Lisa stopped him, “Let’s wait, then.  He said we had a week, we can afford to wait a day or two.  Bitch, go do your thing, get it out of the way.  But maybe try to be more open to negotiation and discussion when it comes up again.”

Fair enough, I suppose.

Bitch’s eyebrows knit together in a glare, not directed at anyone in particular.  She turned her attention to collecting the things she needed – plastic bags, a few energy bars, leashes, and a backpack with a bright blue plastic stick jutting out of a gap in the zipper.

“Hey,” I spoke up, “Can I come with?”

Huh… now that’s an interesting move. I guess Taylor is trying to make good on what she told herself yesterday, and make an effort to get to know all the Undersiders better, including Rachel.

And now that Taylor knows a bit better how Rachel’s mind works, it might not go horribly, even.

I’d told myself I wanted to connect with these guys, and that wasn’t going to happen if I just sat back and participated only when invited.  I had to put myself out there.  Given what I was giving up to be here, I figured I owed it to myself.

Yeah… that’s… a good perspective…

*cough*imterribleattakingthiskindofinitiative*cough*

I have a feeling that by the end of the Arc, Rachel will either a) come around, b) leave the Undersiders or c) be steamrolled despite what was agreed. The deal looks too important to the furthering of the plot – it would be very surprising if the Undersiders didn’t ultimately take it.

I leaned forward, “Not saying you’re wrong in not trusting him, but why?”

Angelica, the one eyed, one eared terrier, nuzzled her, and Bitch scratched her behind the ear.  Bitch explained, “He talks too much.  Only reason people talk like he does is if they’re covering something up.”

Hm. Spoken like a true quiet person.

Maybe there’s some truth to that. I mean, snake’s tongue and all – I’m willing to trust Coil a fair bit, but let’s not forget the motifs and reputation he surrounds himself with. Plus, based on a couple of the asks I’ve been getting, it sounds like some of you guys don’t.

On another note, I wonder how much Rachel trusts Lisa.

“I don’t think he’s covering anything up,” Lisa said, “My power would probably clue me in if he was hiding something.”

“I’m going with my gut, and my gut says no.  Besides, things are fine the way they are.”

“But they could be better,” Alec said.

Fair points on all sides.

“Your opinion, not mine.  We done here?  You said we wouldn’t accept the deal unless everyone was cool with it, and I’m not.”

Yeah, that’s what was agreed. I’m fine with the other Undersiders wanting to know why Rachel voted no, but let’s not peer (pack?) pressure her.

Brian frowned, “Wait.  I assumed we’d discuss this, hear each other out.”

“Nothing to discuss,” Bitch stood up and whistled twice.  Her dogs hopped down from the couch to follow her.  “I’m going to work.”

“Come on,” Brian said, “Don’t-”

Sorry, Brian.

I raised my hand.  Alec, Brian and Lisa joined me in raising theirs.  That left the one person who hadn’t participated in the conversation over Coil’s deal as the sole nay vote.  Bitch seemed unconcerned as she rubbed Brutus’ shoulder.

Hm. What do you think, Rachel?

If this is an actual nay vote, then they’re not doing it. There’s still the chance that she just… hasn’t been paying attention, though? Not really something I associate with her, but a possibility.

“What’s up?” Brian asked her.

“I don’t like it.  Don’t trust him,” she didn’t raise her eyes from Brutus.

Okay, this calls for some serious questions regarding the identity of the scentless man. So far, I’ve been operating under the assumption that the scentless man was the Boss, later revealed to be Coil, but Rachel seemed to trust the scentless man to some extent.

I guess either we have another mystery boss on our hands and Rachel is working for more than one boss, I got the wrong impression of her attitude towards Coil in the Brutus interlude, or she’s lying.

I’m not confident enough in any of those options to really make a solid guess here. For now, Occam’s razor suggests the middle option, but I’ll have to see. Occam’s razor isn’t actually that solid in works of fiction, after all.

“My problem,” I chose my words carefully, “Is it sounds too good to be true.  What if it doesn’t work out?  What if we wind up miserable, or if he screws us, or if he isn’t as good as he thinks he’ll be?  Do we walk away?  Will we be able to?”

All you can ever do is try, so you do need to be prepared for the possibility of failure.

Icarus wasn’t, and that’s the real reason he died.

“I got away from my dad,” Alec said.  “Would it be so hard to get away from Coil?”

I didn’t have a good answer to that.

I suppose that’s one way of looking at it.

And hey, the Undersiders are the masters of the getaway and all…

“I guess we don’t know enough about him or the resources he’s got at his disposal to say.”

“I do have my reservations,” Brian spoke, “But I get the impression Coil’s going ahead with this regardless of whether we’re in or not.  I’d rather be in on this than sitting on the sidelines, watching it happen.”

Yeah, that’s a pretty good point, one that might be what would get me in on this. If the Undersiders stay out, nothing changes for their status quo in the short term, but what about when Coil is in charge of the city?

“Yeah,” I agreed, “I think that right now, what we stand to gain by saying ‘yes’, and being right, far outweighs what we stand to lose.”

“So, who’s for the deal, then?” Lisa asked us.

Aye!

“Call me an optimist,” Alec said. “I don’t think it’ll be that bad.”

Ooooptiiiimiiiist
I know it’ll work out in the end
As long as I’m living here
I’ll be an optimist
I am an optimist

“Taylor just reminded me of what I said about the bank robbery, and what wound up happening.”  This from Brian.

What did Brian say about it, again? That it was high risk, low reward, right?

“We’ve been successful because we, by and large, pick our battles, go on the offensive, and catch our enemies off guard.  In situations where we haven’t done that, and I’m thinking specifically about our fight with Bakuda, we really struggled.  That’s when we came closest to getting killed.

Hm, yeah, this is a fairly good point.

Consider that we’ll be the ones on the defensive, if we’re holding this territory and taking on all comers.”

And it got even better when I actually finished reading it.

“We can work around that,” Lisa replied, “Plans, information gathering, pre-emptive attacks. I’ve got the inside info, and there’s nothing stopping Taylor from using her bugs to keep an eye on the neighborhood.

There we go again: Knowledge is power.

She also seems to be suggesting a “good offense is the best defense” strategy. Which, if you’re better at the offensive to begin with, can be true.

Besides, Coil didn’t say we couldn’t hire other parahumans, just that anyone who wanted to work in Brockton Bay had to bend the knee to him.  So we could theoretically recruit other parahumans, if we needed to, bulk our forces.”

Start with establishing good relations with the Travelers. They’re also hired by Coil, and they’re heavy hitters that can help with that good offense we just discussed.

“Yeah,” Brian agreed.  “I’m less than thrilled you didn’t mention this, I have my concerns about the possibility that a guy like him might come after you, after us, but there’s nothing we can do about it for the time being.  Let’s focus on more pressing matters.”

Yeah.

Lisa pulled her feet up beside her on the couch, “Thoughts on the deal?  Before we vote?”

“Makes sense to me,” Alec replied.  “It’s something I figured I’d end up doing eventually, controlling a territory, being boss of an area, letting the green roll in without any major effort.”

Hehe. Classic Regent, really. It’s pretty much exactly what his name would imply, even.

“Could be a lot of effort,” I spoke, “Depending on how secret he manages to keep this, and how successful he is.

Yeah, that’s fair. This isn’t guaranteed to wo- wait, yes it is, at least if Coil’s power is strong enough.

If this goes bad, it means us against however many capes the Protectorate decides to throw at us.

It might mean that if it goes well, too. I mean, you’ll be a group of villains who have taken over an entire city.

We could wind up with the teams from Boston and New York coming to deal with the problem, if word gets out about what we’re doing.”

Yeah, very likely.

“You said he goes after his kids if they leave,” Brian spoke, “Will that happen here?  If he realizes you’re one of his?”

“Dunno.  Maybe.

That could become a problem some Arc, then.

I’d bet he’d send one of my brothers or sisters to talk to me, ask me to come back before he did anything else.  If that happened, I’d probably leave before he came in person.”

Ahh, maybe not. Unless things didn’t go as Alec expected, I don’t see this actually happening.

“Or we could back you up,” Brian pointed out.

“Or that,” Alec agreed, apparently oblivious to the show of camaraderie.

“Yes, that makes sense.”

“Anything else?  Any more questions for yours truly?”

“Dozens more,” I said, “But I think we need to get to the other big topic of the day.”

Yeah, let’s do that. It was fun learning more about Alec, but that’s not what they actually came here for.

Just another way of pushing my limits.  I had convinced myself I didn’t care about the people I was hurting or about this guy I’d just killed, and maybe I didn’t.  Maybe I don’t, still.  Dunno.  But it was so pointless.”

If Alec’s detached attitude isn’t entirely the result of Heartbreaker’s power, this kind of thing would likely contribute to it. He’d start detaching himself from the things Heartbreaker made him do, and it’d snowball into a detachment from pretty much everything.

He shrugged, “I didn’t see a real reason to stay.  Walked away.  Changed my name, got fresh ID, changed my villain name too.”

Why did you stay a villain? Why do you still want to impress your father (as discussed in 3.8)? Was that what he did with his power, make you permanently want to impress him? It would make sense to do that when he’s trying to raise children to be his parahuman servants.

He’d killed someone on his father’s orders, which made him the second killer in the group. Armsmaster must have dug up that detail & drawn the right conclusions after connecting Alec to his prior alter ego.

(The ampersand seems out of place here.)

Yeah, we know from Coil that the Protectorate is aware of Alec’s past, so Armsy almost certainly knew about that.

“When did this happen, this killing?” I asked, quiet, “How old were you when you killed that guy?”

“Hmm.  I’d been gone for about two years before the boss got in touch with me, which was about this time last year, so three years ago.  I would’ve been twelve or thirteen.”

Sheesh.

Was that forgivable?  He’d been made to do it, he’d been in fucked up circumstances with no real moral compass to go by, still a kid.  The way he described it, though, it didn’t sit well with me.  Cold blooded murder.

Ahh, a good old philosophical question right there. Are you still accountable for morally bad actions if someone forced you to do them?

Immanuel Kant would say that yes, if you have the option to refuse to do something bad (which you almost always have, just at varying costs to yourself), it’s your responsibility to refuse – though Kant was also the guy who’d rather have you giving up your children’s location to a murderer than tell a lie. He did have a point, though – is it selfish to put more weight on the bad things that may happen to yourself if you don’t than on the bad things that definitely happen to others if you do?

Worth noting in this particular scenario is that Heartbreaker would probably kill the victims anyway, and I think Alec knew that. Realistically, Alec and the world didn’t actually stand anything to gain, other than a clearer conscience for Alec, from him not murdering.

The cold-blooded part was a defense mechanism. A way for Alec to handle being forced to do this without breaking apart and becoming another tool for Heartbreaker to spread more violence.

Was it wrong to murder this guy? Yes. Did Alec have a choice? Yes. Do I blame Alec for doing it? Not one bit.

Alec shrugged, “So yeah.  I worked for him for three or four years.  We did jobs, I learned the family trade.  Called myself Hijack at first.

That’s a pretty fitting name.

It also makes me think or Paranatural, where Hijack is some kind of being with the power of possession.

He started to get on my case.  I think maybe he was having trouble affecting me the same way he did before my powers kicked in, so he compensated for that by riding me.

Confirmed that Heartbreaker used his power on his kids, including Alec.

Also, “riding”? I hope you mean in the sense of making Alec work hard. I really do.

Pushed my limits, made me do stuff that was dangerous, stuff that was hard on my conscience.  Wanted me to break, beg him to stop, so he’d have leverage to get me to do what he wanted.”

“And?”

Ugh.

…I have a feeling Alec only got more and more bitter and resolved not to break. Question is whether he managed to keep that resolve.

“And he ordered me to kill this foot soldier for a group trying to push us out of their territory.  After I was done, he told me I did it wrong, that I had to do it again with a captive we’d taken, and I knew no matter what I did, he’d make me keep doing it.

So that’s at the very least two lives he had Alec take for the sake of abusing him. There’s a chance he was going to murder these two anyway, but still. Rude.

…ohhh. I think we just found out what Armsmaster was talking about in Agitation.