20th May 2011- Victoria Dallon

A drizzle misted the memorial, exacerbating the sombre mood. It was a day still covered by the truce, though there weren't any villains in attendance which wasn't terribly surprising. Not that they weren't people who'd lost people too, but Victoria figured she wouldn't trust walking into a memorial where half the people hated your guts either.

Amy stood next to her on her right, freckly face sallow and drawn from the exhaustion of back to back days of healing Leviathan's casualties. Her sister had changed the past few months, becoming cheerier and a hell of a lot less high strung. Apparently, finally making a real friend was all it took, and as much as she bitched and moaned about Greg Victoria could tell Amy enjoyed his company.

Her mother, Carol, stood to her left with her dad, Mark. Both had been severely injured during the attack, but after her usual hemming and hawing about not doing brains Amy had healed them, and nothing had gone wrong despite her misgivings. Having her dad back helped a little, but nothing could truly help.

Next to her dad, her aunt and remaining cousin. Neil and Eric Pelham hadn't made it.

And finally, Dean lay in a cold morgue somewhere in the ruined city, and when he was finally buried she was sure he'd take a piece of her heart with him into the ground forever.

The mist of rain mixed with the tears running down her face as the moment of silence they were all sharing passed. Her cousin, her friends, Dean; all gone, like tears in the rain. She'd heard that somewhere and it was just repeating in her head. Tears in the rain. Tears in the rain. Gone, like tears in the rain.

Legend floated up onto the raised dais in front of the black marble obelisk that was coated with the names of the fallen. He said something about a song, but Victoria was still thinking about tears and rain.

It was just luck that she wasn't somebody else's tears right now. Leviathan had hit her, properly hit her, sent her flying into the concrete corner of a building. It was then that her forcefield had cut out. A millisecond earlier…

Well, tears and rain.

Dark Smoke Puncher stepped up onto the stage beside Legend. Oh, right, he sang.

Greg's voice carried clearly over the crowd, though he held no microphone.

"Just, a song for friends we lost."

He took a moment to gather himself, then sang.

Victoria closed her eyes. It reminded her a little of a Bad Canary concert she and Dean had gone to, the one where he'd snuck in a flask and the buzz had just enhanced the feeling of her singing to awe-inspiring levels, then they'd gone back to the hotel room and it was just the most, most amazing- But instead of amazing it was gouging at the Dean shaped hole in her heart with a blunt knife.

Greg's voice cracked as he sang, the raw emotion of it scouring layers of pretence off the crowd. Beside her, Amy made a strangled noise and Victoria opened her eyes again, glancing at her, seeing her sister sobbing silently into her hands. It rippled through the gathering, the unseen masks of fully costumed capes coming off, a sea of shaking, brightly coloured shoulders.

Her breath hitched, caught in a sob that wouldn't give it back to her. She turned her face up to the grey sky, catching more of the light rain. Victoria felt something run out her nose and down over her lips but didn't move to wipe it off.

Snot in the rain didn't have such a good ring to it.

The song started to wind down. The lyrics were hopeful, in a depressing, bleak sort of way. Even if you lost everything, even if everyone had died but you; you just have to wake up the next day and keep trying so that maybe it would all be ok again one day. It was how she thought a lot of people would be feeling, right now after they'd all lost so much. And she certainly wasn't going to give up, New Wave or not there were always ways to help people.

The song finished, but nobody clapped. On stage, Greg turned away so he could lift his visor and wipe his eyes before turning back to the crowd and offering a small bow before walking offstage.

Victoria turned her eyes away from the grey sky to look at Amy; still crying. Her parents; trying to be strong. Her aunt and Crystal; holding each other.

Who was next? Was it her?

Flying was still amazing, at least there was that. At least she still had that.

Victoria spun, lurching nearly ninety degrees to her right into a serpentine corkscrew. Nobody would be able to see her from the city, dressed in dark clothes as she was this late at night, but she wasn't patrolling anyway; this was just to take her mind off of things.

Her flight tactics, outside specific versus ground ones, didn't see much use given the lack of villainous flyers. Sure, there was Purity, but attempting to dogfight her was a pointlessly stupid idea, which left her hours of reading up on and practising tactical fighter jet maneuvers somewhat to waste.

Victoria swooped and spun, barrel-rolled and weaved, scissored and yo-yo'd. She was just coming out of a downward defensive spiral when a dark shape loomed out of the night. Victoria decelerated, pulling out of the spiral and re-orienting herself facing the shape, slowly circling it. Her heart hammered in her chest as she raised her fists at the shape. It didn't match any of the flying capes she knew, this had wings and let off a low mechanical whirr of a propeller. A new Tinker? Endbringer attacks were rife with new triggers-

"Sorry."

The winged shape called out as they circled. A light appeared at its head, illuminating Greg attached to some kind of hang-glideresque contraption.

"Jesus," Victoria hissed, lowering her fists. "Start with the light next time."

"I would, but I'm trying to be stealthy. Could you catch me? I can't hover."

The light winked out as he changed direction toward her. The glider vanished into smoke and Greg smoothly dropped into her grasp, she held him out at arm's length.

"Ok, let me just… Don't move your feet or I'll fall," he said, smiling in a way that failed to be properly genuine.

His feet touched her sneakers and he swept them back, a sheet of blue solid smoke following their path. The smoke wrapped around her ankles, connecting the platform to her. She let him go and he stepped adroitly onto it, moving back out of her personal bubble.

"Thanks, I'll figure out how to properly fly one day soon."

Victoria nodded but didn't say anything. She saw that he got the message.

"Right," he said. "I saw you out and thought I'd say hello. Your moves are really impressive, you must have practised a lot."

"Yeah."

"Cool. Anyway, I was just scouting out the Merchants. They're starting to get too big, so I was going to dismantle them; I should get back to that. You're welcome to come join me if you're getting bored."

Victoria gave him a weak smile. "Thanks, but no."

"All good," Greg smiled back, turning to leave. "I'll see you 'round, yeah?"

"I might be joining the Wards, so, probably."

"Awesome. Fly safe."

He leapt off the thin blue platform, which dissolved, into a jump that was easily fifty feet and created his glider again. Victoria watched him fly off against the moonlit clouds. Maybe if there were another time he was patrolling, but not tonight. She didn't want to think about anything tonight but flying.

21st May 2011- Alice Arai

It was good to be the king.

Sure, Lung was still technically in charge, but he was still doing his whole depressive, morose shit. Apparently, Leviathan made the guy sad.

Alice looked out over her domain, currently an abandoned movie theatre, as it crawled with her subjects. The chucklefucks had just turned up out of some PRT bunker and delivered themselves right into her hands right at the juncture of a critical manpower shortage. Un-fucking-believably good luck.

She didn't see them as people anymore, just a series of floating targeting reticles in a red-tinted world. God, it was beautiful.

One of the reticles, one with big eyebrows, glanced up at her and she pointed threateningly at him. He cowered and went back to work.

Alice chuckled. This truly was the best life.

It was all coming together, she could finally stretch her fucking legs and do something beyond managing Lung's little fief. The disarray of the Endbringer attack left so many tantalising openings. The pigs were running around in the muck like retards and word on the street was the Empire was in the process of splintering; the two biggest gangs in the city, fucked. That was where she came in. Aggressive expansion. Unchecked terror. Pan-Asian was too small a target, why not let whitey in? Everyone could be bomb collared equally, some real pinko shit.

Her bombs were their bombs, so long as they were inside their skulls.

Couldn't see the 'bigger picture', her ass. Fuck you, Professor Corrigan.

Even as she stood there, Lee was planting a series of bombs around the city and would continue to do so as she made more. Let them see how big picture holding an entire city hostage was. She'd done the math, there was a threshold of what you could get away with as a villain before getting iced. A certain number of people, where if you killed under it or did it over a long period of time, the pigs wouldn't go out of their way to Birdcage you.

Absolutely fucking ridiculous. If it was her in charge she'd publically flense anyone who broke one of her rules rather than let them keep breaking them so long as they didn't make too much noise doing it. Moronic is what it was. It just encouraged people to go against you, emboldening them when you did nothing. Fucking idiots, but hey, it was working great for her. No point in correcting other's faults if they benefited her.

Being in charge mitigated the disappointment of the lack of challenge. It wasn't terribly fun if all her enemies never progressed mentally beyond age ten, she wouldn't get any cred from showing them up. Nobody cared if retards feared you, they were retards who didn't know any better. As an interim step, if she could get Armsmaster to kneel and surrender his halberd to her, then that would suffice before she hit a proper target.