Between the unconscious bodies on the ground from Jaclyn’s attack, and my sonic blast, Prime’s people hung back until one of of them shouted, “Move!”

Well, if I could call them Prime’s people.

Some of them looked professional -- black (probably bulletproof) vests, belts with pouches, knives, and guns. The rest looked like they’d been pulled from local (and not so local) street gangs.

They had guns too -- not submachine guns like the professionals, mostly handguns.

One of them began to pull a pistol out of his pocket when one of the professionals shouted, “No, idiot!”

He pointed past us where Prime’s people rushed us from the other side.

After that, it got too busy for me to be amused by their tactical errors. An overweight guy in running shorts who had a swastika tattoo on his forehead jumped over the front line.

He hit me five times before I got the chance to punch him back. He dodged easily.

I hit him with the sonics, and he put his hands to his ears. As I drew my hand back, Marcus stretched his arm a good seven feet, hitting the guy in the side of the head.

Swastika guy fell over.

In the meantime, some guy with at least five piercings in his lower lip had grabbed my right arm. Blue electricity crackled around his hands, and he held on strongly enough that I couldn’t pull my arm away.

The electricity never made it past the armor.

I kneed him in the groin, and punched him in the face as he bent over.

He fell to the ground, unconscious.

With a nanosecond of a breather, I took sidelong glances at Marcus and Jaclyn. Marcus had formed his arms into shapes reminiscent of baseball bats, and his skin had turned grayish.

A gang member breathed fire at him for barely a second before one bat hit the guy’s stomach, and another knocked his feet out from under him.

Jaclyn, meanwhile, had knocked out three more people.

I hoped Cassie and Rachel were doing as well, but I didn’t have time to turn completely around to check on Cassie. And Rachel probably wasn’t visible anyway.

As it turned out, I didn’t really have time to check on Marcus (to my left and back) and Jaclyn (to my right).

One of the professionals, a guy with missing teeth, and a puckered, circular scar on his cheek started firing his submachine gun at me.

He never missed.

Whether it came from freakishly good aim, or a perception of time that allowed him to fire an automatic like a sniper rifle didn’t matter.

If he had special bullets or managed to find a weak spot in my armor, I could die.

He stood a few feet out of reach, so I fired the sonics at him. He didn’t flinch -- though people on either side of him put their hands to their ears.

He’d worn earplugs.

He fired more bullets only the new ones exploded, knocking me backward.

I barely managed to keep standing, but I managed. He didn’t stop firing at me though, and I couldn’t see a thing through all the blasts.

I could have started the rocketpack, flown upward, and dived at him except that Cassie stood kitty corner from me in formation. Even with her ability to regenerate, an exploding bullet to the back of the head would not be good.

I ran straight forward into his line of fire, smashing into him before I saw him, and knocking him onto his back. Leaning over, I grabbed the submachine gun even as he fired a couple more shots into my chest.

Then I broke the gun in two, and that was great except for one thing.

I’d left formation.

As I broke the gun, people rushed around me toward the group, and I felt hands grab each of my arms solidly.

Below me, the guy whose gun I’d broken started opening one of the pouches on his belt.

I decided I didn’t want to find out what happened if he got that pouch open, so I lifted my leg and drove his bicep into the ground -- hard -- maybe harder than I meant to.

He screamed -- an understandable response given that his arm now bent in two spots.

A solid jerk backward reminded me that people were holding both of my arms. I stepped back, staying upright more by luck than any plan.

The guy holding my left arm stood nearly seven feet tall, but was so thin I wouldn’t have expected him to be strong enough to hold me. He wore jeans, and black White Sox jacket.

The guy holding my right arm was bald, and massively bulky, but his face somehow reminded me of Prime. Were they relatives?

“Pull,” he said, and began to step back.

Not wanting to find out whether my armor would rip before I would, I sent a full blast of sonics into the White Sox fan’s abdomen. As the sonics found the resonant frequencies for the majority of his digestive system, he looked ill, and --

Well... the less said about that, the better. Let’s just say that he was distracted enough that I could easily pull my arm away.

I’d have done the same with my right arm except the sonics on the right still didn’t work.

The massive guy yanked me toward him, grabbing my left arm, and pointing my hand (and the sonics) away from him.

I tried to pull away, but I couldn’t break his grip.

Even as I ran through options in my mind, a ghostly white form materialized above him.

Touching her white, taser gloves to either side of his head, Rachel turned up the juice.