The last time Colin stepped into the briefing room, he was clad in blue-and-silver steel armor, servos whining as they amplified his every move. His heavy footsteps had announced his presence, a walking symbol of indomitable strength despite being one of the youngest capes.
The same couldn't be said for today. Today he was clad in a blue one-piece hospital gown, that had a line exposing his crack if he stood up, and instead of marching into the meeting room in his blue-and-silver-colored armor, he was being wheeled in by a nurse.
His face burned red, but luckily for him, the plain domino mask he wore hid his shame. He should've been fit enough to do all this himself, but the medical personnel, with permission granted to them by the director, threatened that if he didn't follow their orders, they were going to lock him in his hospital room.
It took the severity of the message he had received for them to even allow him to leave in the first place, and only on the condition that a nurse wheeled him in, waited outside the meeting hall, and wheeled him back out before the doctors gave in.
His embarrassment was lost the moment he was wheeled into the room, and a frown found its way to his face. The heroes present in the room looked exhausted. And it didn't seem to be just from the Endbringer fight itself, for no matter how brutal those were, a few days of mandatory rest alongside a mandatory meeting with their on-station therapist helped to get people back on their feet in days.
Challenger somehow managed to look the most tired considering how peppy she always was, and judging by her position at the head of the table where the Chief Director used to sit, Colin felt a cold foreboding.
There was a tension in the room that hadn't been present a few days ago, during their last meeting on handling the Slaughterhouse Nine and the Old Man with his penchant for indiscriminate violence and a disregard for both unwritten and written rules.
There had been tension then, but this time it was something else, a whole different scale.
Challenger turned to him and gave him an uncharacteristically serious nod at his entrance before she began to speak.
"Welcome back, Armsmaster. I hope your recovery is going well?"
"Well enough. As soon as the nurses get tired of pampering me and clear me to start walking, I'll be back to work on the streets," he grunted in response, earning a few half-hearted chuckles from the others. Colin felt his heart sink further.
He was never one to crack jokes, yet even his sad attempt would have usually garnered more than this. It was truly a cold day in hell when he was the one forced to make people laugh.
"With that said, for the few of you that were not able to make it to the Endbringer battle, mostly due to injuries sustained in the battle against the Slaughterhouse Nine and the bombing of the Rig," she paused, giving pointed stares at Colin, Hax, Harken, and a heavily bandaged Orbit, "I'll give the short summary. Behemoth is dead."
The sound of a pin drop would've echoed throughout the room if somebody had bothered to drop one. Some of the capes present didn't seem surprised, considering they had been there, but the rest of them? The injured and the others with powers not suited for Endbringer fights. They sat shell-shocked, and even though this was the second time hearing it, Colin still stared in surprise. But other than the brief pause, Challenger continued.
"He was killed by the Old Man, who we have come to identify as Yamamoto. From here on out, we've given him the alias 'Old Man Yama,' considering that is what our sources Kudzu was cultivating in the Asian district address him as and pending when he decides to pick one himself."
If the room had been surprised before, now they were downright flabbergasted, and this time Colin was not an exception, yet there was a thrill of vindication coursing through him. he told them the old man was Dangerous.That was why he was also the first person to master himself, ahead of the others who had been absent during the fight. Yet he found questions tumbling past his lips.
"What do you mean? How? Why?" Before he could continue his line of scattered questions, Challenger waved him off before continuing.
"I'll get there. The news was supposed to have been on lockdown. Not Behemoth's death—that would have been nearly impossible to sweep under the rug—but the identity of the person primarily attributed to his death.
According to the original plan drafted by the PR department a day after Behemoth's death and sent out to all Directors, Acting Directors, Vice Directors, and heads of the Protectorate teams, with a hefty budget for hushing people up, they aimed to hold things for a few weeks at least.
The timeframe would have given them enough time to spin the fight in a more positive light, but that plan went spiraling the moment a cape leaked their helmet footage of the Endbringer fight—an act the PR department didn't anticipate, considering what happened the last time a fight was filmed."
Colin nodded in stunned agreement. While filming Endbringer fights wasn't outright illegal, after the morale-crushing exposé of the last filmed fight, it became one of the unwritten rules of Endbringer battles. Not even wild, news-hungry blogs or stations dared to try capturing or airing such footage. For if the true casualty count of the Endbringer fights became common knowledge, the number of attendees would drop drastically.
Yet, for all that it was termed a faux pas, a rare few people did film. Him included. They were mostly Thinkers with helmet cameras rewatching fights to improve, or dedicated teams of Endbringer huntersthat lost family to the monsters. However, most of those teams had been drastically cut down over the years—not due to lack of optimism but due to sheer ruthless math.
The truth was, there were only so many Endbringer fights you could survive. Your odds were only so high, and with each fight attended, those odds dropped lower. It was only a matter of time until the odds weren't in your favor.
Challenger's voice rang out again, pulling him out of his thoughts. "I have sent the videos as packages to the rest of you who weren't present."
Ping.Colin glanced down at the tablet still in his hands, but Challenger wasn't done.
"You can watch it in your free time. We are here to deal with the coming storm that we have on our hands. Our think tank predicts that over the coming weeks will be the toughest. We're going to have to juggle the predicted rise in visitors coming into the bay, and probably even settling down, alongside the villains' response to what the old man did.
Word is the president of France is raring to give the old man a medal as well as citizenship, while the Japanese minister of foreign affairs as well as their ambassador are believed to be coming to visit.
Fortunately for us, and unfortunately for the other protective governing body in the city, the Brockton Bay Police Force, that is their problem to handle. Instead, we would be handling the expected surge of capes from outside the bay."
"The psychos," Miss Militia said, earning an Approving nod from Challenger.
The mad and daring few that would want to make a name for themselves by fighting the Endbringer killer. Now, any questions?"
The room was silent, till Orbit raised his heavily bandaged hand, and Challenger nodded at him to speak.
"I was mostly knocked out, what with the explosion of the oil rig, but why are you the one giving the update?"
It took Colin a second to understand why the question didn't sit right with him as well as the sudden silence in the room. It was a valid question, yet the way the man had phrased it, his tone and speech made it sound weird. Ever since his blunder with the old man, Colin had taken it upon himself to relearn how to communicate even more effectively as well as how to read both verbal and body cues. That was the reason he was able to pick it up, and he felt himself bristle.
Colin's eyes narrowed at his fellow hero, and he could feel himself grow angry at the accusing tone leveled on the older and more veteran hero because he knew the reason why. The true reason why the man had spoken up. Not even cape politics could escape inbred and institutionalized sexism. That gender should not be a factor in such, especially considering the presence of someone like Alexandria, was coincidentally thrown out of the window.
Challanger's position as the leader was something that was threatened every day already. Now the rotund and heavily bandaged cape was trying to cast a seed of doubt into her leadership.
Yet instead of barking a sharp reply, he calmed himself. Being Hot-headed had gotten him nowhere, so instead he turned to look at Challenger, because some part of him also wondered the same, yet unlike the other man, his reasons were pure.
The older woman had her arms folded, as she stared back at the other cape for long seconds. Enough for the man to realize he was speaking to a veteran cape with more years as a cape than he had under his belt.
Challenger folded her arms, the weight of her years as a cape settling visibly on her shoulders. "The Director is dead, Orbit. The Assistant Director is in critical condition. That leaves me. If that's a problem, you can address it with the Chief Director directly."
Her tone was quiet, firm, and brooked no argument. Orbit swallowed hard, while his lips flapped wordlessly like a fish before he simply nodded without any further words as he ducked his head down in embarrassment.
Without another glance at the reticent hero, Challenger turned to them once more and continued, this time gesturing to Miss Militia. "Miss Militia, you have been the one few unencumbered by fatigue and have been able to scout the city better. What do you have for us?"
The younger green-clad woman cleared her throat before speaking. "So far, the city is holding its breath. Like with most aftermaths of Endbringer fights, citywide crime has been the lowest it has been in months. The Teeth as a gang have all but disappeared.
Correspondence and liaising with our contact in the police force informed us of Marquis and a great deal of the Marche being spotted at what we believe was the Teeth's main base on the day of the Endbringer's fight. Shortly after that, they left, and all that remained were bloodstains, but no bodies."
The rest of the capes looked at each other with apprehension. Marquis was strong, yet the bone manipulator had always seemed content to rest on his laurels and stay in his territory, never truly expanding, yet too powerful to be pushed back by any other cape group. Finding out that the first time he decided to move, he had ended up decimating a rival gang was chilling to the core.
"Ignoring the fact that he attacked another group during the Endbringer's truce, which is a thin line considering the other group had not sent anybody to fight against the Endbringer either, what about that new hero group? The ones that asked for a chance to take him down?" Harken was the one to ask this time. Another veteran cape but not as old as Challenger.
"They were rumored to be indisposed, having not expected such spontaneous violence from the otherwise reticent Marche." Miss Militia turned to reply to the older man, and he nodded at the answer before sinking back into his chair, giving her the chance to continue. "Onto other news, we believe the Empire has begun to pull out of the city."
There was another short silence, one that was immediately broken by a laugh.
"Hahahahahahahaha!"
A bark of laughter was let out, and even Colin allowed a smile to climb his face. Challenger tilted her head back and continued to let out a long peal of laughter, forcing the others to let out more natural chuckles in response. At least there was a silver lining in all the clusterfucks that have been piling up.
Challenger finally mastered herself, but gone was the dour and overly serious woman she had been earlier. Now, she had a smile dancing on her face.
"Why am I not surprised? I'm sure they were planning a retaliatory attack following the loss of Krieg, but if there is any upside to the Endbringer's clip leaking, then it's definitely this. Allfather might be a muscle-headed brute, but he didn't get this far by being stupid."
Militia nodded in agreement before she continued. "So far, we believe it's only a small detachment, but it's only been three days. With any luck, by the end of the month, the Empire would be another city's problem, judging from the direction their convoy was spotted. Probably Boston."
Everyone nodded in response. There was no long-lost love between the two neighboring cities, but where Brockton Bay had been forced to house some of the deadliest cape populations on this side of the eastern seaboard, Boston had been free. Their Protectorate department getting more funding for less work done. It was about time they pulled their weight.
Challenger clapped, drawing everyone's attention before she began to speak. "Well, if that is all. The meeting has been adjourned till tomorrow." With her part said, everyone began to usher themselves out of the room.
...
Deep beneath the earth in a dark pit specifically created to hold a recently captured monster that bent but refused to break, a passing guard watches a video on his phone as he walks past it. A video of an old Japanese man standing in the sky, with fire all around him, and in the depths of that darkness, a reptilian eye blinks open in response.