(SHATTERPOINT) JUSTIFIED OR NOT?

The implications had been raised more than once, usually in passing and in hastily written reports, and almost always set aside because there had been more immediate fires to put out.

A regular human taking down a parahuman was supposed to be an anomaly, the sort of statistical impossibility that only happened in very specific and very controlled circumstances. Even the weakest capes possessed advantages the average person simply did not, whether those advantages came in the form of enhanced durability, heightened perception, unnatural mobility, or some unpredictable trick that typically made a direct confrontation suicidal. 

As such, the unspoken rule of the modern world was simple: ordinary people did not win fights against parahumans.

And yet Anakin Skywalker had done exactly that.

He had walked into a fight with Battery, a trained and powerful Protectorate hero with years of field experience, and he had walked out the other side victorious with nothing more than a broken hand to show for it. No powers had been involved, no tinker technology, and no hidden advantage or trick that could be used to comfortably explain the outcome. There had only been skill, speed, and a level of competence that made every uncomfortable assumption about the gap between capes and civilians suddenly feel a little less absolute.

But there had not been time to truly address what that meant.

Public knowledge was that the PRT was still busy tearing itself apart over what to do with Battery—and, unknown to said public, the revelation of Cauldron—trying to determine whether she was a victim, an asset, or a security risk that needed to be quietly transferred from service. Internal reviews were being opened, long-standing procedures were being questioned, and Director Piggot was fighting to keep her department from collapsing under the weight of its own uncertainty. 

Cauldron, on the other hand, was scrambling to contain the damage, trying to decide how many lies they could still maintain and how many truths they might be forced to reveal in order to retain their control.

Both sides that could have done something about the emerging problem were entirely consumed with their own internal crises.

So no one was watching for what came next.

No one was prepared for the first parahuman death at the hands of a civilian since Fleur.

Ever since Anakin Skywalker had effectively crippled the Merchants, the gang had been a shadow of what it once was. Their surviving numbers had scattered, their influence had shrunk to almost nothing, and the fragile structure that Skidmark had held together through fear, charisma, and drugs had begun to collapse in on itself. Old loyalties meant little when there was no incentive left to keep them.

And to add to that, Squealer had disappeared.

Not officially, of course. There had been no missing persons report, no organized search, and no public concern from anyone with the authority to care. But within the remnants of the gang her absence was obvious. She had done her best to avoid Skidmark and the few loyal thugs he had left, knowing exactly what kind of mood he would be in after losing almost everything he had spent years building.

Brockton Bay, however, was not a kind city to people trying to hide.

Without money, without allies, and without access to the resources she normally relied on, there were only so many places Squealer could go. She had always been valuable because of her talent, because she could turn scrap metal into drivable nightmares that made the Merchants feel more powerful than they were, but talent did not help much when there were no materials and no safe place to work. And leaving the city required connections and the aforementioned resources she no longer had.

So she did what she could.

She moved from one abandoned building to another, sleeping where she found space, scavenging what little she needed, and doing her best to avoid anyone who might recognize her. The problem was that Brockton Bay was only so large, and she had never been good at surviving on her own. The gang, for all its many faults, had always provided shelter and protection, and without them she was and could do nothing.

It was inevitable that someone would eventually find her.

The man who stumbled across her sleeping form in one of the city’s countless abandoned factories was not anyone important. He had no grand destiny, no hidden significance, and no connection to the larger forces currently wrestling for control of Brockton Bay.

He was simply a man who had run out of options. A man older than he looked, worn down by years of bad luck and even worse choices, with hands that shook more from hunger than age. 

Homelessness was common enough that the sight of another person curled up in a dusty corner would not normally have drawn more than a tired glance. Most people in his position learned quickly to mind their own business, to keep their heads down, and to survive one day at a time without inviting unnecessary trouble.

But this time was different.

Because the man who found her was not most people.

Because he recognized her.

He had never met Squealer personally and had never spoken to her or crossed paths with her in any meaningful way, but he knew exactly who she was. Everyone who had suffered under the Merchants eventually learned their faces, even the ones who tried to stay in the background.

His life became fucked up because of that gang. 

He had lost jobs, lost family, and lost years swallowed up by addiction and desperation that he had never quite managed to escape. He could trace nearly every misfortune he carried directly back to the cheap drugs they had flooded his neighborhood with, driving away the few businesses in an area that had already been barely holding together.

To him, the gang was not an abstract problem discussed on the news. It was deeply and painfully personal.

Skidmark himself was nowhere to be found, protected by whatever scraps of muscle he still had left, but his missing girlfriend was right there in front of him, asleep and unaware.

Normally, that would have been more than enough reason to walk away and pretend he had never seen her.

It was the sensible thing to do.

Parahumans were dangerous by definition. Everyone knew that. Even the ones who did not look threatening could turn a person inside out with a thought, and Squealer, despite her reputation for being more grease monkey than combat specialist, was still a cape. Approaching her should have been unthinkable, because that was how the world had always worked.

But the world had changed a little in the past few days.

People talked. Rumors spread quickly in a city like Brockton Bay, especially among those who lived in shelters and soup kitchens and on street corners, growing a little more exaggerated with every retelling. He had heard about what had happened, about what Anakin Skywalker had accomplished at Fugly Bob’s. 

And the realization had taken root in his mind.

Maybe parahumans were not as untouchable as everyone believed.

The thought frightened him almost as much as it thrilled him. He stood there for a long time, staring at Squealer’s sleeping form and arguing with himself in circles. Fear told him to leave, to find another place to hunker down for the night and forget he had ever seen her.

Anger told him something very different.

Anger reminded him of everything he had lost.

She was just lying there, a woman who had helped ruin his life, completely at his mercy. This was an opportunity he would never get again, one more golden than any he had ever seen.

Still, he hesitated.

A civilian killing a parahuman was unheard of. Even thinking about it felt insane.

But unheard of was not the same as impossible.

Finally, with shaking hands and a heart pounding so hard he could hear it in his ears, he made his decision.

He rummaged through the debris scattered across the factory floor until he found what he could use, a jagged, broken bottle discarded long ago and forgotten like everything else in the building. It was a crude weapon, little more than trash, but it was a weapon all the same.

He stood over her for a moment longer, and he considered turning back again, throwing it aside and walking out into the night.

Then he thought about the smug, laughing faces of the Merchants when they had still ruled these streets.

The little voice at the back of his mind spoke, if Anakin Skywalker could do it, then so could he.

By the time the sun rose over Brockton Bay, the abandoned factory was silent again, and Squealer would never wake up. The man fled after he was finished, leaving behind a body that would not be discovered until much later.

News traveled quickly, as it always did, even in a city that had grown numb to tragedy. A body was discovered, a known parahuman confirmed dead, and not at the hands of another cape but because of a single desperate civilian with nothing left to lose. The details were messy and confused, passed along through rumors and secondhand accounts, but the core fact remained undeniable.

For the second time in the city’s living memory, an ordinary person had killed a parahuman.

The PRT awoke to a nightmare they should have planned for.

Cauldron discovered a complication they should have predicted.

But both knew it was far too late to pretend that the world was still the same as it had been only a week ago.