The Legion [Network]

[Rich hasn't been very vocal lately. After Murderworld, especially after running into those bugs, he retreated into himself a little bit. It wasn't full moping, just thoughtfulness, and he needed some quiet time.]

[But he's got to speak up on this. He's got a perspective most don't and maybe that can help.]

Kid Q already got the lecture out of the way, so I'm not gonna do that. That isn't what this is.

In that last mission, some of us had disagreements about lethal force, and we had to sideline them because of the urgency of the situation, but it's something we still need to talk about, because those disagreements aren't going to go away.

Now, I occupy a unique position on this. I've been a meta-powered cop, a superhero, and a soldier. I've been to war. I've led an army in a war against omnicidal space bugs, and you can be damn sure I didn't have my soldiers hold back.

I didn't hold back either. I've killed more than my fair share of sentients, and when it came down to facing the intergalactic despot that ordered his army to slaughter billions, I pulled his guts out through his throat. And you know what, if given the chance to do it again, I'd do it ten thousand times over.

My point here is I get it. I've seen that side of things well enough to understand sometimes that's what it takes. The problem here is this is not warfare that we're facing. Right now, we're law enforcement. We have a mandate from this universe's government to follow their laws, and a responsibility to the public to follow their morals -- and they value life here -- and having also allied myself with some ugly customers for the sake of the common good, I know that even terrible people can sometimes find purpose and redeem themselves, so this universe valuing life enough to give at least some criminals a chance to reform ain't exactly entirely misplaced.

But whether any of us agree with that principle or not, the public trusts us to follow a certain standard and we ultimately serve them. When it comes to police work, there's levels of force. With a team of over thirty metapowered individuals, we're a small army. I don't know if any of you noticed, but even with non-lethal force we cleaned their clocks the other day, with no casualties, most of the villains detained, no civilians harmed, and minimal serious injuries.

Having that kind of power and the kind of numbers we have changes the entire ballgame, because it changes the nature of the conflicts we face. It means that villains can go to greater extremes -- extremes that in other situations would require fatal force to stop -- and we're powerful enough that we can handle those extremes. When you're a superhero, controlling battlefield conditions and preventing casualties is a lot easier than it would be without the metapowers.

I guess what I'm trying to do here is bridge the gap and try to help people understand why all this is the way it is.