(SHATTERPOINT) INCOMING SHITSTORM

Sometimes, the how and why didn’t matter. Only the end result did. But when said end result was something that defied reason, when it upended everything people thought they knew, the how and why became impossible to ignore.

Take this situation, for instance. No matter how much the PRT tried, no matter how quickly Miss Militia and the rest of the Protectorate scrambled to contain it, the altercation between Anakin Skywalker and Battery had been far too public, far too dramatic, to simply disappear.

There were witnesses, people who might not have seen the fight itself, but who certainly saw its aftermath. They saw PRT officers carefully carrying Battery’s unconscious body out on a stretcher. They saw a bloodied man calmly led into one of the large vans. They recorded what they could, shaky footage taken from behind others or over shoulders, most of it filled with confused shouting and mutterings. And when the PRT vans finally drove off, Miss Militia had been left trying, and failing, to allay the growing worry.

And most damning of all, there was Greg Veder.

Greg had a special talent for making assumptions and running with them. He had an uncanny ability to insert himself into situations that had nothing to do with him, driven by equal parts obsession and genuine curiosity. Everyone had thought he’d left the scene before the fight started—especially Miss Militia, who had told him he’d get his autographs later—but Greg being Greg, had ignored her words and sneakily followed after her, stumbling onto the scene just before things started getting interesting. Through sheer persistence and luck, he had managed to capture the entire fight on video, and that night, he uploaded it online.

Once that happened, there was no stopping the rumor mill from turning. And at first, it was small. Easy to laugh off.

Battery fought a civilian, and the civilian won.

Most people dismissed it immediately. A trained Protectorate hero, one of Brockton Bay’s best, taken down by some random man? The very idea felt like a ridiculous plot to a bad movie. Even after the footage started circulating—shaky, the audio a mix of heavy breathing and Greg’s occasional, whispered commentary—most assumed it was fake, some cheap attempt by VoidCowboy to stir outrage or rake in views.

But then the man’s name became known: Anakin Skywalker.

That was when everything changed.

People remembered that name. They remembered the story about the mysterious man who had dismantled the Merchants weeks prior. They remembered the fear former members had as they spoke about this seemingly impossible feat, his skills, and the sheer ruthlessness with which he acted. And they remembered that, as far as anyone could tell, he wasn’t a cape.

Disbelief turned into curiosity, curiosity into debate, and debate—on PHO threads, in bars, in classrooms, and on late-night talk shows—turned into something more. 

Who was Anakin Skywalker? Was he really just a civilian? Or was he a parahuman hiding his power, a vigilante who had never crossed paths with anyone until now?

But try as they might to convince themselves otherwise, the truth remained the same: Anakin Skywalker was a regular man. Unusually skilled, certainly dangerous, but still a regular plain human. Normal. 

And that, paradoxically, made things worse.

Because if a normal man could do what he did—if someone without powers could take down a Protectorate hero who could bend metal and move faster than cars—then what did that say about everyone else? What did it say about the 99.98% of the total population who had spent years living in fear or awe of those with powers? Could they do the same?

That was when the story began to change.

The new rumor went like this: Anakin Skywalker was tired of the capes in the city. Hero or villain, it didn’t matter, he was cleaning house. The Merchants had been first. Now it was the PRT. Next would be the Empire Eighty-Eight, and after that, the ABB.

It was baseless speculation, sure, but it spread like wildfire through the city’s rumor channels. After all, real, primal fear never truly disappeared, just kept in check by common sense and self-preservation. Humanity might have learned to live beside parahumans, might have learned to accept and trust a handful of them, but deep down, most still deeply feared them.

They were unpredictable, dangerous, and most importantly, unknown. 

Sure, everyone knew you became one after a really bad day—a “trigger event,” the scholars called it—but beyond that, no one understood how or why. Powers simply happened. And people feared what they couldn’t understand.

Now, though, that fear was shifting.

Someone had proved the unthinkable. Someone had shown that a parahuman could be beaten by those without powers.

It was intoxicating.

On the forums, people spoke of Anakin Skywalker almost in reverent tones, calling him names like The Equalizer, The Human Weapon, and The Man Without Powers. Conspiracy boards labeled him an anti-cape extremist. Others hailed him as a symbol of human strength, a reminder that you didn’t need powers to matter. Even the tabloids jumped on the bandwagon with headlines like:

“Man Without Powers Defeats Protectorate Hero: What Does This Mean for The Cape Community?”

But beneath all the noise, something subtle began to change in Brockton Bay.

The fear that had once belonged to the powerless was being replaced by something new, something that almost resembled hope. Cautious optimism, it was called. 

Maybe they didn’t need capes after all. Maybe they didn’t have to live under the protection of unstable heroes and unchecked villains. Maybe they could protect themselves, like people used to, before powers had complicated everything.

It was only a small spark, hardly enough to be considered a movement. But in Brockton Bay, a city that had long forgotten what hope felt like, it burned all the more fiercely for it.

For now, though, the people waited, restless and curious, to see what Anakin Skywalker would do next. Because one thing was certain, the balance had shifted, and no one—hero, villain, or rogue—could afford to pretend otherwise anymore.