“How old were you?  When your powers showed?” I asked, quiet, feeling intense pity not only for Heartbreaker’s victims, but for the kids in that situation.

Honestly, you might as well count them under his victims too. They’re not victims of the same thing, but they’re definitely also victims.

That said, it’s useful to keep them separate, just for clarity’s sake.

Whatever my feelings, Alec managed to look bored with the topic.

Honestly, Heartbreaker’s power has me worried. Is there a reason, beyond Alec’s personality and what he had to teach himself in order to make it in the Heartbreaker household, for his nearly perpetual bored or detached attitude?

I hope not, for Alec’s sake. Especially considering that boredom is one of the most awful and self-destructive feelings we have – many if not most people literally prefer pain over boredom.

“Hard to tell.  Since I didn’t go to school, and nobody really kept records, I lost track of the years.  Ten or eleven, maybe.

That must be such a strange feeling. I mean, it’s one thing just biologically having a limited sense of time’s passage and no idea if certain things happened two weeks or two months ago, like I do, but something very different to have been neglected so much you lost track of how old you were back then.

I was his fourth kid to show powers, and there were eighteen or so of us when I left.  Most of ’em were babies, though.”

Damn.

Which made him, not Grue, the one of us with the most experience and seniority.

…I suppose that’s true.

I think that’s where I’m going to leave this session for the night. We’ll continue Alec’s story on Sunday Saturday. See ya then!

(Chrono link for part 1 of chapter 7.1)

“Seconded,” I added.

Come on, Taylor! Not you too!

See, the thing is, unlike me, these two don’t have the excuse of Alec being a fictional character whom they’re supposed to learn about in this situation as per the divine decree of the author of the universe. To them, Alec is a human being who clearly doesn’t want to talk about his childhood.

He scowled briefly, then crossed one foot over the other on the coffee table, settling deeper into the couch with his coffee resting on his belt buckle.  “We had everything we could ask for, as far as money and stuff went.

I’m sorry, Alec.

Dad’s victims took care of the chores, so the only thing us kids would have to do was take care of the babies sometimes.

How many would there be at a time?

Also, it’s not at all surprising that Alec was raised with a lot of money and not much to do – that much has been clear since, well… pretty much all the way since 1.6.

Didn’t have to go to school, but some of my brothers and sisters did just to stay out of my dad’s way.”

“Why?” I asked, “Or is that a dumb question?”

It seems like a useful interrogative quip to grease the wheels of his monologue.

“Eh.  It’s hard to explain.  He cultivated us, bred for us, went miles out of his way to get us back if a member of his ‘family’ was taken from him.  Mounted a freaking crusade if it came down to it.  But when we were around, he paid almost no attention to us kids.

Hrm. What did he see them as? Property?

When he did pay attention, it was to discipline us or test us.

…soldiers?

Discipline usually meant getting a dose of paralyzing terror for not listening to him, insulting him or even looking him in the eye, sometimes.  Testing happened on our birthdays or if he’d had a bad day… he’d try to set up a trigger event.

Ohh boy.

Welp. Guess we know how Alec got his power, somewhat.

Yikes in a handbasket.

Not supposed to be so hard, given that we were second generation capes, obviously, but he started when we were eight or so.”

So, remember how I once suggested there might be some sort of group that were actively trying to cause trigger events for the general population because of parahuman supremacist views?

This seems to be in the same vein, except it feels even more disgusting because it’s Heartbreaker’s own kids – it’s like he’s having children specifically to turn them into his own personal army of parahumans.

“Damn,” I muttered.  I asked Alec, “You grew up with that guy?”

He shrugged, “It was normal to me.”

A typical exhibit of what happens when someone grows up in fucked-up conditions.

“I mean, what was it like? I can’t even wrap my head around it.  Were the women nice to you?  What- how does that even function?”

“My dad’s victims had eyes only for him,” Alec said, “So no, they weren’t nice to me or my brothers and sisters.”

Well, there goes the “at least he got to have a lot of moms” silver lining.

“Details,” Lisa said, “C’mon.  Talk.”

Rude, Lisa. I know you don’t like not knowing things, but rude. Very rude.

“I’m not a talkative person.”

“Talk or I kick your ass,” she threatened.

Lisa just took “Very rude.” and punted it into orbit – that’s how rude she’s being now.