I startled at that.

Wasn’t expecting yourself to come up, huh? :p

“I meant on a long-term basis, but let’s talk about that.  I imagine they were telling you ‘No, you aren’t.  You can be good.‘”

Kind of?

“Yeah.”

“But you didn’t believe them, did you, Amelia?  You’ve spent years telling yourself the opposite.  You’re a bad person, you’re destined to be bad, by circumstance and blood.  And even though you didn’t believe them, you’ll believe me when I tell you no, you aren’t a good person, but that’s okay.”

This is disturbingly real. I have real friends who struggle with this kind of thing.

“It’s not.”

“You say that, but you believe me when I say it.”

It’s mainly the “but that’s okay” part she’s denying, yeah.

There was another pause where Panacea didn’t venture a response.

“Isn’t it unfair?  Through no fault of your own, the blood in your veins is the blood of a criminal, and that’s affected how your family looks at you.  You’ve been saddled with feelings that aren’t your fault, and doomed to a life without color, enjoyment or pleasure.  Don’t you deserve to follow your passions?  A decade and a half of doing what others want you to do, doing what society wants you to do, haven’t you earned the right to do what you really desire, just this once?”

Yeah.

Amy is a very tragic character because of this exact thing.

But going with the Slaughterhouse Nine isn’t what she really desires. Which is why Jack is trying to convince her that it is.

“That’s not really that convincing,” Panacea spoke, but she didn’t sound assertive.

“I know.  So I’ll offer you a deal.  If you indulge yourself, we’ll surrender.”

Like fuck you will.

Hell, by the time she’s done “indulging herself”, there might not even be many people left to surrender to in Brockton Bay.

“What?”

“I won’t even make you do it now.  Just look me in the eye, and honestly tell me you’ll do it. Drop all of the rules you’ve set yourself.  I don’t care what you do after, you can wipe your sister’s memories, you can kill yourself, you can run away or come with us.  And your side wins.”

Would you cure people of the miasma? Because if you don’t, their side hardly wins, no matter how much you surrender.

“Aren’t we winning anyways?”

Well, until the water turned to blood.

“Up for debate.  I’m really quite thrilled with the current situation.  Very enjoyable, and we’ve certainly made an impact.”

Which of course is what Jack is most concerned with.

“This deal is a trap.  You’ll make me do it and then you’ll kill me.”

I mean, I’m not sure about the killing part. I think he genuinely believes that if you try, you’ll comply.

And just like that, her resistance crumbled.  “I’ve never felt like that.  Never felt carefree.  Not since I could remember.  Not even when I was a kid.”

Amy is pretty much the perfect target for Jack, short of someone who actually wants to be a villain.

“I see.  From your earliest memory, what was that?  In Marquis’s home?  No?  Being taken home by the heroes and heroines that would become your false family?  Ah, I saw that change in expression.  That would be your earliest memory, and you found yourself struggling to adjust to your new home, to school and life without your supervillain daddy.

And later, having her trigger event and beginning to heal people all the time…

By the time you did figure those things out, you had other worries.  I imagine your family was distant.  So you struggled to please them, to be a good girl, not that it ever mattered.  There was only disappointment.”

😦

“You sound like Tattletale.  That’s not a compliment.”

He really does, yeah.

“My ability to read people is learned, not given, I assure you.  Most of the conclusions I’ve come to have been from the cues you’ve given me.  Body language, tone, things you’ve said.  And I know these sorts of things and what to look for because I’ve met others like you.  That’s what I’m offering you.  A chance to be with similar people for the first time in your life, a chance to be yourself, to have everything you want, and to be with me.

Jack is a lot better at sales pitches than Taylor.

I suspect you’ve never been around someone who actually paid attention to you.”

Well, there was one, but she kinda secretly hated that guy due to jealousy.

“Tattletale did.  And Skitter.”

Oh yeah, that too. I’m glad to see her acknowledge that. 🙂

Trust me, Amy, if you’re gonna join a supervillain team offering to genuinely pay attention to you and care for you, the Undersiders are a much better choice.

(And thus my hopes are reinvigorated. Slightly.)

“Not family.”

“Yes, family.”  Bonesaw cut in.

Heh.

They really do have a lot in common, thematically.

“You guys kill each other.  That’s not family.”

Uh. Each other?

Pretty sure Jack’s been doing his best to prevent that.

“You’re derailing our conversation, Bonesaw,” Jack chided the girl.  “Amelia, when I say you could have everything you ever wanted, I’m telling you that you could live free of guilt, of shame, you could have your sister by your side, no more doubts plaguing you, no more feeling down.

And if she refuses, Bonesaw can make it so she’ll really always have her sister by her side.

Haven’t you laid in bed at night, wondering, praying for a world where you could have something like that?  I’m telling you that you can have those things, and I promise you that the transition from being who you are now to being who you could be would be much quicker than you suspect.”

He’s probably talking from experience with other formerly heroic newbies, if he’s not just lying.

“No.”  The defiance was half-hearted.

He’s slowly winning her over.

Better end this before he pits Amy against you, Taylor.

“Amelia, you could let yourself cut loose and love life for the first time since you were young.”

Fuck, that one hits hard.

Again, one of those pauses that suggested something was going on that was visual and out of sight, rather than something I could overhear.

Hm. How would he illustrate this speech?

I suppose this is a school. Maybe the room he’s in is a classroom and he’s using the blackboard/whiteboard. But I suppose then Taylor should be hearing the telltale scritches of chalk or marker on the board.

Jack offered a dry chuckle.  “Did that hit home?”

Probably. “I’m a monster” is something Amy has been telling herself for some time now, even if she denied it earlier.

“I’m… not that kind of person.  Not a monster.  I’d kill myself before I became like that.”

Or at least, “I might become a monster”.

“But you see how you could be like us.  It wouldn’t even be very hard.  Just… let go of those rules of yours.  You’d get everything you ever wanted.”

Taylor would fit in better personality-wise, but Amy’s got a really good power and issues Jack can exploit to pull her in.

I visualized it, the steps I’d take to open fire, and I realized that the shards of glass on the ground between me and the door could provide them with a half-second of warning.

Ooh, good catch.

Slowly, carefully, I began brushing the shards aside, keeping my ears peeled for some clue about a key distraction.

“Survival of the fittest, it sounds so tidy, but it’s really hundreds of thousands of years of brutish, messy, violent incidents, billions of events that you’d want to avert your eyes from if you were to see them in person.

But not just that.

In spite of how the phrase often gets translated, fittest does not mean strongest. It means the most adapted. That includes those who survive because they cooperate and play an honest, productive part in their society. Hell, judging by the fact that we’ve evolved into a social species, it seems that’s what’s been working best for us. Survival of the fittest, for humans, seems to have favored those who get along with others.

And that’s a large part of what’s shaped us into what we are.  But we wear masks, we pretend to be good, we extend a helping hand to others for reasons that are ultimately self-serving, and all the while, we’re just crude, pleasure-seeking, conniving, selfish apes.  We’re all monsters, deep down inside.”

I’ll give him the self-serving part. Even empathy-fueled actions are to some extent self-serving, to relieve ourself of the negative feelings associated with not helping. But that’s because these feelings and instincts are the way our biology asks us to comply with what it believes is the best course of action for survival and propagation.

We’ve evolved empathy because it works.

“No,” Panacea’s voice was quiet.  “Um.  You’re not going to kill me if I argue, are you?”

Probably depends on what you’re arguing about, I suppose.

“I’m liable to kill you if you don’t.”

Right, because then she’d be boring.

“It’s not that you see too clearly.  I think your view is warped.”

“Over the course of millions of generations that led to your birth, how many of your ancestors were successful because they were cruel to others, because they lied, cheated, stole from their kin, betrayed their brothers and sisters, warred with their neighbors, killed?

How many of those were happy?

We know about Marquis, so that’s one.”

Ouch.

How many were successful because they cooperated?  I wondered.

Probably quite a lot more.

Jack probably had a rebuttal to my question, but I wasn’t about to speak up to hear it, and Panacea didn’t ask.  She fell silent.

I was tensed, ready to move and shoot the second an opportunity arose.  Anything would suffice.  Anything would do.

Careful. Don’t get too trigger happy.

“I’m not… not that type of damaged.  I’m not a monster,” Panacea protested.  As an afterthought, she added, “No offense.”

Hehe.

“I’ve been called worse.  I almost relish being called a monster.  As though I’ve transcended humanity and become something from myth.”

“Myth.”

He would enjoy feeling like a legend, yeah. Something with impact. Something that resonates.

How fitting that he is named after one of the most well-known serial killers in history.

“And according to Cherish, it may well be a destruction myth.”

Yeah, seems like it’s going that way.

“What?”

“She recently informed me that the world is going to end because of me.  Not quite sure how or when.  It could well be that I’m the butterfly that flaps his wings and stirs a hurricane into being through a chain of cause and effect.”

Yep, and I think he’s already done that.

Also, it’s kinda appropriate that he’s bringing chaos theory into this and comparing the end of the world to a hurricane, considering there’s an Endbringer with a hurricane theme.

Though I’m fairly sure the final threat is going to make the Endbringers look like Über and Leet.

“I- how do you know this?”

“Our emotion reader picked up on some.  I’ve figured out the rest.  As you might expect, I’m rather familiar with damaged individuals.”

*looks at the people he’s been surrounding himself with*

Yeah, sounds about right.

Bonesaw giggled.

I didn’t like the way this was going.  I looked down the hall to see the doors.  Each door had once had a window on the upper half, but there were only slivers left, the rest scattered over the floor.  In an ideal world, some distraction would present itself, or the conversation would become a heated argument and they would distract each other.

What would you do with such a distraction?

I could rise from my crouching position, step forward, aim my gun and fire.  Unload the gun’s clip on Jack and Bonesaw.

Oh right, the gun.

I’m still not convinced it’ll work as well as she thinks, but a full clip might do some damage, at least.

Or I’d miss, resulting in the messy deaths of Panacea, her sister and I.  I really needed that distraction if I was going to do this.

Hmm.

She can’t use bugs as her distraction directly. That’d just tip everyone off to her presence. But maybe she could use them to do something else that could create a distraction?

Fly in some cymbals or something.