A Powered on the Subway

Almost as soon as I boarded, I could feel a strong presence brushing up against me.

Not physically, not in any ordinary sense.

I... Well, I'm a mutant. A meta. I'd developed my ability mid-way through high school, and it was an odd one. Very rare, but not extraordinary, at least usually.

A sort of absorption. I'd apparently been born with it, but it only triggered during puberty. Some people were like that, while others became meta through accidents or deliberate experimentation.

Or were aliens. There were a lot of those these days, since humanity had started expanding beyond the solar system.

My ability didn't do anything on it's own, or at least not much, but I would naturally feed of other abilities in my environment. It would just happen, slowly, if I wasn't paying attention - but I could also focus it, control it.

And this person on the train with me glowed unlike anyone I'd been within hundreds of feet of.

Lots of people had small abilities, some of them barely noticeable, but mutants, biotics and aliens were still a miniscule minority of the population.

I'd only gone to high school with only one other meta of any significance, and he'd been an absolute douche.

Josh Tark. Debate club. Not your ordinary bully, but as soon as he realized people had a hard time getting mad at him, he'd taken full advantage and never looked back.

Until his ability disappeared.

Yeah, that was me.

I didn't *have to* take people's abilities, it didn't happen if I just passively fed on their presence, but man... That asshole did not deserve to keep it.

And that was how I'd initially learned I could fully absorb someone's power. It was win-win for me.

Best part is probably that he never had any idea how or why it had happened. There was no visible indication of me using my power. It just happened.

The closer I was physically to someone, the better, but just us sharing a couple of classes was enough that I'd fully taken Josh's ability within a week of figuring out how my own worked.

For Josh, his ability had been a shield against aggression, and therefore retaliation. So fuck that guy.

It manifested slightly differently in me than him, though. I guess... If I were to take a shot at explaining it, for me it was just a base level of friendliness and acceptance that people seemed to feel towards me, unless they already had a reason not to.

Now, as my eyes locked on a short raven-haired woman in the train car, just twenty or so feet away... I could feel her glowing against my senses.

I was tempted. Whatever she had, it was strong. The strongest I'd ever seen up close.

But I didn't know jack shit about her. Who was I to just take her power away?

I wasn't sure I could, anyway. The standardized SHIELD Alliance testing had come out inconclusive regarding the upper limits of my ability, but I'd been preliminarily classified as D-grade in the system.

Minor powers in multiple fields, or perhaps the ability to absorb three-to-four full E-grade mutations.

F through A were almost exponentially more powerful, as I understood it. Public knowledge on exactly how it worked was limited, and judging by how poorly they'd graded me, I would soon get the impression that the whole system was unreliable.

But the idea was that F could be an ability or mutation that was totally unnoticable to the person who had it, that had limited or literally no impact on their lives.

And on the other end there was S-tier, but that was reserved for the real titans. The superheroes you saw on TV, the big villains, the world-ending threats.

Way out of my league.

I had no frame of reference to say where this glowing black-haired girl might be on the ladder. Higher than D-grade, for sure.

In some way I couldn't quite put my finger on, she felt familiar, even though I was pretty sure I hadn't met her before.

She was in her late twenties or early thirties, I'd wager. Cute, pretty, but angry-looking. Sad.

Something was weighing her down.

Maybe I could start there.