Amy
There was a ceremony to honor the dead, they had called in and asked Void Cowboy to come in for an award but he didn't show up. That was normal, Void simply didn't do social stuff in the real world. He showed up to the fight and then vanished, I knew his reasons but that stuff was private and though it sucked it was probably for the best. I pitied him in a way living the life he did, hope things went better for him. People were still filtering back into the city. A tenth of Arcadia had moved away, another tenth was dead. You knew who had stayed and who had left, it was in the eyes, in the sudden tremors, a few people had the tell tale electrical burns.
I walked with Vicky as she preened and enjoyed an extra heaping of status that came with being part of a victorious Endbringer battle. I let her enjoy it and concentrated on the fallen, Kaiser was dead of course, going to fight an electricity based endbringer in a metalic suit had rather predictable and explosive results. That said if you had to go out, that was the way to go, the Empire had by all accounts split. We didn't say good riddance because it wasn't done. If you went out fighting the Endbringers then, well that was considered a good death. New Wave got lucky and not just because I altered our suits to handle the voltage. The Protectorate lost two people, Velocity was dead, I looked at the place where Carlos used to sit. Dean was taking his death the hardest. They would gather what was left of him and give him a hero's funeral.
Dennis walked around in a horrified daze, and Dean looked depressed, I took Victoria aside to talk to her in private.
"You and Dean on a break?"
"No, but-"
"Don't fuck it up."
She blinked at me, it was rare for me to interfere with her love life.
"What?"
"Your relationship, don't fuck it up, Dean's a good guy, he's handsome, rich and is a vet of the war now. If you fuck this up they're not going to back off because they're afraid of you, they will go for him."
Vicky rolled her eyes.
"That'-."
"Goddamn it, look around."
She turned her head.
"So?"
"Notice how there are a lot less boys around? Did you notice how the boys tended to stick around during the evacutation? There was a 10% death rate, who do you think did most of the dying?"
She looked around as if seeing the school with new eyes.
"So?"
"Girls outnumber the boys at Arcadia now, I've been counting."
"So what, I'm-"
"Half the football team is dead, a third of the swim team, the baseball team doesn't have enough people to have a team, and the chess club lost a fourth of their guys. There are 10 girls for every 9 guys."
"So, there are other high schools."
"Those high schools lost even more people, unpowered locals tend to have the worst casualities in Endbringer fights. Look, what I'm trying to explain to you is this. Supply and demand, the supply has gone down, so the price of dick is at a premium and sooner or later all the girls who want boyfriends are going to realize that."
Vicky blinked.
"Oh..."
I leaned against a locker.
"Look if you want to break up with him, break up, but if you do that he isn't going to come back Vicky. Someone else will come in and he will be gone."
"They won't get it."
I decided to be honest.
"You have been a really shitty girlfriend."
Vicky stopped as if she had been struck.
"What did you say?"
"I said that you have been a really shitty girlfriend, you're together, then you're not. You're always giving him these stupid little tests and not tell him you're giving them, then you get pissed at him that he's not a mind reader."
"He's a you know..."
"You talk all of the time but you don't communicate, you don't FUCKING LISTEN!"
I was a little angry.
"YOU DO THINGS AND YOU DON'T THINK ABOUT THE CONCEQUENCES!"
I stopped yelling at her.
"And there will be concequences, I don't want you to fuck up a good thing because you're being stupid."
Vicky glared at me.
"Do you like Dean?"
I stared at her in the eyes.
"That isn't relevant."
"Are you after my boyfriend?"
I slapped her hard, both of us kind of stood there in shock, I decided to stand firm.
"How dare you, after everything we have been through, how fucking dare you?"
Vicky took a deep breath.
"I'm sorry Amy... I know you're trying to help it's just difficult with Dean, ok? I'm screwed up, he's screwed up and we try but maybe this won't work out, ya know?"
I shrugged.
"Fine but if you break up don't expect him to come crawling back to you, things are different now."