but oh hell is she ever outnumbered. Guess I'm leading the group again.

Think Dylan, think think think.

I shift back, wiping the blood from my face. "Adaline. Trace. Kali's over there somewhere. Trace, can you heal her?"

Trace says, "Is Angel going to... die?"

"No. She isn't," I say. "But we're going to need to make a quick escape. More humans are probably on their way. See those civilians?"

Elle is yelling, "Put down your devices. Nothing alarming has happened here," with all the charmspeaking force she can muster. We really are back in the good ole days, when we'd bust up a city every few days before Red really took charge and everything stopped.

"That's not going to hold them for long," I finish to Trace. She nods, although Adaline is still staring at me, slack-jawed, fearful. "Addie. Get the middle kids. Take Gillian, Damien, and Alex, meet us back at camp. They'll know where it is."

"Are you going to be okay?" asks Adaline.

I nod stiffly. "Tell Mary she can keep fighting long as she wants. Elle will need the backup."

"There's no way they'll pull out of that," Damien says. He's bleeding from a bullet wound, which his flesh is quickly trying to grow back around to no avail. "They couldn't possibly--"

I push him aside. "It's the best answer I have. I need to find-- I need to find Red," I say, and when I dash off, coward fox running away from the fight, no one stops me. Behind me, I can scent the streets, ugly as they are, and my heart twists for Kali. She couldn't be down. Then again, we might all be before the night is out. What a hell of a way to go out.

I'd love to say I died doing what I loved, but I'd have to find Red first.

My fox-form grins, a wicked gesture not made for the face of an animal. It's nice to know I haven't completely lost my sense of humor, no matter what the situation is. (Are we ever in a situation.)

Red has to be around here somewhere. I have to protect him. He's somewhere around here, lost, scared, and he's probably stuck. If the whole group falls apart tonight, I need to be right next to him when it happens, at least to slap him across the face for thinking that this was a good idea. He had to know something, didn't he? He still lead us into it without thinking, and he must have known...

Why?

A direwolf paces in the scrub. It fixes me and its pupils dilate, becoming fully animal. It attempts to bolt and I grab him, falling into human form just in time. Needless to say this goes over poorly and the two of us are a tussle of fur and skin before I end up thrown. I grow gorilla arms and hold him against the ground, half-transformed. He's panicking in earnest, now, and I bare my twin fangs. "Red."

The animal stops.

"Red. I know you're in there. Buddy," My arms recede from gorilla hairy to normal hairy, that is, a light sprinkling of furze. I draw myself up to his face, and he remains immobile, his ears perking at his own name. He looks like an especially terrifying large domestic wolf, the kind the humans have... dogs? Alright, if that wasn't unnerving enough, his breath smells like dead animal. The uncooked kind. He hasn't... killed anything between now and the battle, has he? Oh jeez. "Red. It's Dylan. I'm right here. Snap out of it."

He tilts his head. At least he's not immediately hostile. The wolf places a paw onto my lap.

"I'm... I'm trying not to freak out here, but you've got to realize I'm nearing my edge here. Kali might be dead, Elle and Mary are going to go down in a minute... if you were here, I bet you would have told me to stay, but you weren't. Plus, I was right. You were definitely out here. Hunting. Like a..." Red sniffs halfway through my monologue, pressing his face up against mine. He licks my cheek, which queues me in on the ridiculous amount of saltwater I'm shedding. "... fucking animal."

He backs away. I think he can sense it before I do, but my hand grabs forwards. I go for the neck, and then my hand is no longer a hand. I can't grip with it. My teeth bare down on his side and he struggles against me, desperation in his eyes as they dart around, pleading escape. He's on his stomach, in wolflike gesture of surrender, and I hear his every panting breath as if it were human. Slowly, he shifts, bringing his hands to his head to protect himself, blood seeping through his trenchcoat. The two of us return to ourselves as the sirens wail in the distance, far past where they could reach us, and we cower in the brush.

"It's you?" I ask.

"It's me," Red's voice is choked. "That was awful. I've never..."

"You really can't shapeshift, can you?" I move closer.

Red shakes his head slowly, eyes full of pain. He runs a hand over his mouth, wiping something from the edges. "Dylan, I think I may have killed something."

"No shit," I say. "Could you think?"

"No. I didn't even realize it was you," he says. He's still stuck in the fetal position, and now he's sobbing. I don't know if I've ever heard him cry like this. At best, it's been a handful of isolated incidents, all of which were... years ago. Back when we barely knew what we were doing. I lift him up like a limp bird, his hands slumping the way the wings of a goose do after we bring it in from the kill.

"Hey. You're going to be alright. We need to get back to the group now. They're in danger, and you-- I knew everything would be okay if I came and got you," I say. All the power I had sifts through my fingers like sand, and I curl my fingers into a fist. I need him.

"Don't... you don't need to question it. Don't worry about this," Red says. He runs his hands through my hair, getting to his feet. He rights his trenchcoat.

"Don't worry about this? Are you fucking crazy?" I ask, and then I pause. "That's what Kali said."

"What do you mean?" Red asks. His voice still sounds like a wolf whimper, which he has to realize, because he puts his hands over his mouth. He's got an enormously self-conscious expression across his face, which usually incentivizes me to ravish the poor man, but right now, I think I might need to nip him in the neck again.

"Don't ask questions, right?" I say. "Red, did you know that the whitejackets were going to be there?"

Wish he at least hesitated. "Yes."
"Is that your power? Are you connected to them somehow? I mean, you always know what to do, and how to handle us. If you think about it, it kind of makes sense you'd be the greatest weapon against them."

"Dyl, that's not my power." Red says. "I'm a time traveller."

I grit my teeth. "You what?"

"It's hard to explain, but I can go back and fix our mistakes. Always have. Always will. It's how I protect you all," he tells me. His smile is sad as he raises his fingers, and a memory so faint, so old, that it is less than morning dew, snaps through me. I've seen him do this, put his hand back down, hesitate on the verge of it... "See, it's working again. It wasn't earlier, but..."

"I'm not going to remember, am I?" I ask. "You're not going to tell me."

Red pulls his jacket a little further around himself. He shakes his head.

"You've never told me," I realize.

"I want to protect you," he says.

"I want to protect you! How many times have they all died?" I ask.

"However many stars there are in the sky. Double that. Double it again," he says. He shrugs off timelines. I want something to say to him, but here we have Red, cool, collected leader, and I'm just part of the fold. Even tonight, did I even do anything but speed up the process a little? Has anything I've done ever mattered? "Thank you, Dylan. I love you."

"Bring me with you," I tell him, hoarsely, placing a hand on his shoulder as the sky opens around us, pouring down in torrents of golden rain. He shakes his head softly, already opening up his fingers to let the light back in. I know that this is the feeling of things awakening, of us falling back into position and our fallen groupmates awakening, but right now, at his side, I'm more certain than ever that the two of us are portents of death.