Slingstone… he hadn’t been as cavalier about his background. He’d gone after the big guys. He was ex-Haven and hadn’t been open about why, and he’d dodged the Shepherds, presumably being close-mouthed about his decision there. He was ‘boring’ by how he looked on paper. A blaster, a single shot at a time, softball sized ‘stones’. They flew in straight lines at high velocities and were really, really good at breaking through and shattering the inorganic, including armor.

But he’d fought Endbringers, traveling overseas to do it. A year before Leviathan had hit Brockton Bay, Slingstone had been hurt in an Endbringer fight, and he’d taken a break. He’d resumed activities just in time for the world to end.

The individual pieces of his body were mixed in with Nailfarer’s and Scaffold’s. Streaks of blood suggested the directions by which they’d been thrown.

Multiple sizes of footprint suggested that members of the team had waded through the gore of the first one to die… or that there had been multiple attackers.

“Cuff, do you have any metal? I need a chunk you don’t care about,” Laserdream said.

Cuff tossed something to her.

The team hadn’t been much of a cape against cape group. They’d focused more on mundane gangs and criminal organizations, with Slingstone being the one to go up against Endbringers and challenge the powered enforcers.

In a lot of ways, they’d been closer to police than capes. They’d been offered positions in the Guild, an international organization rooted in Canada, very cause-driven and mission-focused. They’d turned it down, allegedly because it was still too much about image, and they just wanted to work.

Who or what came after you, and why?

The location was important. That I’d been pretty fucking close to here in the last twenty-four hours was important. I knew it was bad to decide who the culprit was before all the evidence came in, but Love Lost’s group had members who were willing and able to do something this savage, and she wasn’t situated that far away.

March’s group could blow people to smithereens and take people to pieces, and they’d been close, earlier in the day.

“Victoria,” Laserdream said.

I flew over in her direction. Below her, Scaffold was more intact than the rest. Head and torso were impaled on the mangled architecture that he’d created with his power. His parts were strewn about as the others were, red and glistening.

Created and altered building layouts. Slide a wall this way, raise up a wall where there was none. Trapdoors and cover as it was needed.

General use wall and forcefield powers, as I understood it, came about most often from trigger events that involved ambient, environmental threats to people or things the trigger victim wanted to protect.

Aunt Sarah had it as a power. So did Crystal. So had Eric.