The current situation wasn’t all that different from the way it had been with the PRT. There were heroes, there were villains. One would fight the other. Most would go through the revolving door, unless they committed an egregious act or fell down a slippery slope and found themselves at the bottom with an enemy clear in their memory.

Breakthrough was one such concern. She had struck a deal with them, and how that deal was treated would tell her a lot. Hopefully that would be in time. Hopefully.

The words and noises were escalating in volume. The tranquil scene of a snowy, flat field was disturbed, the furthest thing from tranquil.

The frustrations being spoken of now were bottled up ones. They were being afraid one’s home wouldn’t stand for more than a few years, that the winter was already proving to be an utter bitch, and they’d had barely a day of proper snow.

She caught the word ‘kill’, and she didn’t pursue it with her power.

With two years of relative low consequences now over, the petty villains were facing a return to something like that old status quo under the PRT. A firmer response, real consequences for the worst offenders. It had been inevitable, guaranteed to happen if society rebuilt on any level. Tattletale had expected it a year from now, and she’d been wrong.

But of course, to this population of small villains who hadn’t thrown their lot in with the Red Queen, Teacher, or other warlords, this return to order was now intolerable, the response anger. This wasn’t a tidy group, not an organization like Prancer’s. Only a hundred or so capes who seemed to agree on nothing at all except that it was looking like a time to start getting mean, to draw blood and scare off the heroes.

It wouldn’t be that simple, of course, but blood would be shed.

She’d hoped to steer it if it came to this, but she had to wait for the loudest voices to grow hoarse. She was losing optimism by the second. She’d come at this from the wrong idea of what it was going to be.

She looked back at Chicken Little.

When she had brought him under her wing, she’d told herself she would do it right. She would help him, save him and save him from himself, if she had to.

She was zero for two. If she couldn’t get it right and save him, at least, then what?

A hard thing to say to his face. In some ways, he was doing so well. In others, she worried.

In this situation, she worried. A careful retreat might be needed, to avoid being at the fringes of a firefight or any violence.

She was so tired.

Tired of fighting her shard. Tired of managing.