I could also cringe inwardly at the fact that our superhero here was implicitly sporting a ‘move forward’ ideology when that was the last thing this old man probably wanted to hear with a freshly reopened emotional wound. Time and place. Unfortunately, because of the team emblem the cape had on his breast—a stylized figure holding a shield shaped like a greater-than symbol, the guy represented that ideology every time, in every place.

He walked over to the car, still watching the crowd, and he exchanged a few words with the girl in the driver’s seat. I was glad for that, at least. I had my hands full with the old guy and nobody else was stepping up to do it.

The cape stepped away from the car, looked at me and the old man. “He’s okay?”

“The pillar. It’s for his—” I started, looking at the plate on the pillar for a clue.

“Son. My son,” the man said.

“My condolences,” the hero said.

The man tensed. They were words that made it worse, not better, somehow.

“Go,” someone in the crowd said. A different person than the last. “We’re fine.”

The people that had been splintering away were holding position now. I could see the hostility. The summer heat was holding out through the start of September, making things just a little more uncomfortable, tempers a little shorter.

“Yeah,” the hero said, more to himself.

It put me in mind of a scene from the history books and the grainy old news footage of an event from the mid-80s. Back in the day, when the superheroes could be counted on the fingers of both hands, there had been a riot over a sports match. The anger and chaos had outweighed the respect the rioters had for the hero that had stepped in. Someone had struck out with a blunt object and hit the hero. He’d died before he reached the hospital. We’d called him the second cape after Scion, but he might well have been the first, after all.

Did I think that would happen here? No. Too small a group, the emotions were different, there wasn’t enough chaos.

Still, the general setpieces were here. The barely restrained emotion. The lack of care. The ill-timed intervention of the man in costume. The lack of respect in particular was in play. For Vikare, it had been because so many people hadn’t truly believed the powers were real, and he had apparently held back to avoid scaring people.

For this cape from Advance Guard, it was the opposite. He’d gone all out, we’d gone all out. Capes still hadn’t been able to stop the world from ending.

We were back at the beginning in so many ways.

“Yeah,” the hero said again. He seemed to wrestle with what he was going to say next before deciding on, “I’m going to go.”