another missed possessive.
Thank you
Quite appreciated.
Emotional imbalance=power screwups?
Only partially.
It's because she trained with Hu Dai and got the benefit from lots of training-charms. Similar to Aisha, she's basically at Martial Arts 5 now (Aisha is only at four or so). She's not using any charms here though - and is not natively capable of doing so either. She's just that good.
Now, why did she manifest a sword?
Partially because she was indeed a bit emotionally imbalanced, and was (partially) acting out of loyalty to Hu Dai. So thinking of her=falling back on her training with her. If she had been fully focused, she'd have manifested the gun she wanted.
But also - well, you may recall that Miss Militia is not that good at creating melee weapons. Essentially, that's changing due to her training with and exposure to Hu Dai (hint: the Hook Sword is actually a Crane Style form weapon).
She's bending the rules to get involved. Are we going to see that soldier mentality from post-Levi canon come in?
I'll certainly try, yes.
Regarding the whole Mercenaries vs. SWAT thing and the like:
I very much doubt that Earth Bet-USA has SWATs to the same degree as RL-USA. At least not in cities with parahumans and a strong PRT-presence.
The main reason would obviously be that there would be much less need - heroes can take over the job of taking on the dangerous criminals, and often can do so better. Then you have to figure in funding - all the funds for the PRT and Protectorate have to come from somewhere, and SWATs are a logical place for that.
So there's probably less SWATs in Brockton Bay. Which doesn't mean there are none, but not enough to counter Coil. Especially since his mercenaries are just as well trained, have better gear and the benefit of never making a grave tactical mistake (because if they did, that timeline never happened).
Also, consider what all of this looks like from the POV of the public:
For decades now, there has been gang violence in some parts of the city. The bad parts which you avoid. Your parts of the city have been safe except for the rare incident. You haven't really been paying attention to how the conflict changes in the poor parts of the city.
Then suddenly, there's a severe attack in your neighborhood. Your coworkers cousin and a dozen other people were taken hostage for three hours by gang members. On the same day, a bomb blows up a coffee shop that was fortunately closed on that day. The police barely rescues the hostages, but the gangers escape.
Then on the next day, that happens again. And on the day after that, three attacks. And you know that tomorrow, it could happen to you. What do you do?
Well, you demand that the police do everything they can to protect you of course. Use all available resources and so on.
Now yes, a reasonable person would say that you'd have to fight those criminals at their source (the poor parts of the city). But come one, that doesn't even happen in real life!
Here, with Coil paying strawmen to argue that the good neighborhoods being protected is important, and that the criminals are being bled dry by their attack? Yeah, I don't see that happening at all unless the police (PRT/Protectorate) has the resources to spare to stop all attacks right away
and fight the gangs
and Coil.
