"That's a yes, then. Okay, fine.

Huh, I'm probably supposed to pitch the Protectorate. Job sucks but worst-case you end up here blasting robots and bored, they'll take you if you want. There, done."

They're close enough to the wall now that she can make a break for it if this doesn't go well. The lightning shade comes back, placed on the other side of the talker from her, immediately raising both hands and firing at the talker and the nearest other person. The tinker appears in the face of the third patroller. Ellie lunges for Lightscour.

They go down, one with a shout of surprise and the other not even that. The nearest opponent solidifies the shadows and knocks her back, but in the split second it takes him to form it into a weapon she's already on him again. And that's all it takes.

The power is hers, now. This one, and the others that are on the verge of floating free.

There's the same glimpse of vast formless things with each collection. And then new powers. Shadow generation and manipulation, with slightly increased physical abilities. A thinker power detecting nearby threats, fairly vague but her own power can help understand how to phrase queries about what does and doesn't count. A generic blaster power, shooting bullets that explode into hot air and smoke. Not exactly the cream of the crop as powers go, but they're hers.

She shakes her head to clear it of the visions.

None of these feel as big as the tinker did. But they are useful, in their own ways. The thinker, especially. No more running blindly through walls and stumbling over enemies.

...But it seems she can only have three shades out at once. Mildly inconvenient. She keeps the tunneler, the thinker, and the lightning shade. Any dangers outside the wall?

Yes.

(It doesn't say any more than yes, but she does get an automatic description of what that is and isn't answering. What it considers to be the relevant range for "outside the wall," what level of risk is worth warning her about, no details on what the danger might be coming from.)

Can she get it more specific about location than that? Anything within a hundred-foot radius of her exit?

That switches it to "no."

Within a thousand feet?

Yes.

(Each specification comes at a cost to precision in other possible variables, her own power informs her, as well as a higher risk of being outright wrong, but she's barely exerting it so far. Plenty of room to just keep asking before the thinker headaches set in.)

Is it more or less dangerous than the blaster she just collected?

More.

(That might have fooled the original thinker once, but Ellie knows this power. The danger sense can't usefully make comparisons outside the present tense— it doesn't think she's in any danger at all from the blaster she just collected.)

Not exactly user-friendly. Fine. She's still feeling confident. Through the wall and see what awaits for herself.

It's just more Protectorate heroes. Could probably have gotten that from common sense instead of superpowers, but either way.

They noticed teammates going silent. Then they spot Ellie and charge toward her.

She swaps tunneler for the shadow-maker and starts gathering darkness around herself as armor. She'll take the thinker's advice on which one is the most dangerous for lightning's targeting.

Most dangerous does not necessarily mean most resistant to lightning. First target goes down—not fatally or she'd have noticed—and the next most dangerous manages to evade the bolts. He's moving faster than a non-cape could, and charges at the lightning-throwing shade. Manages to get close without being zapped, only to find that a physical strike moves right through it.

If she switches out the thinker for her other blaster, does that one have more success at hitting the speedster?

Not really, but a near miss can mess with visibility and slow him down. He can't evade forever now.

The next problem is that the other capes are getting into their effective ranges, and Ellie is still only three capes.

Bullets can keep focusing on the runner, lightning can attack the rest of the group.

After a few shots the smoke from the bullets obscures enough that no two people can see each other. Her lightning is easily the best blaster power on the field; she can take an undirected hit every now and again but the same isn't true of her opponents. The best response would be area-effect powers, and the closest the heroes have is a localized earthquake that seems to follow her around.

She's probably gotten as much benefit from the bullets as she's going to get. She brings back the thinker to help with targeting. How fast and strong is the earthquake?

Strong enough to throw off her aim, weak enough that she can keep her feet while trying to aim.

It'd take a lot of asking to get the danger sense to output a location precise enough to shoot at. While she's narrowing down the probable location of the earthquake person, a large cape flies out of the smoke and tackles her. Bad idea.

He's dead before she hits the ground.

—impossibly huge beings, dwarfing planets, alive—

The new power gives strength, toughness, and a complete lack of endurance even compared to normal humans. The cape probably got as far as she did by walking up and shrugging off the hits whenever the lightning got a lucky shot. The body is not quite human; for instance there are metallic ridges running down the spine that could almost pass for part of the costume. The shade has the same deviations but exaggerated, most notably representing the ridges as more like a carapace.

Thanks to the smoke, the other Protectorate capes still don't know that hand to hand combat is hopeless.