Soup Lines & Capes: The Disappeared of Ironvale

Sammy Quell yanks her cart around a pile of discarded hero helmets, boots squeaking on last night’s rain. Roxie Blaze, breath fogging in the morning chill, leans against a graffiti-tagged transformer box, cigarette smoldering between gloved fingers. Father Grit bellows from the mouth of the alley,

“Soup’s on, but keep your heads down, caped clowns on parade today!”

The Giggler’s neon form darts overhead, scattering flyers onto the crowd below. Sammy catches one:

“PROTECT AND SERVE (YOUR BRAND!), MEET THE GUARDIANS OF GLOW!”

A siren wails nearby, closer than usual. Someone’s missing from the soup line. Sammy’s stomach knots; she exchanges a glance with Roxie, whose eyes flick nervously toward the end of the block, where the crowd’s beginning to thin. Sammy tightens her grip on the cart’s handle. She heads for the corner, where an unfamiliar hero pose is barely visible through the haze, right next to an abandoned sleeping bag.

Sammy’s cart crashes into a brick wall just as the ground explodes beneath her. Dust and rubble fill the air, swallowing the abandoned sleeping bag under a fresh mound of gravel. A towering figure in neon-blue spandex stands at the crater’s center, cape fluttering with forced grandeur. Sammy rubs grit from her eyes, glaring hard at the intruder.

"You just destroyed the only lead we had, you absolute moron!"

she shouts, her voice sharp with fury.

The neon-blue hero stiffened, his gaze flicking from the crater to Roxie’s flickering hands. The air around them thrummed with static. The few onlookers melted back into the shadows, leaving only the sound of crumbling brick and the hero’s heavy, rhythmic breathing. He shifted his stance, eyes narrowing behind a reflective visor.