There was a growing feeling of satisfaction as people got underway with their days and messages started coming in. Steelmasons were starting patrols near the devastated old Wardens HQ. Auzure was resuming business as normal, but as they got things done they hoped to be able to spare their people. Shorewatch was just setting up at their HQ—they’d been on a break since the portal attack and were just getting into the swing of things.

Shorewatch’s situation wasn’t so dissimilar from us. We’d taken a break to reel, to attend to our individual group members. Sveta, Tristan and I were in headquarters early in the day, the place was clean, and the whiteboards that had been wiped clean were filling up again.

More messages, and it was a two-for-one this time. Rushdown and Royale were reporting in. They weren’t a team so much as they were a pair, but they operated from the same area of the city as Houndstooth’s Kings. They’d emailed a report they were starting their day closer to noon, with the intent of going after some people who had been trying to stir up riots. There was an outside chance those people were Cheit’s provocateurs. They also included a report on behalf of the Kings of the Hill.

Houndstooth hadn’t mentioned that he’d be doing that, but I could understand it, kind of. One degree of separation. Lookout couldn’t hack people. This enabled his team to communicate with us without discomfort.

I saw the first message from people that hadn’t been at the meeting. They hadn’t used the email format I’d requested, and they called themselves The Major Malfunctions. There were also several glaring typos, to the point I was suspicious that non-capes or villains had found our word-of-mouth setup and were toying with us.

A painfully slow search online brought up some images of kid heroes with terrible costumes. They’d been small timers before Gold Morning, small town ‘heroes’ who’d rotated between three middle-of-nowhere towns in North Dakota looking for villains or criminals. Four years of activity and they hadn’t found any.

It would have been easy to dismiss them, or to disparage them. They had dropped out of school to be heroes and had no wins. The lack of education was clear in the spelling errors. It worried me a bit that their referral had come from ’Super Magic Dream Parade’, the loopy team from Boston, who had apparently heard about what we were doing and passed on word.

The Major Malfunctions were teenagers now and they’d been kids when they’d triggered. They’d stayed heroes across six years, and they’d stayed together.

That had to count for something.