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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.
"Just shy. Apparently he was separated from them and some random Midwest townful of unpowered people mobbed him. His power wasn't really in play considering, but there were still casualties. They got him though. They suspect cape involvement but can't figure out who, they didn't know there was one there."
"Unpowered people? Didn't he have, like, super strength and super endurance? I guess if there were enough people..."
"It was pretty much the entire town. Also some of them had guns."
"I mean, if I were them I wouldn't hang out in his range," Lorica points out, "I'd give him a phone."
"Yeah, sure, but—well, I guess maybe they were having one of their 'let's have fun slaughtering a small town' breaks..."
"Article doesn't say what he was doing there, I don't think they know."
"Ugh. But, well, Midwest... Is it bad I'm kinda relieved? Both that he's dead and that he was killed so far from here. The Nine don't ride planes."
"But it's also kinda unnerving, like, someone actually killed one of them, and it's not like most of them even last much longer than that anyway, but there's usually token retaliation. I don't suppose the town was completely slaughtered after that?"
And paying attention to the patrol. He looks at the screen again.
"Townies are being weirdly cagey. Suspected Master involvement but they don't know the details."
"What's really weird is the town looks pretty normal? It's not like Ellisburg or something. It's just a town. They just all up and killed Hatchet Face and won't say why."
"Could be the master's still in the actual town controlling them." Pause. "The alternative's somewhat horrifying."
"The master may have either left or been killed. It wouldn't be the first time a power keeps acting beyond its original host's grave, like Butcher's."
"Or maybe the master could've joined the Nine. That'd explain how come they didn't butcher the town."