He went on, "Supervillains-- supervillains do things like fry your girlfriend's face off in front of you, clone her, then kill the clone in front of you, just because they like to see you suffer."
His look was stern, hard.
"They're not cartoons. They're bad people that do horrible things--but do it on an even bigger scale--because a lot of them don't care who gets in their way or sometimes because they just like to watch the world burn."
There were noises from the omnicom as the pieces stacked up and he lost the game. He looked back to it and restarted it.
"I don't save people because I'm naive. I don't do it because I don't think people are capable of being awful. I don't do it because I haven't seen awful things. I've been tortured on alien death worlds, seen people I love die, and seen soldiers with their guts hanging out in Zero-G--begging for their mothers and looking at me to put them back together when nothing could."
This wasn't exactly the first war he'd been recruited for, and though his stint in the Paradocs hadn't had him on the front line, it hadn't been any less traumatizing going through wreckages and looking for survivors.
"I do it just because I can see that stuff without becoming jaded and miserable. Everyone's capable of evil, but what matters is what you do, and out of a crowd of people, about to die, most of 'em are going to go their whole lives without doing more than cutting off someone in traffic or lying on their tax return. Fact."
A pause.
"I make sure people are at least given a chance to not screw up, so the world still rolls on--without everyone having alien parasites on their faces or having to bow to a dark alien god. I don't fight for the goodness of all mankind. I fight for things to just be normal. Normal enough that people can at least try to be good people."
no subject
He went on, "Supervillains-- supervillains do things like fry your girlfriend's face off in front of you, clone her, then kill the clone in front of you, just because they like to see you suffer."
His look was stern, hard.
"They're not cartoons. They're bad people that do horrible things--but do it on an even bigger scale--because a lot of them don't care who gets in their way or sometimes because they just like to watch the world burn."
There were noises from the omnicom as the pieces stacked up and he lost the game. He looked back to it and restarted it.
"I don't save people because I'm naive. I don't do it because I don't think people are capable of being awful. I don't do it because I haven't seen awful things. I've been tortured on alien death worlds, seen people I love die, and seen soldiers with their guts hanging out in Zero-G--begging for their mothers and looking at me to put them back together when nothing could."
This wasn't exactly the first war he'd been recruited for, and though his stint in the Paradocs hadn't had him on the front line, it hadn't been any less traumatizing going through wreckages and looking for survivors.
"I do it just because I can see that stuff without becoming jaded and miserable. Everyone's capable of evil, but what matters is what you do, and out of a crowd of people, about to die, most of 'em are going to go their whole lives without doing more than cutting off someone in traffic or lying on their tax return. Fact."
A pause.
"I make sure people are at least given a chance to not screw up, so the world still rolls on--without everyone having alien parasites on their faces or having to bow to a dark alien god. I don't fight for the goodness of all mankind. I fight for things to just be normal. Normal enough that people can at least try to be good people."