The therapy.

“Victoria wasn’t a part of that,” Capricorn said.

“I guess,” she replied.

“Thing is,” I said. “Standing here, thinking about how I didn’t even have to ask Capricorn if he was on board with seriously going after these guys—”

“Damn fucking straight,” Capricorn said it with enough force that a few heads turned our way.

“We’re tenacious,” I said. “Every last member of the group, we’ve been given every reason to give up and we pushed on.”

“For better or for worse. Poor Lookout,” Capricorn said.

“I can get behind the idea,” Sveta said. “Tenacious.”

I stood a little straighter, taking in the group of gathered heroes. I drew in a breath. “Then let’s go be stubborn. We’re not going to accept this loss.”

“Yeah,” Capricorn said.

I flew down from the roof of the concrete garage. I went straight from flying to striding forward. Capricorn hopped down, though it wasn’t a distance most would want to jump—twenty feet onto packed dirt, a heavy landing with the armor he wore. Just a little bit of enhanced physique could go a long way.

Sveta’s landing wasn’t as graceful. I heard the noise as she hauled herself, turned to look, and saw her coming my way. My arm went out and I caught her with it—stopping her from stumbling forward while helping to keep her upright.

She took my hand and gave it a momentary squeeze.

Heroes gathered around us. Fume Hood was present—Tempera wasn’t. Lighter had come, which was nice—it was my first time seeing the low-key vigilante, though we’d talked some by email. He’d been scheduled for a turn at harassing Cedar Point, but things had gone to hell before the scheduled time had come. He’d been enthusiastic about that—and I could assume he’d like the idea of this.

Sometimes a team seemed like too much, but being a solo hero was too lonely. Triggering tended to involve some lack of support structures—that was Parahumans 101, class one, an hour and fifteen minutes into the three hour lecture level stuff. To go from that to being a costumed hero didn’t generally involve gaining more support.

Maybe this would appeal.

Houndstooth was absent, but two of his subordinates were present. I recognized Foxtrot and another member of the Kings of the Hill. Foxtrot’s chatter about the Cedar Point operation had led to Advance Guard jumping in and our involvement being spoiled. Well, I had my suspicions that Scapegoat might have helped matters. The defected healer from Advance Guard was the primary one to blame—but Foxtrot had let some minor things slip.