Alex bit his lip. In the distance, Drake rose to all fours, his wings spreading wide. With a roar, he lurched forward, jumping at Miss Malone's hrider form with a slash of his claws.

Thoom.

Like hitting an invisible wall, Drake slammed into a flat surface and fell to the side. Alex grimaced. He couldn't see Artur, but Miss Malone was using his curse. That complicated everything.

"We'll need to hit it from multiple sides again," Alex said, his mind immediately dismissing using Bolton's curse.

His problem was size. While his bullet would cancel out the barrier, Miss Malone was too big and not the origin of the curse. After seeing what it did to Mister Tyson, Alex didn't want the same for Artur. Artur was one of his crew, and Alex wasn't going to let him get shot. But that didn't make Bolton useless.

He had two problems: getting over to the fight and knocking down Miss Malone hard enough that she couldn't get back up again. Bolton could help with the second part, assuming his curse didn't care about size and hit a vital area.

"Alright." Alex held out his hand, envisioning a contraption. "We're going to go over there and hit her from all sides. Then, when the barrier drops, we'll hit her again until she's down."

"That's horse—" Bolton stopped. "Is he even going to cooperate?"

He gestured out at Drake as the dragon rose again, biting at Miss Malone. The massive maw slammed into another invisible barrier, and Drake's jaw slit wider than Alex thought possible. It was like Drake was an animal. There was no thought in the attack, just blind rage. Alex pursed his lips, but kept his focus on the image in his mind.

"We'll have to time ourselves to him." Grayson rubbed at his beard. "We can't count on Drake to do it for us."

"Then let him handle it," Bolton said. "We don't know if he'll lose yet. Look, he's doing fine."

Boom.

As he said it, Miss Malone hit Drake. Her legs shot forward and slammed into the dragon's jaw with six consecutive punches. Drake tumbled and fell, sending a cloud of dust pluming around him.

"Yeah, no," Alex said. "Are you both ready?"

"Why?" Bolton gave him a side eye.

"Junk Catapult."

Bzzt.

Alex let his curse speak for him. In a flash of blue light, jagged metal fused together beside him. Springs and weights assembled themselves as they appeared. A sharp spike pierced his mind as he finished, and hot blood dribbled down his lip. In moments he was finished. It was a simple design, a counterweighted long arm with a cupped end and a weighted end on the opposite side. It wasn't as complicated as he wanted it to be, but it would get them into the air. Ideally, it would have been a trebuchet, but he didn't know how to build one of those. The catapult was a compromise, and he wasn't even sure it was right. He had a basic idea of how they worked and had seen enough of them in museums and movies. He knew they weren't designed for people, but it was a quick way to cut the distance between them and the fight.

For the landing, he and Grayson would have to handle.

"Get on," Alex said, stepping onto the wide cup and pointing his hand at the ground.

A metal plate attached to the base of the catapult was going to provide the compression. With his body between the cup and the plate, he could pull the cup tight before releasing his hold. The rings and weights on the opposite side would do the rest. At least, he hoped it would. Already, he was pushing his curse by making something so complicated instead of something simple. Even the training they had done on the way to Grim Agis hadn't prepped him to make a bunch of moving parts.

"Get on." Grayson pushed Bolton from behind with one finger, corralling him onto the cup before stepping up on his own.

"I'm gettin," Bolton grumbled, lowering his knees so that he was squatting. "I'm in this under protest."

"Noted," Grayson said, crossing his arms and closing his eyes. "Get it over with, Ortega."

Groan.

The metal groaned as Alex pulled the plate below toward himself. Springs creaked, and metal held strong. Alex grunted as his body tried to make up the difference between his body and the plate below. He sucked in a breath, and his muscles bulged as he focused on the path of Grit. His muscles tensed, and he became like a massive bolder. Completely unmoving. He hadn't mastered Grit yet, but had some practice in it over the last few weeks. If he kept working on it, he'd be even harder to hurt.

Clink.

The metal cup touched the plate below, and Alex's muscles burned. His mind felt like a rave light show was amping the brightness to eleven, and his nose continued its bleed down into his mouth. His blood tasted like copper in his mouth. Holding the cup to the plate was taking everything he had, and the conjured thick metal springs lay fully compressed behind him. When they went up, they were going to go high and fest, and Alex wasn't sure how well they'd get down.

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It was a giddy thought. Like riding a bike for the first time, or jumping off a bridge with just a thin bungee cord attached. Alex had never done those things back on Earth, when he might have had the chance, but he liked to imagine that when he got home, he would. There were plenty of high places in Argentina to jump off, and he used to watch videos of people in wingsuits flying down the sides of mountains..

"Ready?" Alex asked, more for himself than for the other two.

"Get it over with," Grayson repeated.

"Carpe diem," Alex whispered as he released his hold on the plate.

Twack.

Alex let go, and his stomach was the last to leave the ground. He had ridden a few roller coasters in his life, and the sudden acceleration of launch was the same with the catapult. His entire body tried to stay down as it was flung up and away.

Whoosh.

Wind rushed past his ears, and he forced his eyes open. He would have yelled that he had been right, but his mouth refused to open. Bolton and Grayson flew roughly beside him. Bolton was curled into a ball, while Grayson had one leg out and his hands in his pockets.

Alex didn't understand how he could appear so calm. His own heart was racing as the ground rushed by beneath them. They weren't going fast or far enough to get to the fight, but they would land about halfway there. However, he was sure he could do better.

"Grayson!" Alex yelled, forcing his mouth open. "Get ready!"

Grayson gave him a sidelong look, but nodded. Alex reached out a hand, releasing his hold on his catapult and focusing his mind beneath them. His idea was dumb, and there was no way it should work. However, he was ready to try it.

He imagined an almost flat plane below them, almost close enough to fall into immediately. He knew from experience that conjured metal moved with his momentum. That was why he would wait until the apex of a jump to conjure a wall to springboard off of. In this case, he wasn't changing direction. Instead, he was going to glide.

"Steel Glider."

Bzzt.

It wasn't a paper airplane, though that was his first thought. It was pointed at the far end, and sloped from the front toward the back. Alex was no engineer—he got a bachelor's in political science—but any kid worth their salt had an interest in planes. He was no different.

Thump.

He dropped onto the triangular shape and pulled Bolton down with a magnetic pull. Grayson stepped down like he were walking off of a set of stairs, completely unbothered by the sight in front of him. Alex knelt as the wing took over motion, and it immediately kicked up against the approaching wind.

"Stand close to the front," he said, and Grayson walked forward until the glider leveled out.

"This is insane," Graysons said as the glider tipped a little more forward against the oncoming air.

Already, the glider was banking a little to the right, and Alex had to move in the opposite direction. It was nowhere near perfect, but he hoped it would get them close enough to the fight to use the Path of Step. A crazy grin cracked across his face as the glider tilted toward Miss Malone and Drake. They were right on target.

"How do you even—" Bolton uncurled himself and looked out over the glider.

"His curse is versatile, for sure," Grayson said, looking back from the tip of the glider. "Having the ability to create a substance really changes what you can do."

"Just wish it didn't drain so much," Alex said, wiping his nose for the first time.

Blood covered his sleeve, but it would have to wait until he could stop and properly handle it. Every time he pushed his curse, his mind struggled to keep up. It was like he was taxing it so much that he burst blood vessels in his head. He wasn't a doctor, but he figured that with his strengthened body, he didn't have to worry too much about the long-term effects of that. At least, he hoped he didn't have to worry about the effects. The idea of dying from a stroke in the middle of a fight wasn't appealing.

Roar. Slam.

They floated down toward the fight as Drake struck at the wall again. The barrier repelled him, sending him crashing tot he side on all fours and struggling to keep Miss Malone in sight. Miss Malone took the fight carefully, keeping her distance as she side-stepped the falling Drake. However, she didn't strike. That put her between them and Drake, which meant they might actually be able to pull out a multi-front strike..

"Can you get to the top?" Alex asked Grayson.

"I'll try." Grayson nodded.

"We'll both hit from this side then." Alex looked at Bolton. "You shoot, I'll shoot the glider at the same time."

"I can do that." Bolton drew his gun, holding it beside his head. "It'll be the most normal thing I've done today. Just don't drop me after."

Alex grinned as Drake rose, readying another attack. If Grayson was like him, they were about in range to reach Miss Malone. Alex and Grayson watched as Drake reared up again, his maw opening wide to bite at Miss Malone. Alex had to wonder why he didn't shoot out another energy blast, but maybe it was a problem of range and charge time. That or it was draining. Grayson leaned forward as Drake's jaws opened wide. Alex dropped off the back of the glider, while Bolton lined up his shot.

"Step."

Bang.

"Rail Shot."

Boom. Bzzt.

Four strikes hit as one. Maybe Bolton's did the most work with the least effort—Alex noticed that the barrier didn't do anything to stop his bullet. However, all that mattered as Grayson landed a kick on the top, Alex's glider shot through the barrier, and Drake's maw cut into one of Miss Malone's arms was that they had gotten through the barrier. He smiled as he dropped, reaching out a hand and drawing Bolton down at him by his gun.

Hiss.

Miss Malone staggered, the mouth at the bottom of her torso spitting out ichor as she struggled against Drake's jaw. Two legs forced the head off of her arm, leaving a long trail of blood raining onto the grass below. Drake fell back onto all fours before rising again. Smoke licked out of his maw as Alex and Bolton fell.

"Step."

Alex used the same trick as Grayson to slow his descent, and they landed together onto the tall grass. It was now a four-on-one fight against Miss Malone. If they could keep her from raising the barrier again, they had the fight in the bag. Then it was just a matter of getting home. Alex had all the confidence in the world until Miss Malone smiled and lout out a booming laugh.

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