Discards

For this short story, we move from the usual Wild Cards setting of America to Rio de Janeiro, and not because any of the regular characters are visiting. It's a different perspective than usual, telling the story of a Brazilian street urchin who draws a joker and has to struggle to survive in a world that was hardly kind to him beforehand. Despite the poverty and crime on display, with plenty of battling against the odds, it's a positive story in the end (helped, as one might expect, by what exactly the card turns out to have dealt the protagonist) providing the mix of down-to-earth reality and superpowered action that Wild Cards deals with at its best.