Power Swap: For Justice! (Sean)

[Kateri Rivera]

After the first few days of initial confusion, Kat was loving her new power. In truth, she’d hardly noticed it. She’d just noticed that her weather manipulation was gone. It wasn’t until she’d been practicing some self-defense tactics that she’d realized that the punches weren’t hurting her, and that she was instead absorbing their energy. And that was pretty awesome. Her experiments had started slowly. She’d started working with one of the powers trainers who hadn’t been affected by the mysterious swap. But she’d always been pretty good at mastering control of her ability and this time wasn’t an exception. Within a couple of weeks she had control, and shortly after that was having a grand old time with it, running all sorts of experiments. She missed her weather control, no doubt, but this one had the blessing of having so much more power behind it. Eventually, however, she decided it wasn’t enough to just keep playing with it. There had been enough horrible things that had happened in this town that it was time to do something cool with this power.

And since Sean had also gotten a rather—interesting—power, she decided to approach him.

And by approach him, she meant showing up at his doorstep in workout clothes and a grin. And with cookies. Because she had heard he’d had a challenging time with the loss of his telepathy and felt bad for him.

“Hello,” she greeted, holding out the cookies. “We should go fight crime.”

It should be mentioned that she’d probably been talking to Cee a little too much lately.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Sean has not been doing as well as Kateri, in terms of acceptance or happiness with his power. Starting with the fact that it had taken him so very long to even realize that he had a new power. For so many days after the Event (although they still did not know what had happened), he had focused only on the loss. He felt cut off, he felt as though he lacked so much compared to how he had lived his life. He knew that he had no access to other people’s memories either, as he had lost both his telepathy and his memory manipulation. Even if he relied on one of those far more than on the other.

Despite awareness that others around town had gained powers that they had not had before, either because they were non-powered or such abilities had developed to replace their lost ones, it had not occurred to him to think about that for himself. Losing his telepathy had taken so much out of him, and he had no desire for a different power. Instead, he had clung to the headaches and fatigue, falsely attributing them to the fact that his powers might return. After all, the side effects were the same, and he could still shield. Although not as well as before the loss.

After one too many coincidences in which he had been able to overbear the wills of those around him, either making them accept or do something he wanted or getting them to stop or leave him alone, he realized that he, too, had a replacement ability.

At least it was a psychic power as well. Even if he still felt cut off with the lack of a sense.

A conversation with Chase had helped a bit.

Due to the lack of telepathy, Sean had not known who had come to visit until he opened the door to find Kateri standing on his doorstep.

“Hello,” he replied, before she made her proposal. The former telepath didn’t know what to make of that. “I beg your pardon?”

[Kateri Rivera]

Kateri’s power shift had probably gone better for a few reasons. One, because her power was far less powerful than Sean’s. And while she often used it to cool down her classroom and entertain Meg, that was the daily extent of how much she used her powers. She had only noticed it gone when she’d absentmindedly tried to move a few clouds on a rainy day and had found that she couldn’t. It had been a shock. That was the hardest thing—to talk to her parents and tell her she didn’t know what had happened to her power, the one that had been fairly routinely in her father’s line. But this power was awesome enough to make her feel the loss less. She did miss it, though. She missed it a lot.

But in the meantime, there were other things to do. She grinned at Sean, then let it soften. “I suppose what I should say first is that I am very sorry about your power. I know it was very important to you. Maybe one day it’ll come back. But I also heard what you got instead.” Because Kateri was pretty much unstoppably friendly, her smile turned to a grin. “But I also heard what you got and—well, can I come in?”

Once she was inside—because Kat never took no for an answer—she turned to him. “I’ve been thinking. We both got powers that aren’t really comfortable for us but could be very useful. I got Vincent’s—you remember. So what if we went around and fought crime? Starting, perhaps, with recalcitrant students? C’mon.” She tilted her head to the side. “You can’t say you’ve never thought about doing it. We could be…vigilantes. But not Batman level. I don’t think either of us is that clever.” A pause. “Well, maybe you. Definitely not me.”

[Dr. Sean Neville]

In fact, Sean could say that he had never thought about vigilantism as a recreational hobby. The one time that he had needed to involve himself in a battle – his only battle, and one that was so far outside of the confines of the law that Claude had resigned over it, despite the former telepath’s best efforts to shield his friend – had been a fluke. It had been a literal matter of life and death. Even with those considerations, he regretted how it had happened, although not the fact that it had happened.

Never again, he had vowed.

Sean had put forth no resistance to Kateri entering his home. She was a friend and a coworker, and even if he disagreed with her proposition, he would not force her to stand outside while they conversed. Once she was safely inside, he closed the door and gestured in the direction of the kitchen. That might be a better place for this conversation than the foyer.

“That’s illegal.” That was not his only objection to the matter. After all, the psychiatrist had indulged in a number of illegal activities over the years that abided by his moral principle of “harm none.” Sodomy had been illegal for most of his life, which had not stopped him from pursuing sexual and romantic relationships. Marijuana had been illegal when he had indulged in college, although it had been decades since he had done so. The matter of flag burning had not been settled until long after he had done so at protests. Although he had never been confronted with having to assist a suicide medically, as he was a psychiatrist and not a physician, if a loved one was near the end of life and wanted his help, he would do so without regret, and that broke the law in nearly fifty states.

Still, that was not the same thing as being one of Ryan’s comic book heroes.

“Besides, I don’t think that beating up Oriel is going to teach him anything that therapy can’t.”

[Kateri Rivera]

Kateri would admit that she’d never thought of it as one either. Drinking, yes. Partying, yes. Tutoring students and teaching lessons to adults for local nonprofits, yeah, that happened too. She liked doing all of it. She enjoyed the work. She enjoyed helping people. But now she had these cool powers and…well, why not? Besides, she had no intention of taking this as far as, say, Batman. Nah, some light justice here and there. Some thieves stopped, some muggers put out for the police…just helping out. Being a good citizen. And hopefully, low violence.

Mind, it wouldn’t even get out the door if Sean continued to have that attitude. Kateri let herself be escorted to the kitchen but did frown at him for response. “Sean, don’t use that with me,” she said. “I know you. It’s not the first illegal thing you’ve done.” A pause. “Or, frankly, that I’ve done.” Although none of her crimes were particularly terrible, she’d admit. Except one. And only a few of them had actually been illegal in any way. Darn. She needed to get out more. Although maybe now that she was a mom she should think about this more. “Before you start on your other ideas,” she said, “because I can tell, I’m not thinking harming. I’m thinking of preventing harm. Trussing up some bad guys. Never hurting anyone, no, because you now I don’t like that anymore than you do. But helping people. Just…” She made a face. “In a different way than we normally do.”

However, she did have to laugh at that statement. “I beg to differ. But in that I’m more old fashioned than you, I think.” She’d grown up in the line of thinking that it was okay to give someone a good smack on the bottom if it got your point across. Then again, it hadn’t really helped her. But anyways.

“Think about it,” she said. “It’d be…interesting.”

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Sean knew that it was not the first illegal thing he had done, and he firmly agree that ethics, morality, and legality could diverge in such a way that a person had to pick one or two, and he would prefer to be ethical and moral while operating outside of the law, if push came to shove. He also did not believe that the law had any place dictating certain areas of life, which was why he and Josh had not had a legal relationship until after 2003 and the Supreme Court’s decision in Lawrence v. Texas. “There’s a world of difference between this and smoking marijuana or consensual sodomy.”

By every analysis, active vigilantism existed outside of the realm of an acceptable course of action. Sean separated active vigilantism from the battle with M.S.A.D. in 2010 and 2011 because that had been an act of necessity, as opposed to prowling for adventure or crime. The law had failed them, the threat was real, palpable, and imminent, and there had been no other viable options. Never again, he had vowed.

The former telepath began to pace the length of the room as Kateri outline her case. “I went to Catholic school,” he pointed out. He had seen first-hand the effect of corporal punishment on students, and it had failed to teach them any lessons. As such, he opposed corporal punishment, all threats to Vincent Verax aside. He didn’t believe in spanking. He disagreed with police militarization, but he did not think that the answer to that problem was for the citizenry to mimic those tactics. And meta-humans faced enough prejudice that they did not need for certain meta-humans to become avatars of power abuse.

However, the way she phrased it gave him further pause, and he sighed. “Give me an example.”

[Kateri Rivera]

“Okay, okay, okay.” Kateri held up both hands in a gesture of supplication. “Sean, I know we’re close, and I like that. And I know we can speak openly together—I hope we can—and I appreciate that as well. But please, do me a favor and don’t mention consensual sodomy. I consider myself understanding, but deep in my heart I am still a young obnoxious teenager and that phrase still brings it out of me. But yes, I agree that there is a difference. However.” She lowered her hands and grew solemn. “Police here are becoming more and more armed. Really, could we be doing worse than they do? We could help. Safely.”

True, M.S.A.D. had been different. She could acknowledge that, and know she was unlikely to do anything like that ever again, and for good reason. She might’ve been a little drunk with power, but she did honestly believe that this was different, and this could help. She watched him pace back and forth—a sign of his anxiety, and not a good one—and bit her lip. Poor Sean. Her lack of weather manipulation powers had hit her hard, but this seemed to have hit him harder still. “I know you did,” she said patiently. “And so did I. But I still don’t think it did me any harm. As I said, I’m more old-fashioned than you. Surely that doesn’t surprise you?” Not that Kateri would ever be likely to hit her own child. She loved Meg dearly, and even when the child could be a brat she rarely even thought about hitting her. Still, a warning smack on the butt didn’t do any harm, especially when words weren’t cutting it.

“All right,” she said. “Take a mugger. He’s trying to hurt someone. You hold him mentally still, I tie him up, we call the cops.” She shrugged. “Or someone trying to slip a drug into a girl’s drink in a bar. You stop him. Someone trying to cause a fight, we throw him out before he can cause more harm. There are real people who need help, and we don’t have to do much to prevent it. We don’t have to hurt anyone to do it, Sean.”

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Sean lifted his hands in a gesture of mock surrender, mirroring her gesture. “I won’t use that combination of words around you again.” He had only phrased it that way to make a point, specifically that the laws he broke as a younger man involved consensual sex between adults, but because he and his partners were unmarried, and because many of the acts counted as sodomy, that is how he would have been charged. By the time he had become sexually active, fornication had been decriminalized. Otherwise, he could call it sex or lovemaking, as he did with Josh or with other adults in his social circle.

“I’d rather that we disarmed the police, and fired anyone with a history of violence or bigotry.” That opinion should not have been controversial, although given the protests in Missouri that had gone on for over a month, society proved far less empathetic and more conservative than he would like. At this point, between the fact that the protest area looked like a war zone and the greater reports of violent abuses and deaths, he would far prefer to simply disband the police altogether and try again with something new. Not vigilantism but something with community accountability.

“No, it doesn’t surprise me.” Most people were more old-fashioned than Sean was, when it came to belief systems. Yes, he was formal in his job and he drew clear boundaries between himself and the students (and his former adult patients) as a matter of professional ethics, but in his daily life he was far less conventional than many people assumed. None of that had any bearing on the fact that spanking solved nothing, and he had studies to support his beliefs.

He shook his head as he began to pace the length of the foyer, keeping his voice low from habit when discussing something sensitive and secretive. “Where would be draw the line? This goes so quickly from an ethical gray area to something morally indefensible.”