Air awash with emotions, both those wrung tight and those rendered slack to the point of uselessness. People hurrying around in desperation and robotic rhythm. The city disrupted, distorted, scared of what may come, jaded from what had occurred, and tired of it already. Their heroes had lost, failed to defeat a villain despite all of the faith and precedent pressed upon them. And now a nightmare from the past was hiding amongst them like it was still human.

Eyes shifted from face to face. Neighbors distrusted neighbors. Fear drove the once cheerful and content to leer at anyone they couldn't recognize, and any hair out of place. The description was clear but still he was already known for disguising himself. And now they all knew full well what was hiding, plotting-

"Yaaawww…"

Waiting in line at the grocery store.

It had been a day or three, it was getting hard to tell, but Seth was still hardly changed from his grand unveiling. Least of all with yet more nightly bouts of denied sleep. It helped that the faces staring back at him at least looked similar now, but it didn't stop the haunting feeling they gave off. Too many eyes he knew, even if he never remembered them for long. Too many familiar faces changed and locked in torrential emotion. Too many-

"Next please."

Seth shook the existential spiraling away.

"Sorry."

And stepped up to the counter. A small basket of prepacked cereals, sodas, frozen dinners, bread… and sleep aids. He was well past the point of sentimentality and survivor's guilt. He didn't care if his town was looking on from his subconscious. Or if their souls were still screaming or scowling for reparation or avenging. He was getting a full night's sleep if it was the last thing he could.

The card machine beeped as the clerk tallied up the total, but went ignored as Seth handed exact cash instead. The bank probable wasn't happy, but screw 'em, he needed his savings. The clerk counted out the change as he kept his tired eyes on his waiting bags, a familiar form burning his peripheral vision. A familiar tug trying to pull him back to that blasted moonscape, that burning forest, those-

"Hrrgh!"

He shut his eyes tight, clenched and took his change in a cupped hand. The other forced back open and scoping up plastic replacement for his basket. Apparently this store was running that same donation drive, the same placard, the same decals. The same well-meaning reminder that had kept him inside most of his adult life, just enhanced beyond simple memories. His filled hand shoving his change into his pant pocket before pulling up into his face, desperately rubbing that daytime nightmare away. Rubbing softly against the brown hair crowning his head, narrowly fading it back to white as his focus frayed. But at least that ordeal was over with.

The streets of Kadia weren't too much better though. That unconscious, unspoken tension still permeated as people walked the streets. The power grid was toasted, crews could only do so much at a time, so some sectors were still a little dark. The cars on the road though were a lost cause. If Seth had been a betting man, and still had those analysts in his head, he would have bought stocks in every car dealer in the city. But even then that investment was iffy, as people just chose to walk to wherever they needed, since said dead cars still had to be cleared and put back whence they came. So maybe the auto parts angle was a better call.

Still, it read of an adaptive attitude already burned in by the disruptive EMP attacks. Or just daily life in the face of super powered villainy. At least Seth could avoid the guilt of culpability, since technically Resent was the one that broke everything. All he did was siphon off a little too much. Still, the effects were felt by everyone.

The air was getting colder, wetter, dreary. Compounding. Surprisingly comfortable… Well maybe not surprisingly anymore. The whole extra side of his anatomy certainly had its perks. But everyone who was left without proper heating made that bright side a little offensive.

Seth still kept an old coat on from his apartment just for the coverage though, fitting in well even if the cold wasn't an issue. That would be the soup of paranoia that the city was starting to stew in. Something he couldn't help feel more guilt for, least of all since he was the one who pushed them into the pot.

The same shifty distrusting eyes scanning faces, hats, coats too big to warrant, unneeded umbrellas. Everything even the slightest bit out of place. Eyes that were unsure of what they would do if they saw their watched for target, but if their heroes couldn't defeat this menace then they would take things into their own hands. Fear in every wanton gaze.

The industrial sector was at least less crowded, nice and out of the way of it all. Though also a good deal emptier these days. Factories and metal works don't fare well without electricity or workers willing to commute by foot. Still the fires of industry must go on, else the forges literally solidify. There was also plenty of demand for their supply, and people still need to get paid. A few spared trucks drove the wide streets, ferrying everything they could get loaded up with. Work yards were filled with the sounds of manual labor and gradual reconstruction, super labor force paying dividends. And the smell of restarting furnaces and burning metal filled the air. Even though Seth was only living at the outskirts.

His apartment still looked all too fitting and yet woefully out of place. Still stood empty except for its only two tenets. But boy oh boy was it fucking better than staying in Eagleville. Seth climbed the stoop, his garage space unneeded now and safer locked up. The mail slots still labeled his and Ms. Mahan's, but he did all he could to avoid her for now. Plenty of years of passing her on the stairs told him enough of her routine, and a little bit of power expenditure kept the noise to a minimum. Pulling taut each steps up so it wouldn't creak. But he knew his luck would run thin eventually, and he'd have to own up to what had happened. He just hoped he could explain it well enough…

'Shit, I've got a list now. Hopefully Aegis takes her time getting here. There is way too much to go through.'

His door slid open without a sound, relocked slowly so the thunk wouldn't resound. The walls were thickened up a bit and given the same deep clean treatment he gave his other residence. Less yellowing on the wall paper, less dust caking his home, and a general sense that he had a comfortable place to sleep again. He looked down though to his full plastic bag, hoping that the pills could help with the latter more than the former. But that was for later. Now though he'd rather just watch TV and get away from this world.

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The one burning and yet still not quite on fire.

If there was space for it, Aegis' footsteps would have echoed through the halls with all the "done with it" attitude she had on offer. All the energy of someone who wasn't in the mood to be bother right now. But they didn't. Couldn't. The halls of the periphery, The Hill in its entirety, were bustling.

Supers, civilian liaisons, support staff, and general population who slipped in with the show of a badge and a purpose. People gathering about, hurried to their destinations, demanding of their guides, and leering at the scenery and each other. Advocates for the people, lawyers looking for cases, politicians both city and national looking for failures, volunteers looking to help, and heroes just trying to do their jobs. It wasn't quite an upheaval, no one could even conceptualize what League ouster would mean for a city this large, but adverse sentiments were seeping in with no subtle façade. And Aegis was not going to give in to it.

She stormed passed groups and through tightening thoroughfares, giving nothing to gawk or demand of but the tied dirty blond hair flowing in her wake. And the standoff simmer that kept even the forceful and ambitious at bay. The worst offenders already placated, so these small fish would just have to deal with scraps. Though a quick turn and forced open door freed her from the growing claustrophobia of the whole sale shakedown occurring outside. And simply dropped her into the mess she'd made herself. With help at least.

"Are they still here?"

Alex was sat at a table across the retrofitted ready room, computer terminal hiding her from the door but offering little protection otherwise.

"Hhgh. Yes… Think the mayor's getting a tour."

The simmer faded, but the exacerbation remained.

"Please tell be you found anything on your end."

Alex's expression shifting, but not quite to readied shame. More like…

"I don't really know?"

Aegis pulled up to her and wheeled limply to her screen, a desperate database search up and looking for any hint of the phrase Seth left for them. A few too many hits for the lost and abandoned, but it was something to work with better than what they had found up to now.

"So… was Omnimax that much of a bust?"

Aegis scooped up a chair and flopped back like a released marionette only half propped up to look at the results before her. A clear enough message for Alex to take and sulk.

"Entry was clean, exit was clean, even the crime was fucking aggravating… Huggghhhh! The fucker gave Tango back his eye."

"Wait! Seriously!? P-please don't tell me-"

"He's still in there, crew included. But… but all their wounds and scars were gone. Even that wild one Sasha. Lost limbs and lost minds just… put back together. Here's hoping the altruism doesn't bite us in the ass one day."

"Speak for yourself! You weren't up close and personal with the psycho trying to blow us all up!"

"Eh… I don't think he's holding it against you. Well… Okay maybe a little revenge is possible in your future."

"Uggghhhh!"

Aegis could only give a sympathetic smile in return. She had plenty of vengeance sweared against her to know the feeling of your first arch nemesis. At least hers was on the older side. She joined in the search before she could fall into worrying about her own nemesi. Scanning down the screen before them for anything that sounded even remotely like it was connected to Seth.

A large number of bands called any number of variations of lost and abandoned, a few lost and found store listing, three different orphanages and foster centers, an unacceptable amount of heroes and villains with both in their names, and all manner of other answers to the wrong questions being asked. Their search was hitting dead end after dead end, and they'd been forced to scour the internet search engines for even the slightest hints. And were getting nowhere.

Old news articles, old police reports, a few gangs going by some combination of the words, more stores opening and closing with them, oh look another band name. All of it nothing they could definitively say was what they were looking for. And their time was far from theirs alone. At any moment any number of people could learn of their whereabouts, storm in, demand answers, demand results, accuse dereliction, or just look for a release from the tension they'd been left with and use them as a punching bag despite the fact they were the ones actually looking.

So many issues had all come to a head because of him, because of what he did and what he didn't do. It would have been easier on everyone if he had just murdered all of them when he revealed himself. At least all the yelling would have been silenced. But instead, civilian groups and local officials were all clamoring for a piece of the pie they had been skillfully juggling all this time. The programs sponsored, the good will built up, the general fact that they were super heroes dedicated to keeping this city and so many others all peaceful and upright. All of it stumbling because a laceroid was still alive and had shown itself to be stronger than anything they could muster. Despite all of the shit Para and his ilk had been doing.

Aegis drooped her head and frazzled her hair, frustration with the everything of it all driving her down. And back through all she knew about Seth just to find anything she could have missed.

He was alone when she found him, and later he said he lost his parents in the crisis. He was only partly lying given everything else, so he was definitely an orphan. But the results for lost and abandoned offered up a lot of options and not a lot of hope. No digitized database files for a child of his description or his name. Things weren't adding up, but Alex had said he was building suits since fourteen so it had to be-

"…hey…ugh."

Aegis looked up at Alex, following her eye line back to the screen. A kind of recent newspaper article about the closing of an orphanage with their search terms in the name. An actually good article about it finding the last of its wards a home after… after the influx from the crisis. Aegis pick herself up and read deeper. The orphanage was old before the crisis even hit, dilapidated and behind the times. And situated… in the industrial sector. Where the only powersuit manufacturing facilities were.

Aegis pushed Alex slightly aside and put the full name of the place into the database search. Marrow's Home for the Lost and Abandoned. But despite the exact nature of the search, it just arrived at the same shotgun spread they got before. This place was outside the database…

Or deleted from it.

"No wonder it's been so damn hard to find! He better hope I don't find the logs or I'm cramming him in a box for this!"

She shifted gears under a frightened reel from Alex, bringing up maps of the sector and trying to find the address based on the photos in the article. A simple task given the fact the orphanage was a century older than the surrounding buildings. A few small factories and ancillary offices surrounded it, recognizable from the street view photos. And just like that they finally had a lead.

Aegis looked over at Alex going over things for herself, only looking up as she felt the exacerbation finally relent from the room. Both smiled for what felt like the first time in days, but quickly Aegis shifted. Her relief igniting the fire suppressed for too long by this entire shitshow of a result.

"What do you say we get the hell out of here?"

Alex lit up slightly.

"Hopefully this ends up better than the last place you dragged me to."

"Hey, for first missions I'd say you got it pretty good."

"I can't get the smell of saltwater and human shit out of my suit."

"Well… this one should definitely be better."

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