Love Lost balance

I turned to look, and I saw the faint shadow of Nailbiter's nail-fingers stabbing skyward.

Love Lost was running up the fingers. They were thin, but she didn't seem to be struggling.

Her mask was off, and she was looking down. Looking for me.

Scratch my earlier theory about her not wanting to provoke me.

I couldn't get to cover fast enough, so I did the opposite. I headed straight for her. If she thought she could deal with me, I wanted to see what she'd do. I pushed out with my aura for the first time, to make it harder.

She would be resistant, like Snag was. Still, I refused to believe that she could deal with my aura, scream at me, and take evasive action against my charge while thirty feet above the rooftops.

Nailbiter lashed out. Teeth. My forcefield took the hit, and I carried forward. Love Lost lost her footing, teetering, then leaped hard off of the fingers.

I flew straight down, to put myself out of Nailbiter's reach, while Love Lost leaped sideways.

She touched the side of Prancer's headquarters, the claws of her hands and feet finding traction on the surface, and she moved like she was running, claws catching and helping to propel her.

There was the wall-running power. She moved fluidly along a vertical surface, claws helping. Her hand went to her mask, and a hand reached up from below, grabbing her ankle.

Sveta.

Love Lost was pulled away from the building. No longer able to make contact with the surface, she fell at a diagonal, in the direction of the rooftop she'd originally been falling down to. I could see her reorient herself in the air, twisting to put feet beneath her, but she couldn't stop falling.

Not a terminal fall, most likely, but it'd be a hard one.

*

Nailbiter appeared, looming over Damsel in a crouch, three times as tall as Damsel was, so thin in places as to be almost invisible. Her face was still prolonged, jaw hanging, teeth pronounced.

Love Lost was in Nailbiter's cupped hand, crouching, holding one finger for balance. I couldn't tell how hurt she was.

*

Time to get around a corner, to take pre-emptive evasive action.

They turned the same corner, and Sveta had turned herself around. She cast her hand out, and gripped Love Lost at the neck and hair. Love Lost had her hand at her mask, and stopped, not screaming.

"Sorry!" Sveta called out, as she hauled Love Lost free of Nailbiter's grip, pulling her halfway toward us before letting go.

Love Lost was like a cat, apparently, acrobatic enough to keep her claws under her. Still, she was moving fast, momentum was a thing, and the resulting landing was a bit of a roll and tumble, before she managed to stop herself.

Scraped up and glaring, Love Lost watched as I put some vertical distance between us.

- Shadow 5.3