"Remember, if anything happens, I'm going to need you to tell me within the day," Red tells Gillian for what has to be the hundredth time. Gillian nods like this is the most amazing thing that has ever happened to her because of course she's got so much duty and responsibility in this group and isn't just a big muscley arm for Red to swing around.

'Cause Red can't fight.

"Are you going to be able to handle leading this mission?" Red asks. "I am trusting you, explicitly, where I wouldn't trust anyone else."

"You can vest all authority you see fit in me. I am willing to go Veritas in the center of the city if that is what is required to ensure that none of them escape while we are patrolling the area for capture and subsequent retrieval of Angel and her subordinates," Gillian says.

"Try to be a little more cautious than that," warns Red, sucking in a breath.

What would Gillian do if I dashed for it? It's not like she could do much of anything if I just got up and left. I consider dashing for it just to see the look on her face but this seems like a decision I can just make when we get there. I grin because she couldn't possibly know what I'm up to.

"Are you sure that we don't want someone else to come to restrain Mary when she tries to make a break for it?" asks Alex. "You know she's going to try something dumb."

"I can handle Mary," Gillian looks back at Alex, mutinous. Alex steps back, hands up to defend himself. I chuckle a little. Gillian scoffs at us both, which is the most condescending noise I've ever heard, like older kid bad, and then says, "We're wasting daylight standing here."

"Oh! Yeah, let's... let's go," Damien says, walking down the trail ahead. Like the rest of the area, the 'trail' is cold and surrounded by ugly bushes. Occasionally there are patches of trees, which are becoming more common, but there's also a lot of dry dust that blows with the wind and gets up in your face. The plains are just about the worst place in the entire world, which is a shame, because the place over the plain is one of the best.

I jump straight up, grow wings, and wrestle the winds. It's hard to get anywhere in currents like these, but that's half of the fun of it. I can feel the entire world straining against me, trying to push me back, and I get to throttle it. I press all my energy into the air (okay not all of my energy because if I used all of it I would be destroying everything) and shoot forwards, leaving the others behind on the ground. Damien and Gillian are looking up at me. Alex is on his phone.

"Get down. We'll be approaching one of the towns soon," Gillian says.

"Can't make me," I say, spitting. Gillian takes it to the side of the head and wipes it off, still glaring up at me. I guess pulling me out of the sky wasn't part of her special operatives she got from Red.

"Can you please get down?" asks Damien. He's so small and he sounds like a little chick from here. I just want to eat him up. (I think I've heard Angel say "eat you up" before, but I don't know why she'd want to eat Trace or Adaline. Adaline would be too stringy.)

I touchdown a few inches from Damien. "Guess if you ask real nicely," I tell him, placing my hand back on his head and ruffling his hair.

"Thanks," Damien mutters. "Alex, are we there?"

Alex holds the black box up. "We're close enough."

The greenery is more constant here, even if green is stretching it a little, and there's houses amongst a few barren trees. Cities usually have a build up like this, where at first there are small buildings, and then there are big buildings. We've already passed a few roads and road signs, although most of the roads have no people, so this city is already kind of a ditch.

"Are we sure that's where they fled to?" asks Damien as we pass one of those big metal places where people put the small kids. I've always kind of wanted to park Adaline and Trace at one of these and walk away, but then we'd get rid of Angel, too, because she's obsessed with them. I think this is an added benefit, but it's also exactly what just happened, and now we're just going off to get them back.

"Does it look like I have any clue?" asks Alex.

"Gillian?" Damien asks.

Gillian shrugs. "If we knew where we were they would already be caught."

"Can't Trace do the thing with her powers where she hides herself by bending space around her? It's going to be even more impossible to find her than it is already," I point out.

"Trace has the least control over her powers of any of us. If she tried to use them forever, she would kill herself from the effort. This is assuming she could keep it up that long." Gillian says.

"Nuh uh. Adaline can't control her Veritas and her only passive power is being sad and quiet and sometimes puking up oil." I kind of feel bad for Adaline but not really. It must suck being absolutely useless, but it's not something I'd know anything about.

Alex tucks his phone back in his pocket. It's always nice to see his face. Joking. "Do we actually know how to find them? At all?"

"We can sense each other," Gillian says.

I sniff the air as loudly as I possibly can. The air just smells like dust and pure cold. "Wow! I sense absolutely nothing."
Gillian blinks.

"Oh, you're no fun. They're probably not in this city at all," I say. "Lucky them."

Damien's face falls. "You're not going to ditch, are you, Mary?"

"She's not." Gillian folds her arms. Like you know anything about me, Gillian! How about you go shut your mouth!

"How do you think we're going to apprehend them?" I ask, bringing things back to the thing I actually meant. "Do you think we're going to be nice about it? Do you think they are?"

Damien stops dead in his tracks. We're standing on a downtown city block, smelling nothing, seeing nothing, wearing clothes that are casual but not enough, not really. The streets are bleak as bone and there's nothing going on here but streetlights and a sense that the entire world is sagging and bored as we are. Putting his delicate hands up to his chest, Damien asks, "Are we going to have to kill someone else?"

Alex and Gillian cringe hard. I snort. "It was just some rando guy who was going to kill us anyway, right? So no big deal."

"I don't want to hurt Angel," Damien insists.

"No one's asking you to hurt Angel. Not unless she struggles! Then everything is her fault anyways and you don't even need to feel bad," I pat Damien on the back.

"That's not reassuring, Mary."

"Mary is never reassuring," Alex says with that laugh he does when he thinks he's being very funny.

"Things are," begins Gillian. She clenches her hand into a fist. She unclenches it again. "Things are difficult."

"We could make things less difficult," I object, stepping in front of all of them to make a pitch. "The truth is that all of you, especially Red, are so bound to doing things for each other that you keep your eyes closed all the time. We're not even good for each other. Red just wants us to think we are that we stay as one big group, but you know what? That group kind of sucks!"

Gillian punches me in the face. I grin, ecstatic as I fall, and I sense humans seizing up. I wipe the blood from my face, spitting out a tooth I'll just as soon regrow, and relish in the golden light of the pain blazing through my body. I look up to Gillian with a smile and stand back up.

Alex stands in the way. "We did our search. Let's go home."

"Out of the way, Alex," Gillian growls.
Alex steps out of the way.

"Wow, lapdog," I cheer. "Woof. Someone put the lizard-dog back on the leash."

"I'm sorry, she's fine, we're both fine, they're just..." Damien says, and a human has their phone out.

"Who are your parents?" asks the human.

"I don't really think we have any," I say.

"Mary," bellows Gillian, perturbed.

"Can we run now?" I ask.

The someone next to us tries to grab for Damien's shoulder, but I rip him away and we run for it. The human looks too shocked to try anything, but she's definitely calling someone. Every time a human's looked us in the face they start reaching for their phone or sounding all... pitiful? Pitious? I don't know. I just know that we were right to go to the openmike, because at least once in our lives we got to make up our own spectacle. It was one of many items in a huge collapsing chain that's been going on around us forever.

One of these days, we're going to be hunted again. Someone will connect some dots together and track us down. I can't wait for them to come find us. I want someone besides Gillian to punch in the face.

We run back until we're on the outskirts of the city, somewhere no one will follow us. Gillian stops and puts her hand against the tree, her broad knuckles clenching up as she bends over to catch her breath. I brush my face, regrowing a tooth, and revel in the pain.

She doesn't know she's losing.

She still thinks she's the one on the hunt.