“You do that, try to address it, but we’ll have to do something too. We’ll go easy on her, especially if you’re taking a better course of action, but…”

“But you have to do something.”

“We can’t let that kind of invasive, dangerous behavior go entirely unanswered. In the same way we can’t look past your team’s activities last night and your ignoring rules earlier today, whatever the circumstance.”

I nodded. I didn’t have it in me for a fight, and a fight would have put things at risk, with Wardens deciding not to let me go out. And that wasn’t an option.

“Before I go… I came to talk to you armed with an argument I was ready to use if you weren’t cooperating. I didn’t find I had to use it… but I think I’d like to bring it up, just as food for thought.”

“Okay,” I said, wary.

“The Fallen were convinced they were in the right. They operated based on beliefs they said to be truths, and through some combination of luck or efforts behind the scenes, they had a lot of successes. They did reckless things in contravention to the unwritten rules. When disaster struck, they believed they were in the right because they’d seen it coming, when you could pick three random citizens off the street, ask them if they thought the world might end, and get four agreements. This encouraged them, and they ultimately pushed things too far and collapsed. In their wake, they inspired others to go down the same course, the new Thomais branch, and those others also pushed things too far, made the wrong alliances, and died.”

“I’m not the Fallen. That’s not fair.”

“I’ve been called a lot of things, with my handling of Brockton Bay and its treatment of the villain population, but unfair is not one of them,” Miss Militia said.

“If I’d been more laid back, planning, laying a groundwork, you’d be comparing me to Teacher instead.”

“Maybe,” she said. “It’s not meant as an indictment.”

“It sure fucking feels like one.”

“A warning. You and I know you’re not Fallen. You’re a hero, and being a hero counts for something. It gets you benefits of a doubt no other cape enjoys. Defiant knows and has lived it. Shadow Stalker in our old Wards program knew it and benefited from it. Skitter got it when she joined the Wards. Lookout, Capricorn, Rain, and Swansong all got some benefit out of it. We’re desperate enough for more people on the side of good that we let things go…”

“That’s not encouraging, if you say I’m not Fallen and then imply the line between me and them is I picked the right side.”