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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.
"I'm thinking making the comms aware of their own functionality so they can call in a distress and location before going offline and then a bot can deliver a replacement or send rescue."
"Are they unaware of their functionality right now? What do they think they are, however that verb applies to nonsapient programs?"
"They're not wholly unaware, but they don't have a priority of noticing small malfunctions that may presage complete breakage, and if I can get them fast enough noticing that sort of thing will be worthwhile."
"How will they tell if it's a real breakage instead of just a bunch of small malfunctions?"
"Eh, I dunno, there's all kinds of weird specialties. That'd be a really weird one though."
He laughs. "Although maybe that's being too generous about the explanatory abilities of most scientists."
"Yeah, you ever try to read academic journals, they're awful."
"Yeah, I actually like reading them. But I'm nerdier than your average—person."
"I am too, but I get very frustrated by people who know things and don't learn to communicate."
"I know. I was actually reading a paper about parahumans a couple of days ago."
"Some people writing about hypotheses on how exactly the corona pollentia generates and controls powers."
"It was a sort of review with a couple new ideas. They raised the possibility that powers don't actually break conservation of energy, they just borrow energy from... elsewhere. Other universes."
"Huh. That doesn't explain the computationally intensive ones really..."