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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.
"Do you not want a challenge? Should I let Eidolon have a friend along?"
"I can figure out how to deal with Eidolon plus friend later, let me crack this one. The two capes should go in expecting something general, so there'll be something that does damage but I'd expect more like splash damage, laser beams as opposed to, say, fire, or bullets. But he won't be using all of it because of the civilians, and his choice of mobility power will likely not be that destructive. The biggest variable is I think his defensive power—he can go toe-to-toe with Endbringers and not get hurt beyond his power's ability of regeneration. I think... maybe this is too local, but I think I'd go with Oni Lee and Glam. And if not Oni Lee, perhaps Leonid from the Vegas team."
"Both are teleporters, but in different ways. Leonid can hear anything that happens within a certain radius of himself, and he can scream and use the echo to teleport. He can also manipulate sound. Oni Lee teleports but leaves a copy of himself behind that can act autonomously with all his intelligence for a few seconds before turning to dust."
"I like the Oni Lee and Glam matchup in specific because they can make the battlefield chaotic. Both of them can make copies appear, and furthermore Glam can make copies of Oni Lee, if their demonstration at the school a few weeks ago was anything to go by, and Eidolon would have to switch to a power that allowed him to either figure out who the real target was or do broad damage that didn't get the civilians. And in any case both of them are smart enough to be able to dodge pretty much indefinitely, and to hit him until he's down—Glam especially."
"How do you tell how smart heroes are? They're all coordinated by whoever's in charge."
"Not really. Oni Lee, for instance, was a solo villain for a while here before Lung collected him. Glam also used to go solo, dunno why they decided to join up." Shrug. "But, there's a way you can tell? Like, plan never survives contact with the enemy, right, and the news only shows us the way stuff goes right but even then you can sorta see which capes can react well and think on their feet and which can't. I, uh, may spend a lot of my time scouring the internet and such for these news clips."
"The Parahuman Online Forums has repositories of their stuff, as well as pages upon pages of speculation. You can also find original news clips in libraries, I think."
"Nah, Lorica probably is, here in BB, although maybe Miracle Max could be smarter than her, he doesn't use his specialty for combat much so I haven't seen what he can do, and tinkers in general tend to be. Maybe Transit, his power doesn't show off any smarts he might have. But I can definitely not tell you who the smartest cape ever is, too many thinkers to muddle up the equation."
"Well, this was fun. And I still haven't talked about BB itself other than cape business and the museum. Should I take you shopping like I promised I would?"
"Sure, if you want. There's a nice restaurant on the way to this shopping district I could show you."
So he starts leading the way. "By the way, it's Italian. They do have salads of course, but it's Italian salads. ...whatever that means."
"In Italy it probably would, but I think there's a general feeling of sameness when it comes to Italian here."
"Well, you never know, some places it might just mean Italian dressing."
And since Sadde took that bus specifically to go to the shopping district, they're not far at all and they have arrived.