Aw, thank you! Glad you enjoyed it <3

I would seriously have *loved* to see this scenario play out in the comic, at least for a bit. It would have fitted with his overall empowering (personality-wise, not powers-wise) character arc, from that poor empty guy standing on the window-ledge to now, if he'd had to finally shake off that mistrust of authority, and quit grumbling from the sidelines, and step up :) And as you say, the only person who doesn't know that Rictor is more than capable of that is Rictor XD

lemiserabelle upthread mentioned the idea of a story of Ric's first case as team leader, and I can't get that out of my head now, dammit ;)