Author's Note: Warning, discussion of disturbing content ahead. See the first part of this story for details.
AU: Whiplash and Backfire (part 2)
Backfire
Interview with a Living, Breathing Controversy: Backfire, Founder of Comeuppance
My readers know I, John Bristleman, will go to some pretty extreme lengths to get interviews with capes. Hero, villain, or vigilante, many have chosen to speak with me over the years. Some of those interviews were even published afterward! (On that note, Accord, I am still willing to work with you on editing the interview we did if you have softened your stance on the necessity of the (sic) annotation).
But never in my years of thrill-chasing and thrill-interviewing have I ever started an interview in my own home, at four in the morning, in the presence of a cape who has been taking the Western coast of America and recently Canada by storm. None other than the notorious Backfire chose to meet me last night, quite unexpectedly, and this interview is coming to you hot off the press, unedited and uncut!
I sat down with Backfire, her in full costume and me in my pajamas, in my dining room. Her signature mask was removed and set on the table, a direct reminder that she numbers among the few capes who operate without a secret identity, though not by choice. Throughout the interview small shapes moved in the shadows of my dining room, though she assured me that she would take all of the insects with her when she left, even the ones infesting the wall behind my sink.
Q: Before we begin, I would just like to ask, on-record, if there are any topics you want me to avoid outright? I'm all for asking the important questions, however uncomfortable, but…
A: But you want to be sure you're not going to set off a parahuman with a kill count in the hundreds. I understand. Don't ask about my father. That's it, everything else is fair game.
Q: Really?
A: If I didn't want to speak to you I wouldn't speak to you. Whiplash doesn't do interviews at all, and for good reason.
Q: I suppose that leads right into my first question then, Backfire. You are categorized by the Protectorate as a Master, and Whiplash is a Thinker. Most capes choose names related to their powers, and you were both known to the public with such names in the past. Why these names now?
A: To make people think. You're right, they don't match our powers. More to the point, they mean something that matches us. Our experiences. Our reasons for doing what we do now. Whiplash, a painful type of injury often received from a sudden change in direction. Also contains the words 'whip' and 'lash'. Backfire, the idea that something had the exact opposite effect of what was intended. I considered going by Blowback for similar reasons, but that was a little too vulgar. Our names are specifically chosen to be uncomfortable, but not for any immediately obvious reason.
Q: I'm not sure I understand, but that's fine. Actions speak louder than words or names. Specifically, you and your partner founded a parahuman group commonly considered to be criminal in nature.
A: Don't sugarcoat it. We're criminals. What we do is violent, we violate the law on a daily basis, and the ones we target die. No arrests, no second chances, and very little mercy. It doesn't matter how many lives we save, how many innocents we rescue, or how much of a deterrent we've become. There are arrest warrants out for almost every member of Comeuppance.
Q: And yet you are viewed as heroes by a substantial portion of the population. There have been reported cases of law enforcement officers refusing to arrest you, Protectorate heroes looking the other way, even politicians who support blanket pardons for your group.
A: Is that a question?
Q: No, I suppose not. Shall I go for the big one, then?
A: Go ahead.
Q: Will you tell me, and by extension my readers, what set you on this path? There have been many theories, and some things are known for certain, but neither you nor your partner have ever given a statement on the events surrounding the death of Regent and the Brockton Bay Purge that followed.
(Backfire hesitated here, and it was clear to me that she was seriously considering whether or not she wanted to answer at all.)
A: I can… confirm a few things. Fill in some gaps. Maybe tell the whole thing, maybe not.
Q: However much you are comfortable with.
A: I'm not comfortable with any of it. Even now. It drives me. Makes me paranoid. Gives me nightmares. And I know I got off easy compared to Whiplash. He got his hooks into her long before me. Regent. Previously known as Hijack… I can start there.
Q: Hijack was the alias of one of Heartbreaker's children.
A: Yes. Nobody in Brockton Bay knew that, though. Maybe the PRT, maybe one other. Nobody else. He was hired by a supervillain, Coil. Part of a team he was building. Coil definitely knew, now that I think about it. He picked up a homeless Thinker who was in the area and had Hijack take control of her. Do you know what Hijack's power was?
Q: Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I do. He could control people, right?
A: So simple if you put it that way. So clean. Controlling people. Yes, he could do that.
Q: How would you describe it?
A: It starts innocently. You spasm, your fingers cramp, your leg seizes. Little things. As Regent, that was all he did in public. But those little things were him creeping under your skin. Learning your nerves, getting his mental fingers into your flesh and jerking and prodding to figure out what does what. Over the course of months if he's keeping the act up and pretending every inch of progress is just harmless nerve-tweaking to annoy you and amuse himself. Hours, if he gets you alone and ties you up and tortures you with it. When he's done, when he knows every bit of your body?
Q: Then he controls you?
A: Then he owns you. There is no you. There's his body, his other body, and the voiceless, powerless fragment of you trapped inside that other body. You can see, you can hear, you can feel just fine. But the words coming out of your mouth aren't yours. The things you do aren't up to you. You're trapped, powerless. And it never ends. You're his toy, his plaything. And he can feel just how much you hate it. He mocks you. Plays with your family, your friends, your enemies. Going through your life in your body, changing things to suit his whims, assuring the people who know you best that it's fine, that you're still you even as you're wordlessly screaming inside for them to notice, for them to save you. And there's no end in sight. He can do it forever. There's a limit to how many people he can control at a time, but you're one of them and if he ever tires of you he can have you slit your own throat in a heartbeat.
Q: I'm sorry.
A: 'He can control people' is a nightmare wrapped in a deceptively banal description. And it's not even the worst Master power out there. Just the one that trapped Whiplash back then, at Coil's request. He paid Hijack, who would put on a show as a minor, harmless villain named Regent, and Whiplash would be called Tattletale. Grue, Bitch, they didn't know. They didn't even know that Regent was Hijack. All they knew was that they were being paid and that Regent and Tattletale were their new teammates, and that the two were friends with benefits.
Q: Oh god.
A: Yeah. Oh god is right. Regent… I call him Hijack now, regardless of what name he was going by back then. Because 'Regent' was a mostly harmless cape who palled around with the girls of the team. Hijack was the monster behind Regent's mask, the one who raped his toy whenever he felt like it and chained her to a bed when he wanted to relax his control for a bit. In a soundproof room so she couldn't be heard screaming for help. For a while it was just her. Then I stumbled right into them.
Q: When was this? Did you come across them as a civilian?
A: No, not at all. I was a hero, or I was going to be. First night out. Ran into Lung, ran into them afterwards. Tattletale contacted me later, a thanks for running off Lung for them and an offer to meet. Hijack can use the powers of the ones he puppets, and he knew enough from her power to know that I might just be that stupid.
Q: I think I can guess what happened next.
A: Probably not. It wasn't as simple as them ambushing me and him taking me right then and there. I met up with them, they gave me a staggering amount of money and invited me to join them. I said yes, tentatively, and I thought I might infiltrate them to turn them over. It was stupid, and a Thinker like Tattletale would have caught me immediately.
Q: But Tattletale wasn't in control, Hijack was. So he let you come in…
A: Now you're getting it. I saw their hideout, scrapped it out with Bitch, almost left, was convinced to stay by Grue, and worked with them for about a week before he made his move. Tattletale asked me to spend a night there so we could do surveillance work for the first job I was going to help them with. I agreed. Showed up to the hideout, it's just me and her. She starts showing me stuff on the computer… then we both pass out. Still not sure how he did it. I wake up, I'm tied to a chair, and he starts digging into me. By midnight I'm untied and walking around and acting normal, but it's not me anymore.
Q: Is that… all that happened that night?
A: No, I was also repeatedly raped. Obviously. But that was going to quickly become a backdrop to the hell that was my life. Losing control of my body for the first time stands out in retrospect as by far the worst thing that happened that night, not the rape.
(Throughout the interview up to this point, Backfire had spoken with an eerie calm that many of my readers would recognize from the few videos of her that have floated around the internet since her debut. But here her voice cracked, and she grimaced at nothing in particular. I was reminded, looking at her face as she spoke of the horrors she had gone through, that she is still a teenager and won't turn eighteen for just over a year.)
A: I'm not downplaying the rape. No way in hell. But I hope it comes across just how horrible being puppeted was that the rape is a distant second, even now in my nightmares. He walked me home that morning, and I talked to my father. Not about the horrible things I had just experienced, about the fun sleepover with my new friend. It was awkward at first, and at school I almost thought one of my teachers was suspicious, but that was just the first day. He put a lot of effort into figuring out how my life usually worked, and slid into the role I played seamlessly enough that nobody questioned it.
Q: Nobody noticed? At all? Not your friends, not your father– Sorry, I know you told me not to ask about him.
A: I brought him up first. No, he didn't notice. He never noticed anything. Not this, not what came before, not me getting my powers. At some point it crossed over from regrettable to unforgivable for me. Our relationship got better while Hijack was playing with my life. I– No. I'm not going to talk about him. He never did anything, and I can't remember a single thing he did that made my life better once I had my powers. He's better off without me, and I sure as hell didn't benefit from having him around. An actual parent would have noticed.
Q: Families can be difficult.
A: I wouldn't call us a family. Not since my mother died, and that was years before any of this. He sleepwalked through life, and I got dragged kicking and screaming through hell without him even noticing. Repeatedly. Hijack had me under his control for months. Long enough for me to make my debut as a supervillain, long enough for me to need birth control, long enough for me to realize Tattletale was his slave just as much as I was, but that Bitch and Grue didn't know anything was going on. Not even when Regent had me 'date' him while still keeping an open 'relationship' with Tattletale. They just thought I was loose and he was a player. I remember Grue warning him to stay away from his younger sister if they ever met.
Q: Is it okay for you to reveal that Grue has a younger sister? I understand that there are codes of conduct for capes and cape family.
A: She told me it was, yes. Their relationship is nonexistent too, if for different reasons.
Q: Is she part of Comeuppance?
A: Can we come back to that? I… want to go in order. It's not easy to tell. She comes into it soon enough.
Q: Of course. Please carry on.
A: I wanted to escape. Of course. Who wouldn't? My power seemed like it might be the key, I control bugs in a large radius around me, but he was always careful to drug me to sleep whenever he really wanted to stop controlling me for a while. Sometimes he let me scream and move in the soundproof room and only kept me from using my power, but that wasn't freedom, he was still paying attention. Tattletale was the same but worse, because her power doesn't have any physical application and she always had bad Thinker headaches from overuse. There was nothing we could do. He was careful. He knew we would murder him if he gave us the slightest chance. Or kill ourselves.
Q: That's very grim.
A: It was reality for months. He used us, abused us, enjoyed our suffering, played with us like toys. If I had him in front of me today I wouldn't just kill him again, I would make him suffer.
(Backfire stopped speaking here, and the rising thrum of insects that neither of us had noticed in the background cut out like a flipped switch. She slumped back, and a single tear rolled down her cheek. Readers who doubt me on this, know that if it were not true Backfire would have me eaten alive by insects. She very specifically told me what would happen if I exaggerated anything, but she was equally clear that I was allowed to print anything that actually happened. I have never before encountered a villain so focused on journalistic integrity.)
A: Do you want to guess who saved us, in the end? Our oblivious teammates, other villains, the Protectorate, random bystanders… ourselves? Go on. Guess.
Q: You putting me on the spot like this makes me think it was none of those.
A: Right in one. When the chance came, it was dumb fucking luck that did it. He tripped and hit his head. Knocked himself right out, dumb unlucky son of a bastard. He'd lent me out to Grue to help him move some furniture, under the guise of me volunteering. Tattletale was in the hideout with him. The second he went out we both dropped like stones.
Q: Why would that happen?
(Backfire laughed bitterly.)
A: We'd spent maybe a few hours moving under our own volition over the last few months. That takes a toll. We weren't totally paralyzed, but it was damn close for the first few hours.
Q: But were you mobile enough to get help?
A: Me? Yes. Grue's sister, because she was the first person I saw that wasn't Grue. Poor girl had no fucking idea why her brother's lanky friend from work had a complete mental breakdown in the middle of moving a couch. Grue… He guessed. Oh, he guessed. He knew something was wrong and he knew we were capes.
Q: I'm sensing that he did not make a choice that we would consider good in retrospect.
A: Is it your policy to not insult or disparage villains who haven't agreed not to hunt you down and kill you?
Q: Yes, in fact, it is. A necessary sacrifice to retain a credible reputation as even-handed and worth talking to among the less than legal side of parahuman society.
A: Then I'll say what you can't. The spineless asshole got me out of his shiny new apartment, told his sister some lies about me being mentally subnormal, some truly offensive lies I might add, and dragged me right back to the loft to find out what Tattletale thought. That might have been okay, but when he found Tattletale unconscious in the kitchen and Regent on the ground, guess who he contacted.
Q: Coil, the one who had hired him?
A: Yes. Him. And Coil told him to try and wake Regent up. Luckily, and she has my undying support for this, his sister was not convinced by his lies. And she already knew where the hideout was. Turns out she knew he was a supervillain and didn't particularly care up until that point. She walks in, bold as brass, and demands to know why the hell he's got three unconscious supervillains on the floor, one of which was conscious when he left with her, and why he was getting the guy up. She didn't know what was going on but she already knew something wasn't right.
Q: It sounds like she knew or at least suspected more than Grue did at that point.
A: No, they both suspected about the same. My babbling earlier was nearly incoherent, but I got a few things across. The difference was Grue wanted to believe that there was an explanation that didn't ruin his cushy setup with a boss and a team and a steady paycheck. His sister had no such reason to give anyone the benefit of the doubt. She browbeat him into waking Tattletale up first. She could barely speak, she was so crippled by the sudden absence of Regent controlling her, but she got out enough that his sister believed.
Q: His sister. Not him?
A: There's a reason I think he's a spineless sack of shit. He heard her, he thought about it… and he decided to try and get Regent up anyway. Despite having just heard that when Regent woke up we'd both be under his control again. I think, looking back, that it was willful ignorance. Regent could explain it all away, and we would say that it was a misunderstanding or something. Stupid, obviously, and a betrayal of everything decent, but he made his choice. He chose to look away.
Q: And then?
A: His sister didn't take it well. At all. That's her story to tell someday if she wishes, not mine, but in brief she had been let down by a lot of people and he was the only one left she felt she could count on. Him doing that… It hurt her deeply. Broke her, in a sense. Broke her trust at the very least. And the thing about broken people nowadays is that sometimes something steps in to fill the cracks. At the start of that day one of them was a parahuman. By the end they both were, and her power turned out to be a lot more offensively-oriented. She beat him black and blue, tied him up, and asked Tattletale what to do about Regent.
Q: If you want to stop there for the purposes of deniability, I won't press the matter.
A: No, I don't want to stop. Truth is, Hijack was pretty badly hurt by that first stupid fall. He didn't wake up. Tattletale was still mostly out of it, but I recovered a lot quicker. And when I did, I crawled over to him, grabbed him by the hair, and beat his head against the floor until his skull cracked, and then kept going. Broke a finger doing it. Scared the shit out of Grue's sister, too.
Q: It was the only way to be sure he wouldn't retake control?
A: Stop giving me excuses for my actions. I don't want them and I don't need them. I killed him because I was scared of losing control again, but I also killed him because I had fantasized about it for several months and wasn't going to let the opportunity pass me by, even if he was in a coma and dying anyway. It was the first time I killed, and it sure as hell didn't end up being the last, but I can count on one hand the number of people I enjoyed personally beating the life out of, and he was one of them.
Q: I honestly cannot claim I've experienced anything remotely similar, but I think I might have done the same were I in your place.
A: I think a lot of people would have. I know it, actually. It's the foundation of Comeuppance. Those who get out before their spirits are broken tend to want to strike back. Often not in healthy or legal ways. We believe that they should strike back as hard as they can, and then some. It's not always good for them, but denying the need isn't either, and we provide support, companionship, and therapy along the way.
Q: I have a whole list of questions about your organization which I would love to get into, but before we switch subjects, is this the end of the story?
A: I've not even mentioned the Brockton Bay Purge yet. I'll keep going in chronological order, if it's all the same to you.
Q: That would definitely help keep things easy to follow, since you want this going out unedited.
A: Okay. So… I spread Hijack's skull across most of the living room floor, and pulped everything that came out. Then I started on his body, kicking and scratching… Grue's sister didn't stop me until after he was definitely dead, but she did eventually force me to stop. That was about when Bitch came back from walking her dogs.
Q: Oh. Yikes. That's very bad timing.
A: Not so bad. I was basically feral at that point, and she thinks… differently… than most people, so her first instinct wasn't 'attack the traitor,' it was more along the lines of 'what the hell set her off?' She didn't like Tattletale much, but Tattletale wasn't in any state to be snarky like usual and that was Hijack anyway. It was still tense, but Grue's sister managed to get the story across well enough that Bitch eventually decided that Hijack deserved it and that was that. She left, which was a kind of shitty thing to do, but she doesn't really get people. She gets dogs, and we weren't dogs. I don't think she thought there was anything more she could do.
Q: Do you know what she's doing now?
A: Last I heard she was up in the mountains in Virginia. She left Brockton Bay when things got crazy. Runs with a wolf pack now. I think she likes that well enough.
Q: Interesting. But she left you, a crippled Whiplash, and Grue's sister with a dead body, Grue tied up, and a boss who knew something was up. Not a good situation.
A: Actually, we got out of there easily enough. Left Grue to get himself untied, ditched our phones, put Whiplash in the back seat of Grue's car and stole it. His sister didn't have a license but she knew how to drive. We got out of town, to avoid Coil's retribution, and holed up in a motel by the highway. That week was… something. Three girls in a rented room, only one not horribly traumatized, one with bits of brain still in her hair until she finally took a shower and another barely able to speak coherently. We didn't know anything about each other, either.
Q: But you knew… ah, I see. You knew Tattletale, but she wasn't real, was she? She was Hijack's version of the woman he had enslaved. I think I see now why neither of you kept your initial cape names.
A: Now you understand. I knew Tattletale. I didn't know her. She knew Skitter. She didn't know me. We spent months on the same cape team, spoke Hijack's words to each other, cracked Hijack's jokes, did his bidding, his laundry, his chores, had sex with him, had sex with each other when Hijack wanted some girl on girl action… I didn't even know her real name. She barely knew more than that about me. And Grue's sister had never met either of us before that day. We were total strangers.
Q: But there wasn't anywhere else to go, really? What about your home? Whiplash's home?
A: I told you already about my father. Whiplash had parents, but they were on the other side of the country and she had run away from them long before falling into Coil's hands. Shitty parents were a common theme between the three of us. No reliable friends was another one. I didn't have any to start with, Whiplash was new to town, and Grue knew all of his sister's friends. Thankfully Hijack had used us to access his bank accounts and we still had the credit cards he kept on us, so we weren't hurting for money for the time being. We could afford to just hide in a motel and order expensive takeout while we tried to recover some sense of normalcy.
Q: Did that… work? I would think the motel employees would notice something. None of you sounded particularly… normal. Not at that time.
A: You overestimate how much some motel workers see. It's actually the same as with Grue. They see what they want to see, the things that let them convince themselves there's no need to look any further. I know now that a horrendous amount of human trafficking, kidnapping, and rape happens in and around places like that. Isolated locations with few other people, beds, privacy, and employees willing to look the other way. But that week, just the three of us? Nothing bad happened.
Q: I think my readers and I would appreciate it if you elaborated on the good things that happened that week, if you can. It's been a long and dark road to this point.
(Backfire stared at me for a few very tense heartbeats, and I thought I might have overstepped. But then she smiled and nodded.)
A: Yes. I don't want to downplay it. We were not okay, and a week of solitude and freedom didn't fix us, but compared to what came before it was heaven for Whiplash and I. Grue's sister, not so much, but we really owe her for how well she adapted. She stuck around at least partly out of spite toward her brother, but she was good for us. Someone mostly normal to provide a voice of reason.
Physically, Whiplash was close to recovered by the end of the third day. I was fine by the end of the second. We had trembles in our hands and sometimes legs for a while, but those were manageable. Sleep was hard, but we worked out a system for it. I'd sleep for half the night, with her sitting up by the bed, awake and ready for anything. Then we'd swap and she would sleep. It wouldn't have protected us from Hijack, but we knew he was dead. Coil scared us both more, and he wasn't a Master. From what we knew if he found us he'd send in some armed goons, and that was something either of our powers could give advance warning of. So it was comforting.
During the day, Grue's sister got us talking. Little things. Shower schedules, what we wanted to eat… She refused to let us wallow. We told her… in retrospect, we told her way too much about the things we had gone through, she was younger than either of us, but we told her everything and then some, and she barely let it phase her. That turned into talking about things not related to Hijack, and then we were just talking. Relaxing. A little bit.
We talked about what we were going to do next. Grue's sister wanted us to skip town for good and set up shop somewhere else as a villain team. Same thing Grue was doing, but with no rapists hijacking half the team for fun. Whiplash wanted to hide somewhere. Just, live off the money she could make online with her power. Me… I was the one who wanted revenge. I was the one who said we needed to end Coil to be safe. From what I know now I definitely wasn't wrong. He needed to die.
Q: And thus began the Brockton Bay Purge. Was this around when Hijack's death was reported, or was that later, after you went back?
A: Hijack's death… Let me think. I'm pretty sure Grue abandoned that hideout once he got free. Coil set him up somewhere else. Bitch too, until she dropped him and left town on her own. Hijack was found later, not sure by who. Coil might have set it up to get back at us. We were the primary suspects in his murder. Still are, I think. Maybe once this interview goes out they'll charge us.
Q: There would be a riot.
A: Maybe. But I'll never count on the public to protect or support me. Anyway, the three of us went back to Brockton Bay to try and hunt down Coil. Whiplash knew a lot about his operations, because Coil used her power through Hijack, but she didn't know who he was under the mask, what his power was, or where he was hiding. In the meantime… We did what we could. I investigated buildings with my bugs, Whiplash threw her power at everything that might help, and Grue's sister contributed from the shadows. There's a reason I'm still calling her Grue's sister. She doesn't have a cape name. Never needed one.
Q: How did you find Coil?
A: We took advantage of the local villain community. Hijack's death got them riled up, you don't kill capes. Sometimes in battle, by accident or 'by accident', but not in what seemed to be his home, partially out of costume. The self-righteous assholes even set up a big meeting over it at their usual diplomacy spot, invited all the villains to attend. We attended. Coil's body double was there and he tried to turn them all on us, but we just gave them the unfiltered truth. Hijack stole our lives. We broke free and took them back, then took his much more directly. Pointed them at Coil. They 'believed' us for selfish reasons, an excuse to wage a joint gang war against him and squash a rival, but it was enough. His mercenaries had to go out and fight, and from there I'm sure you can understand why I won't explain our tactics. Just that we had what we needed to find him.
Q: Where was he?
A: Abandoned Endbringer shelter converted into a cliche villain base. We went in, and we went in hard. Found him, found his self-destruct mechanism… He anticipated Whiplash and I, but Grue's sister was a wild card he was completely unprepared for. She had him down, and when he initially got away from her that gave Whiplash enough information to figure out how his power worked, and then we trapped him.
Q: You caught him. It sounds like you caught him alive. You've said not to give you excuses, and I was going to ask anyway. Why did you kill him, if you caught him alive?
A: We weren't going to, at first. Then I found the preteen he had drugged in a room just off his office. Whiplash put a bullet in his head. We left his mercenaries to be picked up by the heroes, but, well… That was a mercy they didn't deserve. Most of them were back on the streets under different employers soon enough.
Q: I see.
A: After that? We were angry. Our plans had worked. We took down a whole gang for revenge, but it didn't feel like enough. The city's underbelly was rotten, and we knew what the other gangs did. The Merchants drugged and forced prostitution. The ABB was even more egreious with their forced prostitution. The Empire was discreet, but there was truth to the horror stories about women, especially women capes, shipped overseas to their international counterparts when they could. We had already broken the back of one gang, and the others were a lot less hidden, more open with their evil.
Q: So you decided to break them too.
A: That was where Comeuppance began. There, in Coil's base, around his cooling corpse. Specifically, when the preteen offered to answer questions for us before we took her home… Because she knew we would take her home. That we wouldn't hurt her. She was a precog, and she gave us the information we needed. Our chances were best if we went after the ABB first.
Q: So you struck at them. Ignoring the Protectorate, sparking an all-out gang war that died as quickly as it started as capes began to die. The deathcount for those few weeks…
A: We refined our ideals during those fights. Figured out where we drew the line, and just how far out it really was. Those who trade in lives and futures die. Capes, non-capes, if they were actively participating, guarding, or aiding slavery, human trafficking, forced prostitution, forced addiction, any of the ways people break and own other people. They die. That guard outside the brothel? He dies. The matron who was once a prostitute herself but now helps keep unwilling girls captive? She dies. The capes who fight for their organization, an organization that buys and sells lives? They die if we can get at them, and the longer we've operated the harder it has become for any to make themselves outside our reach. Anyone who really is borderline Whiplash can figure out, but those cases are not as common as you would like to think.
Q: It's this approach that has garnered you the reputation as a villain. Do you consider that a worthy tradeoff, when you could have been less lethal and perhaps retained a measure of legitimacy while still making a difference?
A: We're back to the reporter asking hard questions, I see. Good. The answer is yes.
Q: Yes to which part?
A: Yes to all of it. I do consider it a worthy tradeoff even if the alternative you described really was the other option, and we would not have done that regardless. We are not concerned with legality. We are not here because laws saved us, and the laws would wrap around our necks like leashes if we let them. Others rail against the systems of law, of justice, but we don't advocate for change. Not to the laws. We are hypocrites. We are not good people, we are not okay, and we are not going to stop and let these things continue, whether or not the law condemns us for it.
Q: That's a very… firm stance.
A: It's a radical, extreme stance that would get me a kill order if I weren't specifically targeting the criminals that every decent person wishes didn't exist in the first place. Even then, my group teeters on the edge of tolerability every time we move through a new city. I am a criminal, and if I am ever arrested I expect a significant portion of the men and women in power to try and get me sent to the Birdcage.
Q: But you don't expect everyone to think that way.
A: No. I don't. Only some. There have been rays of hope, quite a few recently. I hear the Governor of Arkansas tried to push through a law putting an automatic kill order on any cape confirmed to participate in human trafficking. That was shot down for good reason, but his heart was in the right place, if not his brain. Less radical politicians are taking note, too. There have been a few laws recently passed that I consider large steps in the right direction.
Q: Do you believe the government can solve this problem effectively enough to render your organization obsolete? Not will they do it, but do you believe it is even possible?
A: Sadly, no. I don't. But I'm a hopeless cynic who was burned way too many times to believe any system can make the world better so effectively that I won't see something wrong with it. I don't think it's about whether I believe it can be done. It's about whether it will be done. And that will not happen quickly, if at all. In the meantime, Comeuppance will be the violent, uncontrollable deterrent and consequence.
Q: You said that you consider yourself a hypocrite a moment ago. Can you elaborate?
A: I am a hypocrite. If, deep down, I actually wanted to fix the world, I wouldn't be cutting a bloody swathe through the slavers and rapists of the world. I'd be arresting them, flooding the justice system with them, pushing through political reforms, founding charities to help the victims, starting movements, and generally beating my head against the wall of the status quo until I dented it beyond repair. But I don't want to fix the world, not really. In my heart I don't truly believe it's possible. I just want to find those next women – and men, often, more often than I would have imagined, but mostly women – going through hell, and I want to save them, and I want to kill the ones hurting them so that they can't ever do it again. And then I want to find the next ones, and the next, and the next. I'm not trying to wall up the bay to stop the tide, I'm just standing on the beach scooping up buckets of water and dumping them elsewhere. It helps that there are others fighting for real changes, a lot of them people I've saved who wanted nothing to do with my organization, but if I really wanted to fix the problem I would be with them. Not where I am now.
Q: I don't know what to say to that, and honestly I don't think I'm qualified to debate you. You have a way with words.
A: My mother's influence. Or maybe I am as I am in memory of her. Either way. I don't consider myself right. I just think I'm less wrong than the alternative. A necessary evil.
Q: Forgive me if I ask you to elaborate on your mentality. Did you start out feeling this way, that what you do is wrong and perhaps even futile, but that you don't care? Or was this a gradual realization? The way you describe the beginning, it doesn't seem like it would have been a time for introspection.
A: That is a good question. You're right, I didn't start out thinking that way. It took time. I wouldn't have called myself hypocritical in the beginning. Wouldn't even have thought about it. In my mind we were making real change to the world, and things would start falling into place if we just kept pushing for long enough.
Q: So what changed?
A: I'm hypocritical. Me? I was fine. Whiplash? The other people we were constantly saving, the ones who stuck with us? I didn't think they were okay, and I worked to get them some sort of help despite us being on the wrong side of the law. That meant we needed someone in-house, and Whiplash's power is only good for diagnosis, not actually helping people. So I started reading up on psychology.
Q: And that made you think about your own actions?
A: No, not at all. And it was a bad idea in retrospect, the people actually qualified to help others deal with trauma are qualified for a reason. It's not something you can learn from a few semi-relevant college textbooks. But it got me thinking and other things built on that. Such as Haven.
Q: Haven, the corporate team?
A: Haven, the corporate religious team that pursued us for the better part of a month when we came near their territory to start picking off the outskirts of the Fallen. Our strategy for keeping away from them was simple. Every time they were close to catching us, we hit the nearest source of human misery, drew them in, and then left. Criminals defeated, most of the time, but victims… there. In need of help. They could be Good Samaritans or they could keep chasing us.
Q: I do remember hearing about that… Though I didn't think they were chasing your group at all. The coverage at the time made it seem they were unofficially working with you against the Fallen. I think I remember them catching some heat for it, even.
A: You don't advertise your failures. And they did fail, because not once did they ever choose to chase us and leave the victims behind. That was another thing I couldn't dismiss. They have their flaws, but they did exactly what I expected, what I considered right… What I wouldn't have done in their place. What I intentionally didn't do, in setting up that delay for them, again and again.
Q: I can see how that might have been thought-provoking.
A: I might have managed to ignore it too. But they did pull off one clever trick, and that… well, we came across a minor Fallen outpost, no capes, that was already halfway to having been destroyed before I got there. An independent hero, green as hell, was already there. She asked to join us, pleaded really, and I made the mistake of approaching her directly to find out what she really wanted.
Q: What happened?
A: Turns out she was Repentance, a new hero Haven subsequently recruited. So maybe I shouldn't attribute her trick to them, though it's not clear exactly when she unofficially joined up. She is capable of inflicting tremendous feelings of guilt and regret on anyone she can see. She was also insanely idealistic, and was working on the belief that I would regret my actions and surrender if she hit me hard enough with her power.
Q: She hit you in full view of your team, with no backup?
A: Like I said, insane. Also stupid. My hatred of human Masters was well-known by that point, and she's lucky Whiplash just had our people tie her up and leave her for Haven to find with the rest of the victims. She wasn't wrong about one thing, though. Her power hit me hard. It didn't have the immediate result she wanted, and it didn't give me any sort of epiphany, but the aftereffects… It doesn't just make you guilty, it makes you guilty about the things you were already inclined to feel guilty about, whether or not you were letting yourself prior to having it all amplified. She's used it to tremendous effect on borderline vigilantes since then, and let's not even get started on the interactions 'amplifying existing guilt' can have with people suffering crises of faith and whether that's ethical or coercion… I still don't like her.
Q: She's certainly a controversy in her own right.
A: More so because she's with Haven. But her power was another blow to my certainty. My conviction. I had to step back and let Whiplash lead Comeuppance on her own for a while. Sit in on some therapy sessions we arranged for our members who wanted out after realizing they didn't have the stomach for what we do. Try and figure out why I was doing what I was doing, and whether I could be doing better. Whether I wanted to do better.
Q: And instead of repenting like Repentance assumed you would, you just… decided that you were a hypocrite but that you wouldn't have it any other way?
A: It's complicated. I'm no better a person now than I was before. But at least I can acknowledge my own failings. I don't want to fix the systems, I want to help the people hurt by their failings right now. Can we move on? There are more important things to discuss than my mentality.
Q: My readers might disagree, but I don't think we're going to get anywhere else on that regardless. To move on to a new topic, could you explain something to me? Hearing you talk, I wouldn't be surprised if your group was currently being hounded across the country. But you're actually surprisingly low-priority for most local law enforcement, and as of yet no heroes have pursued your group to the extent we often see for villains head and shoulders above the rest in terms of brutality. I wouldn't compare you to the Slaughterhouse Nine, but the death counts are in the same ballpark. What, in your opinion, has contributed to what some call a very disproportionate response in force?
A: I already said the main thing. For all that we do, the only people we kill are the ones who are involved in the very specific brand of criminal activity we despise. These people are, unsurprisingly, the worst of the worst in most cases. We make every effort to avoid innocent collateral damage, we operate clandestinely whenever possible, and literally tens of thousands of people owe us their freedom and often their lives, or the freedom and lives of loved ones. We are criminals, but we ameliorate our acts as much as possible. Compared to many forms of organized crime, our impact on the world is both small and relatively positive. Also, and this is extremely cynical even by my standards, a not-insubstantial fraction of the actual slave-traders we kill tend to be foreigners bringing them in from other countries, or taking them out. This does not make their lives worth any less than the homegrown scum of the same ilk, whatever that worth may be to start with, but they aren't exactly this country's responsibility.
Q: I see. And when you are pursued and arrest attempts are made?
A: No hero has ever died fighting members of Comeuppance. No hero has ever been maimed fighting us. Our subversion rate is higher than our serious injury rate when it comes to officially-recognized heroes, and we don't even try to do that. We are strictly passive in recruitment and make no effort to poach from other groups.
Q: So you say.
A: Yes, it's hard to just take my word for it. But it's one of our methods to avoid becoming a problem large enough that we cannot be ignored. Stealing parahumans from the government is a big no-no, much bigger than killing criminals.
Q: Your cynicism is showing again. How about we move on?
A: I have one last thing to say on this subject. I don't consider the lack of serious response to my group to be a good thing. I would rather live in a world where groups like mine were not treated as low-priority because there are worse threats almost everywhere. But that is not the world we live in.
Q: That segues nicely into the next thing I wanted to bring up, one such 'worse threat' who is no more under unclear circumstances. Heartbreaker. Any truth to the rumors that he was your group's first official target?
A: Completely true, in that he was the first one we directly planned to assassinate after officially forming our group. We did it, too. My power was perfectly suited to counter his. He had to see you to enthrall you. Seeing my bugs didn't count for that, but they counted just fine when it came to crawling down his throat and suffocating him. Some of his children weren't limited that way, but Whiplash helped figure out when they would all be gone. After he was dead, it was just a matter of stopping his thralls from killing themselves, which was honestly much harder than killing him.
Q: Why not claim the kill as your group's work from the beginning? Why only admit to it now?
A: We're not in this for fame. We're not here for notoriety. It didn't need to be news, it needed to be a footnote. Masters who issue threats and endanger hostages are no longer actual, valid dangers. They are rabid dogs who will be put down no matter how that might hurt their hostages. Any other response just encourages others to use the same approach, ultimately hurting more people.
Q: And those hostages who might die because their captor died to make an example?
A: I would rather die than be used as an excuse for others to be enslaved. I can only hope the ones actually in that position feel the same. That said, nobody but Heartbreaker died that day, and we have yet to actually lose any of his former thralls. I keep in touch with some of them.
Q: Wow. Okay. Did you recruit any of his powered children? Some have gone on to be rehabilitated, while others became villains in their own right. Hijack aside, of course.
A: I wouldn't say if we had, because the identities of those formerly under his control aren't hard to find if you know where to look online. Unlike me, they still have secret identities.
Q: Yes. That. Would you be willing to talk about the event that forced you to unmask to the world on live television?
A: What is there to say? I didn't even know anyone was watching at the time. Gesellschaft had sent in a cape with acid-spitting powers, he caught my mask, I pulled it off to keep my face intact… Turns out there were some really, really stupid bystanders with cameras risking their lives to livestream the footage. I'm amazed more capes aren't unmasked that way. It was just bad luck.
Q: And the immediate aftermath? Your outing led to investigation of your civilian past, which in turn led to several obvious failings of the public school system, police, and local Protectorate being brought to life. What do you think of your old high school's response?
A: An anti-bullying campaign that completely missed the point? That was actually really funny. Kudos to Winslow for realizing that they were utterly fucked if I was the vengeful sort, though. Blackwell personally apologizing on television was a nice touch, even before Whiplash deduced that she was utterly terrified the whole time. Hopefully this interview sheds some light on why I couldn't care less about any of that. Some capes say you never get over how you get your powers. I disagree. You get over it just fine if something worse comes along and traumatizes you even harder. You can only get powers once. I think.
Q: What about the Ward all but outed as a result of the massively increased scrutiny? Did you know Shadow Stalker's civilian identity prior to it becoming something of an open secret?
A: Yes, I knew her identity. Hijack knew her as a cape. I knew her as a civilian. It was easy to put two and two together. Not that it mattered. Again, I have more important things to care about, and my unmasking royally fucked her life by complete coincidence, so she got what she deserved.
Q: Now that we're on the subject of consequences of new information, what do you think the results of this interview going public will be? Any familiar faces you anticipate reading and reacting?
A: No, not really. The people I care about are all in the know by now. My bullies are old news. My school is meaningless. My father is irrelevant. The world as a whole will react as they do to everything. Hopefully my cause will be a little more sympathetic. The only important result will be the truth being out there.
Q: I think my editors will say that another important result will be the profits this exclusive will net us.
A: Maybe. Anything else you want to talk about?
Q: Oh, so many things, but I only have one more question I think will merit a long-form answer. Could you explain what happened with the Dragonslayers last month? They fought your group for no apparent reason, retreated, and then two weeks later were finally apprehended by Dragon. Then Saint reportedly had a full-on mental breakdown in custody. This chain of events is obviously missing a few crucial links and one wonders what your group had to do with it. Them attacking you could be seen as the start.
A: Simple. They were mercenaries. Someone hired them to delay us just as we were tracking down some big fish in the human trafficking trade, which they did. Do you remember what I said happens to capes who assist human traffickers?
Q: They die… If Comeuppance can get to them.
A: Suffice to say we attempted to carry that promise out, but that there were… complications. Such as them genuinely believing they were hired to attack us for political reasons, not to stop us from carrying out our mission. This is the sort of thing Whiplash is crucial for. They were the definition of borderline, and her insight allowed us to make a fully informed decision. We eventually decided to just dump them in the wilderness, send the Guild their location and the location of their base, and let the authorities handle them.
Q: And Saint's breakdown?
A: An outright unhealthy obsession with Dragon driven to its logical conclusion upon being captured by her, which really… you probably could have guessed that. Calling himself Saint? Naming his team the Dragonslayers? Operating her stolen tech? He was always going to be some flavor of obsessed with her, the only question was exactly what his delusions consisted of. I'm glad the government didn't publicize his opinions or his 'reasons' for doing what he did. I heard them myself, and Dragon doesn't deserve to be baselessly slandered. I have full faith in her morals and hope that she continues to do what she thinks is right, even if that means she opposes us in the future.
Q: This actually leads right into the next topic I wanted to address. The Guild. Specifically, Narwhal. What of the persistent rumors that she is cooperating with or outright a member of Comeuppance?
A: I'm glad you asked that, because I want to be perfectly clear on this. I admire Narwhal and I believe her story may not be that dissimilar to mine based on some of the things she has said in the past. I would put her solidly as part of the 'legal' alternative to my organization, and as such I strive to have no contact with her that might taint her actions by association. Not only is she not a member of Comeuppance, so long as I have any say in the matter she will never have anything to do with us. We actually have a list of heroes and other individuals who we treat similarly, though I won't reveal who they are because this in itself could be seen as suspicious and tainting their reputation. Narwhal already has to deal with those rumors, so I can speak freely in her case.
Q: There is some logic to that.
A: Not enough to clear her name. Not entirely. She'll have to do that herself. Luckily for Comeuppance, she's only one person and the Guild focuses on bigger threats, so she won't be able to devote all of her attention to hunting us down.
Q: You expect her to come after you?
A: Of course. But it's a win-win scenario. If she fails, then we continue as normal and she gets to say, truthfully, that she tried. That she's certainly not helping us. If she succeeds, then at least our defeat will clear her name. Next question?
Q: I could ask 'how will you saying this affect all of that', but then we would be stuck in an endless loop. Instead, I'd like to move on to some simpler, rapid-fire questions. I'm not expecting long responses on these, just your thoughts.
A: Go for it.
Q: Do you have any plans regarding the Slaughterhouse 9? Is there any truth to the rumor that they tried to recruit you?
A: For reasons of operational security I cannot offer any opinion on the Slaughterhouse Nine at this time. If Comeuppance did have plans to kill them, acknowledging it would warn them. If Comeuppance did not have plans to kill them, I would say exactly the same thing. As for recruitment? Bonesaw alone ensures I will never voluntarily join them, and I have… countermeasures… to ensure I cannot be coerced. No offer has been made, and they seem to be avoiding areas Comeuppance is known to be active.
Q: That makes sense. My next question… No. Not asking that. We'll skip it.
A: Why?
Q: It was meant to be a tension-breaker after speaking of the Nine, but given what I've learned during this interview it would be crass.
A: Now I want to know what it was. Just ask. I might even answer.
Q: Let it be known I wasn't going to ask this… Are you and Whiplash in a relationship?
A: Now I see why you wanted to skip it. To answer the question, no. We are not. Not just because of what happened to us, either. Whiplash told me ahead of time that it's fine for me to reveal that she is firmly asexual, and was before Hijack got his hooks into her. We are very good friends now, but neither of us is in a relationship, much less with each other.
Q: I see. This will potentially quiet down some of the less reputable corners of the internet, at least.
A: I couldn't care less whether it kills or reinvigorates the shipping wars. I've seen far worse far too often to care. Now, the darker, hidden corners of the internet… Those are another matter. One I'm not going to get into, except to say that we're working on it. They're part of the problem too.
Q: I see. Moving on, is there any truth to the rumor that you carved Lung's eyes out with a kitchen knife during the Brockton Bay Purge?
A: No.
Q: I thought as–
A: It was a stiletto, and I only took one before he threw me off.
Q: I had originally discarded this next question, but now I really have to ask. What about his genitals?
A: Turns out bug venom and Tinker tranquilizers necrotize soft tissue when combined. I claim no responsibility for that, but he did lose them for a few weeks. Lucky for him he regenerates.
Q: I'm sure approximately half my readers are making a note of that. Are you in any way connected to Lustrum? What is your opinion on her movement?
A: My mom was a follower, which I know everybody knows because every story on my identity tends to harp on it, but I never really cared about what to me was ancient history, and I don't approve of the 'hate all men' approach her movement turned into by the end. There are many fine men out there who do not deserve any hatred directed at them for things other members of their gender do.
Q: Given your opinion on human masters, what is your opinion on the Canary trial and the recent results?
A: I don't like human Masters. At all. If I met Canary on the street, I would run the other way. But that doesn't mean I'm blind to how obvious a scapegoat she was, and I believe she was innocent of all charges more severe than negligence with a parahuman power. Not that it matters now. The Birdcage is as good as a death sentence, even if one survives. Her life is over, and she's forever trapped with the worst humanity has to offer. If I'm ever actually committed to the Birdcage my first act will be to commit suicide. But maybe that's just me.
Q: Maybe I shouldn't have asked that one. What services or advice do you offer those fleeing domestic abuse, or to those who approach your group asking for help?
A: We usually point them to our legal counterparts. We are not a group you want to turn to if you have any alternative, and we don't deal with domestic abuse except in the most exceptionally extreme cases.
Q: Is there any truth to the rumors that you forcibly recruit any victims you recover who have powers?
A: Absolutely none. No one is required to join us, and no one is required to stay with us once they join. We have measures in place to ensure the silence of those who leave us, but these measures are humane, all who join are made aware of what they will need to do to leave, and overall it is harder to quit a job at a fast food restaurant than it is to leave our organization.
Q: What do you do for those you recover from human trafficking and the like who wish to join you?
A: We let them join, once we're sure they know what they're doing. Those with powers join one of our strike or support teams as their powers dictate. Those without powers work with the Tinker support, in administration, or otherwise help the cause however possible. We do have to turn some of the latter away, because there are only so many non-combatants we can take with us from city to city, but most of those go on to do something for the cause. Just not with us.
Q: Is Whiplash psychic? She has claimed it, repeatedly, though it is conventionally thought to be impossible.
A: She likes to say she is. As for whether it's possible at all… I've never heard a convincing argument that could not just as easily be applied to all powers. We do not understand what allows us to do what we do. We do not understand the root cause. Until we do, who can reasonably claim one specific power is impossible? I think it's more to do with feeling safe than any reasonable logic. People want to believe their minds are sacrosanct. They think it's scary that someone could read their thoughts, so they want to believe it's not possible. I believe that powers far more terrifying already exist. A true psychic… That's powerful, but it's not scary. I'd take someone reading my mind over someone puppeting my body any day, and if they're doing more than reading… Masters already exist, that's not new.
Where do you see yourself in ten years?
A: Dead or still doing what I'm doing now. Hopefully with a little more peace of mind by then. In either case.
Q: Does Comeuppance participate in Endbringer battles as a rule? Does your organization require it of its members?
A: It's not required. Some of us do. Some don't. I assist in search and rescue.
Q: What of the rumors that you violate the Truce by recruiting parahumans during the battles?
A: If they weren't just rumors I would have a Kill Order for violating the Endbringer Truce. I do keep my eyes and ears open before and after the conflicts for signs of parahumans who are secretly prisoners of the groups they belong to, and I have found several such cases who were later, well after the Truce ended, liberated. None of those have joined Comeuppance, so I certainly cannot be said to be recruiting them. Rather, I am refusing to close my eyes out of convenience.
Q: Last question.
A: make it a good one.
Q: Do you consider yourself a role model?
A: Hell no. Nobody should want to be like me. Do good. Refuse to be placated. Protect people. But don't be like me. Don't try to be like me. I do what I do because I can't stand to do anything else. Because I'm broken and violent. Don't break yourself trying to be like me. You can do good without doing that.
Backlash stood from her seat, picked up her mask, and nodded to me. The sun was rising in the window, casting her shadow against the wall. I didn't feel like any time had passed at all, but she looked much older than she had when we began to talk. A trick of the light, maybe, or simply my perception of her changing as I now knew so much more than before.
She left, and I called the police to report her presence in my apartment, though of course it was pointless. I could probably have gotten away with not calling them, but…
I'm not sure to what extent I agree or disagree with her. With what she does. But I think I regret that someone like her ever came to exist at all. It says something about the world we live in that Backlash is here, that she has become what she is today. And not something good.
But I do have to thank her for one specific thing she has done. One inarguably good thing.
I saw the stream of roaches she led from behind my sink as she left. There were a lot more than I expected.
This has been John Bristleman, cape reporter, now in the market for a new apartment with better pest control.
Author's Notes: EDIT: I updated this story with a few technical fixes, some cleanup, and an elaboration as to Taylor's mindset and how she came to it. Same story, but now with a few new details and justification for some of the random questions, while removing others. Nothing major changed, but it should all work a bit better now.
Just FYI, I don't endorse any political views espoused by characters in my works. This includes 'murder is definitely the answer'. But we don't write characters entirely unlike ourselves just to have them think like us, and this felt to me like a direction Taylor very much could have gone given the setup, so I ran with it. I would rather my comments section not become a huge debate if that's all the same to all of you? So far everyone here has been pretty good about that, but I've seen how Spacebattles can get. This was simply an exploration of a way things could have gone, not necessarily a good or bad way. Certainly a sad one, I think.
More generally, credit where credit is due; this story was inspired by three major sources.
First, the basic plot concept of 'Regent is exactly as bad as his power facilitates' from Puppets by NonPlayerChar on AO3. 4,700 words, short, and ends right before the part I would have wanted to see, the mid-term aftermath. Also not super enamored with the Coil plot that was coming into play when it died. A hauntingly good concept, though, so long as you're not averse to making Regent the devil, which I'm not. Even the characters I like get the full-on vilification treatment from me on occasion. Which reminds me, I need to return to that serial-maiming-Taylor alt-power I've got sitting in my in-progress folder…
Anyway, other sources of inspiration! The second source gave me the format for this second part, that of an interview retrospective. It's great for telling a story that would otherwise be really hard to effectively convey without many tens of thousands of words. Go check out Interview With A Screenbug (both parts) over in Ruk's Unimaginatively Titled Worm Snippet Collection here on SB. It's much more lighthearted and fun than this story and by far my favorite alternative canon power use.
Third and last, a certain story in this fandom that I will not name angered me so much with hamfisted plot-railroading OOC writing on a sensitive topic that I went 'you know what, I'm going to write a dark story that handles a difficult topic just to rebalance the universe.' I'd had vague plans for this story sitting around, but that story prodded me into starting it and I ended up slamming out the whole thing in one day. Turns out righteous indignation plus a good prompt is good for efficiency.
All that aside… It's kind of funny that none of the three things I listed as 'most likely to come next' actually came next. Again. I suppose that's the freedom of writing a bunch of unconnected things. One of those stories I mentioned last time is probably still coming next, in the same way that the next person to walk through your front door probably lives in the same building as you. It's reasonably likely but by no means assured.
Alternatively, I really enjoyed writing the interview format, and I feel the need to do something cracky and lighthearted, so… Maybe combining those two?