She made her way down the side of the building, strips of her being helping her down, more appearing as she needed them to seize handholds. The rain had settled in part, but the snow still came down hard.

My phone rang. I put it on speaker.

“Woman named… Reidleigh Darleet is talking. She’s the author,” Sveta reported. “They’re talking about the amnesty. Violent capes getting a pass. The Drenched. Valkyrie. A… bunch of villain names I’m not sure I heard about.”

“Me,” Swansong said.

“Didn’t come up,” Sveta said.

“I’m offended by that,” Swansong said. “I’d be offended if I were named, but being ignored is worse.”

“I think I’m okay with you not being named,” I told her. “Earn your reputation as Swansong, don’t lean on what you did as Damsel.”

“I’m both,” she told me. “All three. Who I was, who I am, and who I want to be.”

“I guess don’t let one happen at the cost of the other two.”

“I’ll do that as soon as you take your own advice,” she told me, archly.

“Woah, hold up,” I said, my voice overlapping with Tristan’s, who’d said something similar. “Dial it down.”

“Hmph.”

Her footing was right, at least. Fuck me, though, we needed a middle ground that wasn’t her ranting at people on a train and murdering teammates with words. She was so good at wearing this latent hostility that it spooked me a bit.

“Shitty thing is,” Tristan said. “I think my parents would attend a group like this. Powers fucked all our lives up. They’re not exactly shaking the pom-poms. Especially not for me.”

“Bitch at us when you don’t have any parents, like Sveta,” Swansong said. “When you’ve killed them by your own hand, like I did, or when you’ve smeared your mom’s head across concrete, like Victoria did.”

My blood ran cold.

Ashley met my eyes, and there was nothing there. Cold, emotionless, unflinching.

“Not fair,” I said.

“Cries for fairness are the loser’s prerogative. Don’t be a loser, Antares.”

Fuck me. I’d need to have a chat with her, because that hit a little too close to uncomfortable territory, tracing a ways back to a basketball game.

Tristan spoke up, “I’m not trying to one-up anyone, I’m saying it sucks. It doesn’t have to suck the most to count.”

“If Cryptid were here, he’d have a good immature joke about sucking the most,” Rain observed. “I miss Cryptid. How fucked up is it that I miss Cryptid?”

“Very,” I said, at the same time Swansong said, “Exceedingly.”

“Alright,” Rain said, a little defeated. “He was alright company sometimes.”

“Guys,” Tristan pointed down at the street below.

On the monitor was a grainy gray image, like one from a security camera. The figure in it was unmistakably Ashley, Hollow Point era.