“Long after,” I said. “You can’t make them happen because if you think it’s a possibility, you aren’t low enough or desperate enough. You can’t force others to get powers or governments would have whole battalions of people with abilities.”

Had to keep kids from hurting themselves, even if it made it harder to maintain the thrust of my little speech here.

“You wanted real? There it is. Powers and where they come from. Millions are watching and millions are on the same page as us. Scion? Something set him off, I don’t know the particulars, but he wanted to wipe us out, parahuman and human both. We fought like hell and I lost family members in that fighting. He was everything that was wrong with parahumans, and we beat him, and maybe his influence on some of the worst of us has loosened. Maybe.”

“Nilbog was quiet, almost civilized. Bonesaw was helping, with careful monitoring because we’re not idiots,” Swansong said.

“The remaining Endbringers are quiet,” Capricorn said.

“We have our problems,” I said. “We have big issues, really. But we can’t add the issues of yesterday to them, and we can’t… we can’t do this. We can’t manufacture issues. We’re going to organize, and we’re going to help each other.”

“We’ll answer other questions,” Capricorn said. “But not tonight. We have things to do. We’re out there. We’re not hard to reach. If you’re news, government, finance, if you’re a cape and you don’t know what the heck you’re doing, reach out. We’ll do what we can. Resources allowing, and we’re getting those resources in place.”

“You’re talking like you’re done, but we still have half of a show left,” Lynn said.

Was I? Were we?

I was. We were.

“You brought up the arm thing,” Lookout said. “And her hospital stay. It was scummy. I think we’re leaving, yeah.”

She’d checked with us before the ‘yeah’.

Yeah.

We’d wondered what would happen if they’d kicked us off the show and tried to take control of the narrative. Without planning it among one another, we’d arrived on the same page about how we’d handle this.

“You can talk about Lookout’s case, Capricorn’s, and Swansong’s, or you can dredge up Mayday’s history. Time and the courts will tell. In the meantime, we have work to do.”

“The same applies to Lookout’s family,” Gary Nieves said. “They haven’t been tried or convicted by the court.”

“We’ll trust the process,” I said.

“So will I,” Gary said.

We left the hot illumination of the set, into the dimly lit side area, beneath the staring, hostile eyes of the crowd in their seats.

⊙