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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.
"I never was one to collect action figures and pieces of clothing like that," he muses. "I was more the kind who read up on them a lot and would think about who'd win in a fight, how to best apply a given power to a certain situation..."
He grins. "Well, yeah, a bit. It's all in the same package, really, I like figuring stuff out, how things tick, how people tick, how powers tick, how strategies tick... I'm a ticking guy. Sometimes a ticking gal. Other times a ticking enby."
"Well, what do I have in hand? Just in general, throw Scion at him. Gimme constraints!"
"No Scion, no attacking him in his sleep unless you put him to sleep during the fight, pick any two capes under class S."
"What's the battlefield like? Is it an ambush or does the fight start with everyone fully aware of the others?"
"Okay, so, hmm, when you said no class S capes did you mean to also include heroes who routinely fight class S threats like Alexandria and Legend or do I exclude those, too?"
(Slurp slurp ice cream.)
"The trick to dealing with him will always be being unexpected enough and vary fast enough that he can't respond appropriately. A head-on confrontation is bound to be doomed, need to approach this from an oblique angle, use his habits against him. Can I use heroes, villains, and rogues, or am I limited there?"
"Mm, if he winds up dead or captured I guess? Go for captured if that's pleasanter."
"Hmm... Well if I had time to prepare I'd get Accord so he could design an appropriate plan, but he's not good at spur-of-the-moment design. Eidolon has a few patterns, he always has a power that grants him flight or some appropriate facsimile, and is reluctant to give up powers that give him some defensive advantage. The third power is usually offensive, and a heavy hitter, and that one he's usually okay with changing in the middle of battle. Sometimes the flight-granting power has offensive applications as well, so the two capes will either need to be really darn resistant or to be able to dodge. And whatever solution I come up with will have to disable him fast enough that he can't adapt to it. Hmmmmmmm..."
"How far in advance does Eidolon know about this fight? Has he had time to prepare for these specific opponents?"
"Hmmm, knows a fight's coming in plenty of time to swap powers, but not with who."
"Are there civilians on the battlefield the combatants will have to be careful of? Assuming the other two would care about this, of course, which depends on who I pick."
"So I can't just have Miss Militia drop a nuke on his head while another cape holds him. And anyway that's too much direct confrontation to work with him. So, deception. Theoretically he can use thinker powers, but if he's going with a broad selection for an unknown fight it's unlikely he'll get any good ones. Can I get people from the Birdcage? Glaistig Uaine would probably help a lot, she's basically his opposite number."