View Flat HTML
View Metadata
Search Post
With Armsmaster's death, Miss Militia is promoted to team captain. Even with the losses, however, the Protectorate ENE doesn't get new capes—all teams got hit hard by the last Endbringer attack, and even though it was by all accounts a major victory, it did not cause capes to start lining up to join.
Days pass, and winter hits Brockton Bay. It's pretty mild, as winters go, but it's enough to drastically reduce criminal activity. The heroes have an altercation with white supremacists the following week, but nothing much comes of it, as cape muscle seems to prefer to remain comfortable inside. Capes nationwide are somewhat subdued, perhaps as the aftermath of the victory against Behemoth. Nothing much seems to change, however—the Simurgh continues to fly around in her unpredictable pattern, Leviathan continues to be impossible to locate, lurking in the depths of the ocean. The public gets hopelessly contradictory information about what really happened during the fight from unofficial sources, secretly fed from official ones to make sure people don't jump to the right conclusions, and the topic loses its momentum.
And all of this completely fails to distract Sadde, who seems to not be getting better from the post-battle funk. Or, at least, not straightforwardly better. The depression and fatalism turn—maybe not completely, but at least a bit—into unease and anxiety, or perhaps stir craziness. It is, after all, true that, other than for class, Sadde doesn't really leave HQ a whole lot, not since they reached the comfortable position of being able to patrol from the comfort of the console—of, in fact, being more effective when doing that, for the average uneventful patrol.
Fatalism, depression, anxiety, and unease, all combined into a Sadde-shaped ball, are currently floating upside down in Lorica's workshop, failing to read a book while she fugues.
"Yeah, I just sort of go 'this person is clearly somebody but I don't actually know enough about them to say who, they get default person treatment until further notice'."
"...have I not told you about this, I have to have done. I write down what I'm thinking? So I can look at it while it is not being a thought and therefore slippery."
"Nnnoooo you've never told me about this! I knew about your bot being an auxiliary memory for you, I don't think I've ever seen you writing anything with your actual hand. A thought and therefore slippery?"
"I can't use the bot all the time, I have school and stuff. Although it is more convenient than a notebook when I have it. Thoughts are easy to forget, working memory has limited capacity, so I write stuff down."
"Well, that's not surprising at all in hindsight, and it kinda makes me want to kiss you but damnable gender dysphoria."
She shrugs. "It's not your fault, and I wouldn't trade you for anything." (...now why does that feel like a lie?) "I love you." (That one at least she is quite certain is true.)
"I'm weirdly pleased about this even though it occurs to me you probably write about everyone."
"I mean, I spend more time thinking about you than most people."
"Well, yeah, but like you said, thoughts are slippery, and it feels all warm and fuzzy that there's physical evidence to them somewhere."
"So I will never fall into the abyss of forgetfulness, left to rot and be picked at by the vultures of memory."
