Amy

It was raining when we got home, the city was wreaked even more then it used to be. I felt tired, exhausted. I looked at our house...

"Damn."

Mom sighed.

"Sorry but the Nine..."

"Destroyed our house."

I looked at the crater, and clenched my hands.

"So now what?"

Mom sighed.

"We have bounty money coming, what's left of the PRT said that they're going to wire us our share of the cash."

"And?"

"You know bounty rules, people are allowed to donate to increase the bounty right?"

Which lead to bounty inflation in.

"How much money are we talking about?"

Mom sighed.

"Well between the insurance, our savings, the GI bill, we can get another house."

"So Aunt Sara's?"

"No her house also got destroyed."

I thought about it...

"Void's place doesn't have power, but it has water."

Mom raised an eyebrow.

"Void Cowboy? Hm no, but nice try, you can always see him later if you want though."

She put an arm around me.

"Look Im happy you found some one that you like."

"It isn't like that."

Mom rolled her eyes.

"Ok honey, but the thing is Vicky really needs us right now, she's not in a good place and needs us to be there for her Ok? I need you to be her sister right now."

"I know."

We sat down while mom made calls, Vicky had a faraway look in her eye, staring off into nothing, she was faced towards the ruin that used to be our home.

"It isn't fair."

A statement of the obvious.

"Vicky..."

"It isn't fair, all of this stuff that just keeps hitting us, Dean was a good guy he did the right things, we've done our part to keep this city safe and these psychos just roll in and wreck everything."

She was tearing up, I sat down next to her and let her cry, mom made some calls and we were picked up by a taxi. She knew people, had connections and with the city in a slump we would be living in one of the more functional hotels in town until the mess got settled.

I just stared outside as the taxi moved, I saw the scorch marks along the walls, the remains of rubble, fresh bullet holes and all the other signs of a warzone. People shuffled around in a daze, and this was what victory looked like. This was the city shrugging off an Endbringer attack, shrugging off the Nine. We were Brockton Bay, the city god had either forgotten or had an abusive relationship with.

"Bad things happen in three."

Vicky was cried out, her make up ran and her voice cracked.

"What?"

Vicky continued her voice raspy.

"Bad things always happen in threes, first you had Zeus, then the Nine, something else is going to happen, something bad."

The doors of the taxi opened.

"You don't know that Vicky."

"I do, we survived so far, but can we keep this up?"

I was worried, this wasn't like her Vicky was normally the one always ready for a fight, the positive one. I didn't say anything and just walked into the hotel, the lights flickered and I looked at my cousins. We were all alive, Eric, Crystal, all of us had lived again.

We sat down near them and no one talked, all of us were stuck dealing with the issues of the day and every thing we had been through. There was just a feeling of gloom and-

"Let's get some thing to eat."

I stared at dad, he seemed to still be in his perpetual funk but...

"Look this has been a bad year for us, there have been a lot of bad years, let's go into the hotel restaurant get something that tastes good and try to sleep this off."

We got up and staggered to the restaurant, sometimes all you could do was push forward.