Sliced Bread 2: The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread

I've been trying to keep out of everybody's way today. I don't know how to handle this. Greyghost and Cruickshank have been in and out. Ingrid's been around, but I've been keeping my distance from her; I don't like the look on her face. And I got to meet another couple of superheroes, although I kept these meetings as short and to the point as I could.

See, Manxcat was found dead this morning.

I hadn't even heard of Manxcat. There are about a dozen superheroes active in Empire City, and she was one of them; just goes to show you how much attention I pay. Anyway, some maintenance guys found her lying on an airport runway this morning with a few bullets in her and her neck snapped. Obviously bad news.

So Greyghost has been in consultation with Cruickshank a lot. Why, I don't know; I don't know what legal or financial angles there could possibly be here. But it means I've had to brew a lot of coffee.

And then this evening he came in from the tunnel with two people I hadn't seen before. One was a tall wiry guy with a leather costume that was split down the middle, half red and half black. The black side of his mask had a red eyepiece. The other guy was shorter and all in dark red, with a bit of neon orange trim around the mask and belt. Greyghost introduced them to me as One-Eyed Jack and Surefire, but nobody was in the mood for conversation and they closed the door of the blue room on me after I had gotten them their coffee.

I guess it's like . . . I guess it's like in the cop movies and TV shows when there's a cop killer on the loose and the cops drop everything to go catch the guy. The thinking is that killing the cops is the one thing they don't tolerate, because it affects their ability to deal with all the other stuff. Or that's the story, anyway. I always thought it was because the cops didn't want to die, and wanted to scare everyone badly enough that nobody'd ever try killing them again.

Same with these superheroes. Are Greyghost and the boys meeting to deal with the Problem of People Killing Superheroes, or are they just scared? I mean, I'd be scared too. But then I don't go around hunting supervillains.

It's something I'm not informed enough on to have a good opinion: how much of all this violence is a function of the existence of supervillains, and how much is perpetuated by superheroes? I think Manxcat would have some interesting thoughts on the issue. Shame I can't ask her.