“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.

“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.