audio.

[batricide]

You know, I've been at this a long time, and the fact that so-called heroes are incapable of basic pattern recognition blows my mind.

[ Damian clicks his tongue, a sharp little tt. Thanks to a brush with some Red Kryptonite he's not being shy about his utter disdain for your average kind of superheroing. ]

How many times does someone have to let monsters go free to service their own conscience and keep this little heroc farce going before they're just as culpable for their crimes? Throw them in the same prison they just busted out of, that's basically just a slap on the wrist. Why is anyone surprised when they just turn around and start killing agan? Anybody could solve the problem at the root, but they don't because that'd just kill their little ego trip.

Really, if you ask me? Some people just deserve to die.

Comments

[dragony]

Oh, I'm sure it's not.

But... your first, incredibly basic and, functionally, useless solution is "let's just kill them," you're... obviously working on human parameters. A human scale. Human limitations.

I mean... you kill an imPort, you know we'll just resurrect in like two days, right? That doesn't actually solve your problem, you know. It just means you don't know where your problem is anymore. And most of us still count as human. The ones that don't, half of them can't actually die to begin with. You do realize that, don't you?

[hatestrashcans]

Actually, I can contribute that other species also consider murder and genocide viable solutions to problems!

Aw, the whole galaxy does has something in common, I just realized. How wholesome.

[dragony]

I'm well aware, but I don't think mister capital punishment here has seen anyone arrest an entire intergalactic war machine and have it get parole for good behavior.

That kind of thing seems out of his league.

[hatestrashcans]

Actual machine or metaphorical machine?

We haven't really hammered out a galactic justice system yet, so we're all just on the 'trying not to kill each other in the meantime' step.

[dragony]

Metaphor. But, that doesn't exclude the possibility of a literal interpretation.

I can't say anything to where you're from, of course, but most of our problems here come from... well, the people here on Earth. Even the world-destroyer is only gaining power because of human intervention.

[hatestrashcans]

Yeah, you never know. Things can be weird.

Oh, humans are great at fucking things up, no question. We just don't have a monopoly.

[dragony]

I'm not saying we do.

I'm only saying, it's a shitty thing to look at the worst of humanity, or even the mediocre-bad of humanity, and say, "oh, that makes them monsters."

Monsters exist, you know. And most of them are kinder than humans, anyway.

[hatestrashcans]

Nah, I get it. Meeting other species sort of has made us do a lot of re-evaluating on how we talk about things.

So same here, right?

I actually wasn't joking about the language guide, though. If this guy is new, he might not know there are monsters here that exist; some timelines probably don't have them. I'm not saying it's cool, just saying letting people know might be good.

[dragony]

... I did let him know. By telling him to aim his ire correctly. With the way he talks, I don't think he'd know that to do with anything less indelicate.

[hatestrashcans]

Yeah, fair.

Guess I just meant pre-emptively. Then you guys don't have to have it thrust in your face, and newbs don't have to deal with perfectly reasonable defensiveness when they're already probably off-balance, you know?

[dragony]

Explaining things in one announcement like that, on this forum, almost never works. Believe me, new people almost never scroll back more than a month, and then get offended that "nobody told them" about the sixteen running crises we're still dealing with.

Besides. Does this guy really seem like the type? To go through an entire archive before popping off?

[hatestrashcans]

Okay, that's a fair point.

[batricide]

Oh please. You have no idea what parameters I'm working with.

[ He's rolling his eyes, because Damian Wayne is a mature guy who handles his problems with nuance and maturity and not mockery and dismissal even when valid points are presented. ]

I've dealt with unkillable criminals before. There are solutions to that problem that can be overcome with basic creative thinking and problem-solving.

[dragony]

Mmhmm.

Are you new? You sound new.

[batricide]

And you sound insufferable.

[dragony]

Jeez, if this is your limit, you're really out of your league.

[batricide]

Look.

[ he really, really is. ]

My point is how many times do you let someone kill innocent people before you accept they can't be helped and do something permanent?

[dragony]

Well. I can't say I've ever let anyone kill an innocent person.

[ ,) ]

But I don't think you understand. There is nothing permanent in this world. In your own, whatever, I don't know how things went for you, and you're not interested in telling me. But death, power nullifying, sealing someone in a box and burying them underground, dropping someone in a vat of molten metal so their nanites corrupt, abandoning their corpse on the moon, or— anything else like that. There's no knowing what will stick, and what won't. Nothing's consistent.

Nothing can be permanent when anything can be undone.

[batricide]

So you try until something does.

[ Some of the edge comes off his voice. ]

It's better than letting them live among the general populace until they do something again. Unless everyone in this world is unconditionally immortal then it's unconscionable to do nothing.

[dragony]

Of course, doing nothing after something like that isn't acceptable. That's a simple conclusion, but it's more complicated in practice, isn't it? If everyone enacts their own justices, for example, it becomes impossible to tell who started what, whose crimes merited what — a cycle of revenge that never ends. Or, if you say, we count what they did in their original worlds — well, how do we prove it happened that way? How do we know for sure they're that person, and not someone from a different timeline, who did none of that? Whose stories do you believe? It's not like the "good guys" always get here first.

... But you have specific people in mind, don't you? The ones you find unforgivable, and the ones who frame ineptitude as mercy.

[batricide]

Telepaths are usually a good way of rooting out who is lying and who isn't. If stories don't match, you check. I'm not advocating for senseless murder, I'm advocating for justice.

[ there's a pause. he could confirm it and give specific names and details, but that'd probably just raise questions he doesn't actually want to answer. ]

I'm willing to say their mentality has infected anyone who wears a cape.

[dragony]

There's risk with them, too. Telepaths, I mean. It's not like they're immune to being tricked, or manipulated, or, well, being the problem in the first place. Hell, sometimes you get assholes that'll take possession of people straight up, and use them as puppets to accomplish... whatever. The person might even believe they'd done it of their own will. Any Justice we enact is fallible, so we need more finesse than a heart-and-feather scale.

[ She says it a little casually, like most of the rest, but nearly all her specifics are examples from reality. Shit's Complicated. ]

Capes, huh? So, this kind of thing is how it worked where you're from, too.

[batricide]

[ She has a point there, but he's too pissy about their earlier debate to admit to it. ]

It was until they let one go too far. Infinite chances. Infinite offers of mercy, of help, like it'd do any damn good. Nobody gave a damn about all the people that were being killed so long as their favorite lunatic was still alive and killing. They kill, they get caught, they get locked up, they get out.

[ he spits. ]

End the cycle. Problem solved.

[dragony]

[ ruka frustrates everyone because she always has a point but she's usually a bitch about it. this is normal.

this thing being described, though? that's. well. #yikes. ]

... So, serial-killer and his cape-jailer are kissing-nemeses? Jeez, no wonder you're pissed off.

[batricide]

[ that's a new term. he's going to have to remember that one. ]

It's disgustingly common.