AN: For anyone who primarily reads Parahuman Fanfiction rather than the source material... Miss Militia is not a good or reasonable person in the source material. She is closer to John Walker than to Steve Rogers. Keep that in mind.

Snuggles the Symbiote

If you'd asked me who my favorite cape was, once upon a time, I'd have probably said Miss Militia. A founding member of the inaugural Wards Team, a long experienced heroine who, supposedly, always did the right thing.

Then I'd met her. And realized that she wasn't much better than the teachers at Winslow. She'd been complicit in the instructions that had gotten PRT Troopers killed when the PRT had been given intel that would have kept those people alive. She'd wasted the time of heroes who'd shown up to help when the Slaughterhouse Nine was in town instead of.., Literally everything else. She was complicit in every crooked thing Piggot had done since Ashley and I had joined... Not to mention whatever it was that made the Ms. Mystic in the future hate her with such passion.

And now she was yelling at us.

"Did we break the law?" I asked when she stopped to take a breath.

"What?"

"Did we break the law?" I asked again, firmly. "Or violate the terms of our contract? Becuase Ashley and I have iron-clad contracts that state that you cannot punish us unless we do one of those things. So, unless we broke the law, we are not, in fact, in trouble... And we have three witnesses to you violating the terms of our contracts. Not a good look for the second in command of Protectorate ENE. Could really damage the reputation of the PRT if that got—"

Miss Militia slapped me. It didn't hurt, but she slapped me.

"Let me tell you a little secret," she said with a glare. "Your contracts don't matter. The law doesn't matter. Your rights don't matter. What matters, is peace and stability. And you and this little brat running around doing whatever you want whenever you want jeopardizes that—"

"How?" Ashley asked.

"You're undermining the authority of the PRT."

"So the PRT's authority is undermined if they can't punish us if we didn't do anything wrong and because we have a bunch of rights and priveledges that let us shut down bullcrap that can only hurt us? Enforcing the rights that Wards are supposed to have in the first place instead of letting Director Piggot treat us like property undermines your authority?" Ashley asked again. "Is your authority also undermined because you can't kill us or send us to prison without trial whenever you want?"

Miss Militia responded by turning her weapon into a pistol and placing it in Ashley's face.

"If I killed you right now, for the greater good, not a damn thing would happen." My first instinct had been to punch Miss Militia off of the shattered remains of the pedestal she'd been upon, but I noticed that Ashley's mom was coming up behind her. "Beyond that, you don't get it: The 'bullcrap' you claim can only hurt you exists for a reason—"

"What possible reason could there be for instituting collective punishments?" I interrupted, "There's no good reason to ever do to us what would be a war crime if you did it to prisoners of war. Or how about transferring Wards to different cities without asking them or their families until the arrangements have already been made?"

"Yeah!" Ashley added, "we're kids, not trading cards."

"Yeah... Not gonna lie, if I went to the news with half of the stuff I've learned about how the PRT operates since joining," Lisa interjected, "I could probably get the entire upper management of the local branch arrested."

"It's honestly surprising that the Youth Guard hasn't gotten involved yet," I added.

"This!" Miss Militia exclaimed. "This ignorance. This disrespect. From arrogant children who don't know a damn thing about how the world really works—"

"Twenty-one genocides against people like me in my lifetime alone," Ashley interrupted.

"Homeless runaway with abusive parents forced into a life of crime at gunpoint by a member of the PRT," Lisa continued.

"Bullied relentlessly by a group of people including a probationary Ward culminating in my triggering after being trapped in a locker full of used tampons for... I don't even know how long, kind of had a psychiatric break after I triggered. Teachers did jack shit even after promising they'd help."

"...Okay, unless a holocaust survivor turns up in the next minute, I think Taylor wins this round of misery poker," Ashley said, sounding kind of sick.

"So yeah, I think we know how the world really works," I finished. "Which means we know that you're full of shit."

"You'd think you'd be more sympathetic," Lisa started. "But no, you're just a more polite version of the monsters that made you trigger. It's sad, really, just how much you're lying to yourself right now. And Ms. Piggy isn't even pretending, she sees the Wards as disposable assets at best and you know it. If you were the person you present yourself as you'd have gotten rid of her, by hook or by crook, long ago."

"I'm sick of this," Miss Militia continued, "and Director Piggot is sick of it. Disrespect and arrogance and ignorance, ever since she," she pointed at Ashley, "showed up. That's why the director sent me to get you three, so you could be dealt with."

"I mean, is it really you coming to get us if you have to wait until we're coming home anyway," Ashley deadpanned.

"So here is what's going to happen," Miss Militia said, ignoring the interruption but clearly frustrated. "You three are coming back with me. You're all going on monitor duty indefinitely, and you're going to voluntarily accept massive pay cuts because your pay isn't reasonable no matter what one jumped up lawyer says, and if you complain or refuse..." Miss Militia pointed to Lisa. "Her probation goes away and she goes to prison for all of those crimes she confessed she was complicit in and your pet serial killer," she said while looking back at Ashley, "goes to the Birdcage. And yes, you can complain, get lawyers involved, say we broke the law... But the ex-con won't get those months, maybe years, of her life back and there's no way to get someone out of the Birdcage short of a teleporter, so..."

Ashley responded by vanishing in a puff of smoke that smelled of... You know, they say sulfur smells like rotten eggs but I've never actually smelled a rotten egg. I assume the smoke smelled of sulfur.

Ashley poped in maybe a centimeter behind where she was. "Okay, I wasn't sure if I got that back or not. I can teleport. I got this power by copying it from the son of the guy that got cloned to make the guy that broke that Marcus guy out. Send Grace to the Birdcage and I'll just break her out and leave you stranded there. Because you're right."

She floated up and looked Miss Militia in the eye. "The law doesn't matter. The law can't apply to people like us. They weren't written for people with powers, and every attempt to make laws to account for guys like us... Best case scenario they're an unenforceable mess. Worst case scenario, a black man gets murdered by a cyborg posing as a Norse deity because he refused to obey a law that was eight different kinds of human rights violation," Dr. Richards winced, "and teenage girls who are just flying around on their own property not hurting anyone get arrested by the military without a warrant and forced to become snipers in violation of anti-child soldier laws to avoid going to prison without trial."

"The law doesn't matter for people like us. What matters for people like us is right and wrong. And you? You're wrong. The whole freaking PRT is wrong. You know that rule about how people with powers don't get to be PRT unless they're Protectorate or in the Wards? You know that Alexandria and your Chief Director are the same person, right? And she's committed a lot of crimes against humanity. Ask her where the Case 53s really come from." That... I was going to have to ask about that later. "Not to mention the dozens of ways that kill orders and Birdcage sentences are super illegal. You wanna play blackmail and extortion...? Well, it's a stupid game and you're gonna win a stupid prize for playing."

Miss Militia raised her hand to strike Ashley, only for Ashley's mother, long since come up behind her, to grab it and twist Miss Militia's arm behind her back.

"Hello, my name is Yuri O'Leary. My husband's Irish," she said in a tone that seemed as if the last part was force of habit. "I'm Ashley's mom. And as of last night, I'm an immortal undead ninja supersoldier. Please give me twenty solid, well-thought-out reasons for why I shouldn't spend the next hour kicking your ass up and down the Isle of Manhattan for threatening and trying to blackmail and extort my daughter and her friends. And I'm gonna need all twenty or I'm just gonna start kicking. You have sixty seconds, not counting the time I've spent explaining."

Miss Militia responded by hitting Ashley's mom in the face with the back of her own head, twisting out of her grip, and firing a barrage of bullets into her chest from a glowing green automatic pistol.

This prompted Ashley to scream and jump on Miss Militia's back and start pounding on the back of her head. Since Miss Militia wasn't dying from this, I assume that Ashley was not using her superhuman strength.

Ashley's mother got up and dusted herself off while I tried to pull Ashley off of Miss Militia's back. This did not go how I planned when I confronted Miss Militia about our contracts and at this point I just wanted it to stop escalating...

...Why did I feel like someone had just walked over my grave when I thought that?

"These are borrowed clothes, you bitch," I could hear Ashley's mother say. "And you're lucky I'm immortal. Dr. Richards, is there a way to play music in here?"

"...Just ask the computer for music," he said hesitantly. "Why?"

"I kick ass better when I have music."

"Now see here, I really can't—"

"Computer play 'Real American' by Rick Derringer," Ashley's mom interrupted. Then she jumped for the... Growing ball of violence as vaguely heroic sounding rock and roll music stopped playing.

After a few moments of chaotic four-man-grappling, the whole lot of us were wrapped up in something long and stretchy and... Oh God, we were wrapped up in Dr. Richards' stretched-out torso. That... That just seemed gross.

"Okay, I was going to stay out of this," he said as he stretched his neck to face us, "because it seemed personal and it looked like it would stay that way, but I cannot allow violence in this laboratory. Now, are you going to calm down and settle this like rational, intelligent people or—"

Miss Militia had a free arm and she used it to point her gun at Dr. Richards' head. "Unhand me at once or I'll shoot."

"Really now I don't—" Dr. Richards was interrupted because Miss Militia elected to shoot Dr. Richards in the face. He yelped, more in surprise than pain judging from the sound, and dropped the four of us as the bullet ricocheted around the room before finally hitting Lisa... At least I assume it hit Lisa. She screamed.

I couldn't see because the four of us landed on Dr. Richards' teleporter. Something shattered and something started sparking and I'm pretty sure that they were the same something.

I had just enough time to hear Dr. Richards curse before I was engulfed in the light of teleportation.