Alt-Power AU: Cut Loose

It didn't happen with some big bang, some dramatic event. I wish it had, somebody might have noticed. Or maybe that's too optimistic.

Instead, it was… I don't know. Bullying is too mild a word. Ruining my life is closer, because that's what they were doing. I… I don't want to go into it. I won't. I was bullied by my former best friend for years. One night, I cried myself to sleep, which is normal. I woke up with powers. That's all you need to know.

Oh, and the names. Emma Barnes, Sophia Hess, Madison Clements. One of those is important later, and you already know which.

But not yet. You want the whole story, didn't you? What I did, why, how? I probably shouldn't be talking to you, but… I don't care. I just don't care anymore. So I will. At least you're listening. I think.

I woke up with powers, and I figured it out by scratching up my mirror by accident from across the room. Bitten-down fingernails carry enough of an edge to work. I spent maybe an hour figuring out what I could do, and then all day at school daydreaming about being a hero… Emma threw my backpack in the garbage can because I forgot it in class, I was so distracted.

I didn't hurt her, I was going to be a hero. Or something. Somehow. Even though 'cuts things from a distance' didn't seem like a very heroic power. I would make it work. As a Ward. That was the plan. I wanted to be in a team. I didn't want more drama, but… Emma wouldn't be there. She wouldn't know any of them. They all go to Arcadia.

I didn't want to go in until I had a costume, though. I was going to wait. I was going to wait. But Emma's friends didn't make it easy. Sophia kept knocking me against lockers between classes, all that week. It was some sort of game, or bet. I didn't have anything on me except my fingernails, but I was so tempted… I cut her, once. With my power. She had just knocked me against the locker, and my nose was bleeding, and nobody cared… When she came in to shove me again I ducked and cut at her hand. It was barely more than a scrape on her palm. She didn't realize it was me. It bled a little.

That scared me. I didn't want to use my powers on them, even if they deserved it. I definitely didn't want to do it in a moment of weakness. I went to the Rig that afternoon, to sign up, no costume. I got as far as the bridge over. Then I ran into Shadow Stalker.

I didn't know why she noticed me. There were at least ten people walking over to the Rig at the time, she was coming back from a patrol or something. I was just part of that crowd. But she stared at me, she let the other Ward go on ahead without her.

She didn't do anything more than stare, but I've… I've gotten good at noticing when I'm being watched. Especially by her. I saw her… I saw the bandage on her hand. It spooked me. I didn't have a reason for going home except that I had lost my nerve…

But then I looked Shadow Stalker up. I put things together. It wasn't hard.

That killed my plans to be a Ward. It hurt. I didn't want to go back to school. I faked being sick for a day. Dad barely noticed. He barely noticed anything.

When I did go back the next day… I took a razor with me. Just a razor, from dad's shaving kit. I don't really know why I did. It made me feel safe. Safer than before. Even if I didn't mean to use it. Sophia had her powers… I had mine.

I told myself I was going to be an independent hero, but it didn't really feel real. I knew exactly how it would go. I would cut people until they stopped fighting back, criminals but still people, and I would get in trouble for excessive force. I would get forced into the Wards, like Sophia was. I saw the news articles about it. Excessive force got her, and she her power isn't even good for attacking. It would only be a matter of time.

I didn't know… I didn't know what to do. At all. And my power… I wanted to use it. It was like an itch. An itch that got worse whenever Sophia was around. She hurt me, she was always the one to do the physical things. Emma hurt me with words and rumors, Madison devised tricks and pranks and ways to get me in trouble, Sophia did the roughing up. I wanted to make her stop. It would have been fair. Pain stopped by more pain.

That scared me. I started skipping classes whenever I felt myself considering it. Going to the library… It wasn't better, but my grades were failing anyway. I was going to have to repeat the grade, and I wasn't sure whether that would be good or bad. Another year in school, but to never have a class with my tormentors again… It evened out. And it was better than cutting them up and being a monster.

Then the Principal… She's a bitch. Always on their side, always turning it back on me when I complained. I get it now, I think. She wanted a Ward at her school. Maybe she even wanted two. Or maybe she didn't know how parahumans happen. I didn't, not until someone told me later.

She called my dad about me skipping classes. She did it herself, just to tell him personally that I was suspended for truancy. Which is...sort of ironic. Though I didn't think so at the time.

I didn't even know until he confronted me about it that night. Things… I don't want to talk about it. He has a temper, I have a temper, my razor blade fell out of my sleeve at the worst time… I ran.

I ran.

I slept on a park bench that night. Even though I knew he would probably let me come back if I tried. He was worried. Worried and angry. But I couldn't… I couldn't deal with his anger. Not when he never did anything to help me. He didn't have the right to be angry. Not since mom died. Unless he was angry for me, and he wasn't. Maybe he would have been, if I explained it before…

I don't… I don't want to think about it.

There was a fight in the park that night, just before dawn. Empire thugs against ABB thugs. Nothing big, no capes… I woke up in the middle of a brawl. Someone landed on top of me. It hurt, I screamed, nobody cared… The Empire drove off the ABB, with fists and bats and a pistol, and then they gathered their people up…

And me. They thought I was one of them. It was an initiation fight, a bunch of guys and two girls who were trying to prove themselves in a big way. They barely knew each other… they thought I had come along.

They were going to get food and medical attention. My ribs hurt and I didn't know where my next meal was going to come from. I went with them.

There was food, there was a shady guy who told me my ribs were just bruised… They never caught on that I wasn't supposed to be there. I was white, and the one girl from Winslow recognized me. She didn't remember me showing up, and she didn't really like me, but she wasn't surprised to see me. Said that if anyone had a reason to join the cause, it would be me.

I didn't. Join them, I mean. I don't… hate like that. Not like them. People suck, everyone is horrible, skin color or orientation or religion has nothing to do with it. But they had a place for me to sleep and treated me like I was worth something. I didn't have anywhere else to go.

It didn't last. They wanted me to prove myself. To ambush someone they didn't like and cut them up. They never knew about my powers, so it was just a normal initiation… just maiming someone for fun. They even gave me a knife to do it with.

I was tempted to do it to them, instead. All of them. I could have. They wouldn't have been able to stop me. But I didn't. I just… left, one night. No refusal, no speech about equality and the rotten core of their creed, nothing like that. I had entirely given up on being a hero by that point. There was no point to it. I just… wasn't a racist. Even if they tried to make me feel like I belonged. I couldn't stay with them.

That made me homeless. Again. I didn't… I didn't work up the courage to go home. I should have. I really, really should have. But I didn't. I spent a night wandering.

Then I almost got flattened by a monster-dog. There's something about my luck, constantly having low-lifes falling on me while I'm asleep… At least this time I had the chance to move out of the way. Lung's roaring and explosions woke me just before the dog-thing showed up.

Of course, Lung was following them. The Undersiders, I learned later. They had robbed him, or something. He was out to get them, he was chasing them. I was in the way.

I almost used my power on the Undersiders. I did use my power on Lung, when he blew up the end of my alleyway. I don't really know why, except that I was so damn tired of running. It was...

It was good, okay? Making someone that big and terrifying stumble, making him pause, cutting him down to size. I'd had a really shitty week, and it was only getting worse, and I didn't have to worry about killing him because he was so far out of my league his regeneration alone made me almost useless. It was the first time I used my power since that day in school with Sophia. It was exhilarating.

The Undersiders pulled me onto their dogs once they realized I wasn't actually beating Lung, just annoying him, and they ran. I kept cutting into him whenever I saw him, even as they fled. By the time they gave him the slip, my knife was just leaving scratches on his scales.

They were grateful. Really grateful. I was… less so. You know, for them leading the rage-dragon right to me. They backed off, saying they owed me, and that was the last I saw of them that night. Never saw Armsmaster, I only heard later that he put Lung down.

I wish he hadn't. I wish I'd killed Lung back then. I could have aimed for the throat to start with, or the eyes. Maybe that would have worked. If he was dead, he couldn't have been captured. If he wasn't captured…

But you know all that. You know it better than I do. And I don't want to kill. I don't even want to hurt people. I threw up that morning, once the adrenaline wore off. Even though I didn't do any lasting damage.

I don't want to hurt people, but using my power… It makes me feel better. Less helpless. After that night I started using it on random walls, and wood, and anything else that nobody will care about, and that… it helps. I don't have to hurt people, it's not a compulsion. It doesn't make me feel any better than just… flexing my power. Like a muscle.

But I hadn't figured that out the morning after. I was too busy being surprised in an alleyway by one of the supervillains from the night before. Tattletale, I think that's what she's called. She showed up alone, out of costume. I won't tell you what she looked like. She told me about the Unwritten Rules.

Unwritten Rules. Like they're some perfect guidance to protect everyone involved. They've never protected me, and I'm a cape. Nobody knows my identity, nobody cares, they just kill the people I care about by accident.

We're not there yet, though. Tattletale, she took me to a cafe, paid for a nice meal, handed me a bag with a couple thousand dollars in it. A thank-you for the night before, she said, and an apology.

It didn't feel like either. It felt like a bribe. She was too… manipulative. She was like Emma, but worse because she had some power that let her figure things out about me without even trying. Emma, without needing years of close friendship to ferret out all of the little secrets. She tried to recruit me, tried to sell her group as a bunch of small-time thieves that were barely even criminals…

She knew I wasn't buying it before I even said anything, kept changing her approach to try and find a weak spot. That just made her even more like Emma. Not trying to hurt me, not directly, she told me a lot of useful things without asking for anything in return… What a Trigger event was. But still. Trying to make me feel the way she wanted, trying to make me dance to her tune. Eventually she gave up. Left me the money.

I spent a few nights in a crappy motel, and eating crappy food, and it was good. I thought the money would last me a few more weeks, at least. I got out, used my power on objects, felt a little better… Not good enough to forget that I was living on charity, on borrowed time.

I couldn't go to the Wards. Not with Sophia there. I don't believe anything would… will… be done about her. Not when it never was before. I didn't want to be with the Empire or the ABB. The ABB wouldn't take me anyway, I'm not asian. The Undersiders were not for me. Maybe if Tattletale wasn't one of them.

But Faultline's Crew… They were mercenaries. They had a reputation for not doing jobs in Brockton Bay, and for being high-priced and high quality. I went to the Palanquin one night. I wanted a job… I needed money. To not be living on borrowed time anymore. I thought maybe I could go back home once… Once I had something else to go back to if that didn't work out. I was afraid of ending up on that park bench again. Being homeless for a few days really changes your priorities, but… not enough to make me just go home then.

I should have.

Instead, I went to the Palanquin and managed to get an interview with Faultline. She didn't like me. Oh, she didn't say it directly, but all her talk about not taking in charity cases, and how everyone does their part… She told me her group wasn't taking any jobs for the next month, and that she might give me a call if they picked up a job where I could help, but I gave her a fake phone number to call if that happened. I knew she didn't want me.

Nobody wanted me. I considered looking for Uber and Leet, but I knew nothing about video games so they wouldn't want my help. They probably wouldn't pay very well, either. I don't know how they even fund themselves, let alone their minions. Coil was a name, nothing more, so I couldn't get in contact with him and didn't know if I wanted to.

The only parahuman group I hadn't crossed off my list by that point was the Merchants. I didn't want to get into selling drugs, so that was it.

I stuck with my crappy motel until the money ran out. Or, that was the plan.

Bakuda's bombing campaign kicked off when I was down to my last hundred dollars.

You know how that went. She wanted Lung freed, she was holding the entire city hostage to get it, planting bombs everywhere. The biggest clothing store on the Boardwalk went up in ice-cold flames in the middle of the day. A children's playground was turned to sand. Normal bombs exploded at random in all parts of town. Suicide bombers. Fighting between parahumans in the streets.

I held out for two days, mostly hiding in my motel room. Nowhere was any safer to be. Then I saw on the news that my neighborhood had been hit.

I should have gone back weeks before that. I went then, but it was too late. Our house hadn't been hit, the house next to ours… It didn't matter. A firebomb in the middle of the night, it spread immediately. I heard about it the morning after, and when I got there nothing was left of our house but ashes.

Bakuda. She had made herself known. Lung was still imprisoned, she was still demanding his release. I wanted something else.

Well, I wanted two different things. But the hospitals didn't have my dad, and the police couldn't tell me if he had been in the house at the time.

No, I don't know. Not even now. Danny Hebert, Daniel Hebert, head of the Dockworkers Union. Male, older, has a little scar on his forehead from some old fight he never wanted to tell me about. Could you… check? Please?

Not… Not that I expect you to find anything. He always came home late from work, but he never left the house in the middle of the night. He was probably there.

I should have never left.

I couldn't find Bakuda on my own. A cape, I'm still not sure who, caught me wandering ABB territory and told me about the villains meeting to discuss the ABB. They dropped a preprinted card, of all things. What kind of villain does that? Maybe Coil, since I'm not sure who it was. Most of them aren't subtle.

Obviously, I went. I'm not a villain… I don't think of myself as a villain… I haven't done anything wrong, except maybe hurting Sophia and she did a thousand times worse on a daily basis… They let me in anyway. I had to sit with the Merchants, but still.

Tattletale was there. Kaiser was there. Everyone was there, even some weird guys from out of town. Everyone except the ABB. Which was good, since the villains all agreed to put Bakuda down as soon as possible.

They didn't have a part for me to play. I cut things from a distance, they could have used me to trigger bombs, but Bakuda didn't hide her bombs in plain sight, so that was shot down. I don't think they trusted me to do my part. Maybe it was how I looked, like a new cape without a single fight under her belt.

Which I was. Except for Lung. But I wanted to do something.

I went… hunting, I think. Afterward. Because they weren't going to use me, not even the villains wanted another cape on their side. But I wanted Bakuda. I wanted her to… I don't know. To suffer. She was killing people, every day, but she killed the one person who mattered to me–

More than that. Maybe it's selfish, but she killed the last place I could have possibly belonged. I didn't have anywhere else to go, I was going to go back. I can't anymore, unless I want to sleep in the ashes.

I'm… not proud. Not of anything I've done. I made so many mistakes. But… damn it, I should have been able to apologize! To get an apology. Both. Either. Something!

So I went hunting, because if I couldn't ever escape the pit my life was, the gnawing hole in my chest, then I was going to make sure I wasn't the only one. There's one person to blame for this latest, worst thing to happen. One person who isn't me. I wanted Bakuda.

I… still do. Because you know I didn't get her. Didn't even find her. Found one of her traps, in ABB territory. Empty building, gang signs, an obvious husk of junk that looked like a bomb, even to me. I… I set a fire in the street outside the building. Just a little one, some gas from a car and a few sparks. Enough to get anyone living nearby to evacuate. Some people left. I think everyone did.

Then I cut into that bomb. My knife, it didn't… wear down. I could cut at the metal, over and over again. Not cutting into it, but denting, breaking, chipping… I broke it down to its parts.

Then I went into the building.

The real bomb went off while I was inside.

You… you know the rest. Now you know it all.

I should have just told you I was a fresh trigger. I should have said I was in my house. That my house burning down and my father… dying… was my worst moment. And it was. But it wasn't. You would have found out I was lying. Maybe.

I don't know. I don't know anything.

Is anyone even listening?

Just… do whatever. Put me in jail. Throw me into the Wards. Let me be Sophia's new punching bag. I don't care anymore. It might be better than living on the street. Or maybe not. Every time I think I've hit bottom, a new sinkhole opens to drag me down even further, and never to anywhere I can belong.

I don't know…

I'm sorry.

The city was still, literally and metaphorically, on fire. Bakuda was taken down mere hours ago, but she was killed, not captured, setting off a post-mortem final wave of explosions. Hundreds were dead, and thousands more were injured. The Protectorate was being run ragged, and Miss Militia was exhausted.

But she didn't need sleep, so she was there. There to hear someone screaming from a pile of steaming, complicated-looking rubble in the depths of ABB territory. The building had gone up, which was in itself unusual given where it was, and the bomb to do it was not a normal one.

She called in backup, because making guns was not a relevant power for extricating a victim from a hot, wet pile of wood and bricks, and began to try and pick her way through. The bomb seemed to have been something water-related, a strange choice but not nearly as eldritch as some of the other things that had been reported around the city. Some things were waterlogged, others were mostly fine, puddles were forming everywhere… A cloud of vapor had collected over the remains of the building.

The screaming stopped, but as she got closer she could hear whimpering. Breathing, even, loud and hoarse in between the constant sizzling and dripping.

Assault showed up, apologetic about being the only one capable of responding, and got to work moving things aside with all-too-necessary caution. Miss Militia tried to talk to the girl, but got no answer.

Some of the main wooden beams that had made up the interior structure of the building, Assault told her, had to be laying across the girl. It was a problem Miss Militia had become far too familiar with in the last few days; moving one could shift the rest, and they didn't know where the girl was, exactly. Just that she was trapped beneath something, out of sight.

Assault moved something; something else shifted. The girl shrieked, the most noise out of her since the initial screams had stopped.

Miss Militia crawled forward, into the pile, heedless of the danger. She couldn't wait, she couldn't hold back. Things could shift again at any moment.

Down amidst the rubble, pinned under one of the largest wooden beams still intact, a black-haired girl lay. Her left arm was completely stuck under the beam, and her entire body was a hot, scalded red, like someone burned by steam. Tears streamed down her face.

Miss Militia whispered reassurances to the girl even as she assessed the unsteady puzzle of wood, water, and weight above their heads. It was bad, the worst she had seen yet in this hellish nightmare of a bombing campaign. She tried to get Clockblocker on the scene, or Shadow Stalker, but both were busy at the triage centers, saving dozens of lives while she struggled for this one soul.

"I… can't… feel my arm." The girl whispered to her. She was clearly in shock, her eyes wide and yet distant. "It's crushed. Isn't it?"

"Panacea can regrow it, we just have to get you out of here," Miss Militia assured her.

"Can't feel it…" A pained smile twitched onto the girl's face. Her good hand, if a scalded mess of steamed blisters could be called good, shakily felt around by her hip and drew a knife.

Miss Militia's eyes widened, and she caught the girl's wrist, keeping the knife safely far from her pinned arm–

The girl twitched the knife, and a horrible wound carved itself on her arm just above where it was trapped despite the distance. She did it thrice before Miss Militia really understood what was happening, and by then she was almost all of the way through. Screaming, horribly in pain, mutilating herself, but through. Free.

Miss Militia seized the stump in her hands, used her signature scarf to tourniquet the wound – her identity could stand a small risk in exchange for stopping someone from bleeding out – and picked the girl up from under the shoulders. Nothing she did was gentle, though she wished it was, and the girl passed out long before she made it out to the open air, but they did make it.

Assault was there to pass Miss MIlitia another face covering and take her burden. He set off on foot, toward the nearest triage center, because there were no emergency vehicles available. She abandoned her motorcycle to walk with him; it could wait until she returned. If she did.

"Did you really cut her arm off?" he asked as they walked.

"She did it herself, she's a new trigger," she responded.

She believed it at the time.

It was a transcript. A piece of paper, with typewriter-like font scrawled across it, slightly crooked. Output from one of the interrogation rooms. Meant to stop unknown Master effects that propagated by sound. The one being interrogated spoke, and the words were transcribed for unseen, unheard evaluators.

It was a setup to question dangerous criminals, and Miss Militia was going to stab somebody. Now. Her power flashed between a thousand different variants of knives, and settled more often than not on a bayonet blade with serrated edges.

"How long?" she all but screamed, the paper crumpling in her hands. The horrible, heartbreaking paper that she hadn't gotten a quarter of the way through before tears started to form in the corners of her eyes.

"This is fresh, she stopped talking two minutes ago," Armsmaster intoned. "It's-"

She sank her bayonet – without a gun attached, just a makeshift handle, an oddity she would think about later – into the desk, right next to his armored hand. In between his thumb and pointer finger, actually. Close enough to scrape against the metal with a short shriek.

He shut up. He didn't object when she took the time to crumple and then burn both copies of the interrogation, though she did so as quickly as possible with the aid of a miniature flamethrower. She left him putting out the flames, stormed into the interrogation room–

The girl, Taylor, startled from her chair. She was still missing an arm; Panacea was on pure triage mode, only healing the absolute minimum to keep people alive.

Miss Militia threw her gun aside, seized the girl into a hug, and refused to let go.

"You're suspended for a month, without pay," Piggot growled.

"Good." It wasn't good, people still needed her help… But people always needed help. Some needed help from any hero who could throw a punch. Others needed it from one person in particular. She was needed more elsewhere. Piggot was just making the choice easier, disciplining her for 'attacking a coworker' and 'destroying government property'.

"The girl needs to be brought back to Protectorate custody," Piggot added.

"Go shove a folder of disciplinary papers where the sun doesn't shine," Miss Militia said coldly. She had taken Taylor to her own home immediately, and she was recovering there. Nobody was taking her anywhere else until she felt like leaving. Especially not since her father had been confirmed dead four days ago, as overworked emergency forces finally got around to the non-vital tasks, like identifying dead bodies.

"Report to Master-Stranger screening," Piggot tried with a scowl.

"Done it already, proven clean, see you in a month." She turned to leave Piggot's office, then spun back around. Her power flickered to a nasty-looking rocket launcher on her back, the weight an added comfort. "Unless you haven't dealt with Shadow Stalker by then. It might be more than a month, in that case." Bullying was a breach of probation, at least when it was physical like what Taylor described, and if Piggot wanted a new Ward – or one of her current heroes – she was going to need to follow up on that.

"You're throwing your career on the line for a random delinquent," Piggot said.

"Do you know why I came here?" Miss MIlitia shot back. Bad memories came to the front of her mind, as clear as the day she had made then. Experienced them. Endured them. Her trigger event… and what came after. "I didn't have anywhere else to go. This country welcomed me with open arms."

It was the least she could possibly do to pass that gift on to someone else who needed it. Someone traumatized, with nowhere else to go, no sense of belonging anywhere… Their powers even shared a certain similarity. Their stories. It might have been the least she could do for Taylor, but she knew from experience that it meant the world.

"Just go," Piggot conceded.

Taylor was lying on the couch, her eyes on the television when Miss Militia – Hannah, out of costume – got home. There was a news program on, one detailing the rise of the Merchants in the devastation wrought by the ABB–

Hannah found the remote on the floor and switched it off. Taylor didn't object, which bothered her. "You can tell me you wanted it on," she says gently.

The one-armed girl – still one-armed, Panacea had a waiting list months long before the bombing campaign, it might be a while even if Hannah pulled strings – shook her head. "I really didn't," she admitted. She moved stiffly, sitting up with exaggerated care. Her skin was still coming back in under the full-body scalding she had suffered, another half-measure Panacea had implemented rather than let people die because she was being anything less than perfectly efficient.

"How are you feeling today?" Hannah asked, crouching in front of the couch.

"Better." Taylor levered herself to sit properly on the couch instead of laying across its length. "What… what about you?"

"I just got a lot of time off," Hannah said with a smile. 'Unpaid, but that's not a problem. So you'll be seeing a lot more of me."

"I don't want to intrude," Taylor began.

"And you're not," Hannah said firmly. "I opened my home to you, and it is staying open. Permanently. You can always come back here, no matter what happens." Somewhere to be, unconditionally, without worry or stress. Maybe a little bit of undeserved guilt, at least at first, but she was going to drive that out of Taylor as quickly as possible.

"It's not your responsibility," Taylor mumbled.

"I made it mine, because I wanted to." And because nobody else had stepped up, but 'nobody else was doing it' was not a comforting reassurance. She stood from her crouch and sat next to Taylor, facing the television. No touching, not right now, the girl was still jumpy from her months living on her own or homeless.

"Tomorrow, I'm going to celebrate my month off by going to a shooting range out in the countryside, a few hours drive from here," Hannah remarked. "I was thinking you would want to come along. Get out into nature, learn to shoot a few guns, maybe play with your accuracy and range with your powers…" She held out her pistol, and it flashed to a knife. "Not to test you, just to relax. Powers want to be used, and some are harder to safely let loose with than others."

"Yeah…" It wasn't a no. "I'd like that."

"Then it's settled," Hannah agreed. She didn't know if Taylor actually wanted to learn how to use a gun, but using her power? Stretching her limits? Being in nature, away from the slowly recovering hellscape Brockton Bay had become? She was tempted to turn it into a camping weekend or something, and only unwilling to do so because she didn't have any camping supplies. Maybe another week.

She realized she was still holding the remote, and after a moment of contemplation, switched the TV back on. Something other than the news, not soap operas, not talk shows… She set it on an old show, painting with some guy with an afro and a soothing voice.

She had meant it to be background noise, but the painter was really good, and something about the show was incredibly relaxing. So she ended up watching the whole thing. Taylor too.

About halfway through, Taylor leaned to the side, leaning on her. Hannah smiled to herself and didn't say anything about it.

Author's Note: This is the first time I've written in first-person (that I remember, anyway, it's been a while) and liked the outcome. Of course, the outcome is gut-wrenchingly sad (or it's meant to be), but that was the point. Well, most of the point. If I wanted it to just be sad, I'd have left it at Taylor's part of the story.

Also, it's a Jack Slash alt-power. Without the parahuman mind-messing thing playing a big role (though you can infer its fledgling influence in between the lines in some places). I suppose that's sort of weird, too. Honestly, the power was very secondary to the actual story here; it would have worked with any number of other power sets. But there was that symbolic similarity to Miss Militia, and it's a power that Taylor might reasonably conclude is bad for being a good vigilante… It worked.

(If anyone is wondering, this could be a power swap. But if it was, Jack would be long dead, lacking the special edge his original power gave him, so no current-day 'Plague' or whatever he would have called himself.)