After around two hours of shock and panic, flying just above the clouds at a low altitude, we finally got to where we were headed.

Actually, before we got into the air, we hardly had much of a plan on where we were going, more just thinking of getting anywhere that wasn’t Avernus.

I held back the tears thinking about the place. I’d lived there for two years, I had my belongings there. Like… all of them…

Well, not necessarily everything… but that’s for another day. All I heard today was the distant destruction of my home, ringing off so loudly that we heard it inside the plane as we left.

We’d landed on an unidentified air strip near Calgary at around eight thirty in the dark. It'd been a long, tiring flight after the rough take-off… Thoughts of Vigil’s death haunted me… I’m sure it did stuff to the others too.

The owner was nice when we lied and told him our craft had been attacked by supervillains, he completely bought it after we played the ‘We have Lethal Inferno’ card and let us stay the night.

Jeb had taken off to go find Steelpiercer, he took a bus back and said he would like to meet again, in his own rough and crude way.

It was just the four of us, alone, scared… We hadn’t even realized the worst of it yet. I sat up in the sleeping bag, propped against the wall with some pillows the whole night. My throat parched and my stomach queasy. I never ended up vomiting, but I felt like I should, I had the delusion it would cleanse me.

I’d been tossed around quite a lot in my life, but I always had somewhere to call home. Now, I had nowhere to go. Nowhere to curl up and cry. But for that night, that little sleeping bag did the trick.

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I doubted so many things, like if I’d ever get a job, and have a life again. Would I even be able to save Stocklord? I highly doubted that. It’d be easier just to draw up my resignation and quit. I wasn’t super dedicated or anything.

That was… until I saw Twee shivering. It was cold, yes, but I heard faint sobs coming from her bed. I knew she’d invested her life into everything at Stocklord’s company. She had barely got an in-person social life, and she did hardly anything outside of Avernus that was for herself. She’d just lost it all.

I didn’t dare disturb her though. I would confront her about it in the morning.

But that morning I realized something shocking on the TV. I was lucky the owner of the air strip was out buying groceries, because if he saw this broadcast I was watching, we’d be in deep shit.

“Last night, a tragic encounter occurred in the skies above Canada.” the newscaster began. “Six supervillains were pursued by Bluejay, America’s flying hero from The Ultrahuman Force, after brief combat, sources say one of the supervillains stunned Bluejay, causing both of them to plummet to the Earth in an act of self sacrifice. The bodies were discovered this morning after a search party conducted by the US government. The supervillains responsible are unknown so far, but authorities have identified their deceased accomplice as Vigil Sewan, or his super identity, Blackout. The government says they are handling the case, and they have found that Vigil Sewan may also be another alias, hiding his real one. The government is interrogating undisclosed sources for further information.”

Now that the government was investigating, I was pretty sure that we were in for running. A lot of running and hiding.