Work it off... Just get back to work and ignore it. 

That had been how Wilbur had majoritively gotten through his life. It went right back to his days as a weak, insecure teenager, picked on for where his academic skills instead of being born cool. Just find s mindless task to keep your hands busy and the bad feelings would get bored and go away. Once upon a time, it was a winning strategy for the worst of situations... But not this time. 

The strategy worked for mild feelings of oppression and humiliation. Not grief. 

Even now as he sat in his hotel room, underneath the mechanical mostrocity he had built, he could still hear his voice, see that stupid upbeat snail of his and hear his quips about how his bald head could reflect light... God it felt abysmal without him. Leaving an old, depressed man with only his own thoughts for company was not a good thing. He'd be lucky if his own thoughts didn't eat him from within like some horrible alien creature... Huh. A reference. How quaint, he thought...

He still remembered the scene so vividly. When the smoke rose from the fires, bodies littered the streets and rubble had piled up, amidst all of that, he'd spotted the familiar light patch of brown. He'd set his shell into overdrive, using mechanical claws to dig into at least half a buildings worth of rubble. And beneath it all, there he was. Battered, bruised, broken, breathless. No smile, no jokes, just the uncontested cold hard fact of death. It'd set his heart to stone. 

He'd stormed out of the Champions without regret, alongside Red Jack and the ragtag crew that felt the same way....what a sad joke it all was. Turning their backs on the strongest members of their group to form some pathetic pocket of resistance...

Still, no regrets.

If Nagoya taught him anything, it was how dangerous they truly were. The images of that blasted dragon burning the streets or that cosmic child destroying a man where he stood. the buildings falling and the people screaming... They needed boundaries. Individuals as powerful as them needed personal responsibility, guidelines to follow and punishments when they went too far, something the champions didn't grasp... But he did. And with this splinter group, that was what he hoped to achieve. 

His thoughts were broken by the news report... Did he leave the TV on? Tinhead Ned... now there was a name Wilbur despised. Wilbur was a mechanic, Ned was a crazed engineer with a sad lust for power. And if he was out there, it meant trouble. Even in the wake of this incident, his inner sense of justice tugged at his soul, urging him to get out there and start searching... and, it seemed he wasn't alone, getting Red Jacks message. Depression be damned, it was time to go to work. 

He released himself from his work and set his shell on auto pilot to get it home faster. It would just fly straight to the location needed and trying to get it through customs would be harrowing. He slipped on a brown jacket and slipped a flat cap over his head before he headed down to the lobby to get a taxi. His thoughts followed his footsteps.