this is crazy

[from_scratch]

Cam is watching a new recording of Atriama, tail swishing in the gap in his couch, and doesn't stop to pause the show when he feels a summons go by.

Comments

[wormcan]

"That doesn't make any sense. Why would you believe me saying I had made sure the plague wasn't going to happen but not me saying I wasn't going to do any more art?"

[from_scratch]

"Well, if a plague happens, we can kill you, so you probably won't choose to start a plague and if you couldn't choose not to you might tell us how to go do it for you to prolong your life. But if you're off elsewhere doing some other thing and some of it happens to involve maiming people you are not so convenient to track down and kill then."

[wormcan]

"What if I don't maim very many people?"

[from_scratch]

"I am afraid it will be very hard to get buy-in for anything other than a zero-people-maiming maximum."

[wormcan]

"Phooey.
But if it's nobody at all, and I let you track me, then what? Once I'm not threatening a plague, you have no reason to keep me alive."

[from_scratch]

"I continue not to like killing twelve-year-olds," Cam points out. "Actually most people of any age manage not to be killed without ever having to threaten to release plagues, although you have got yourself into a sort of precarious position regarding the average person's interest in seeing you dead."

[wormcan]

"They have no reason to keep me alive, then. Including the people they've probably already called to arrest me."

[from_scratch]

"If they have any sense anybody with the authority to arrest you is busy evacuating San Francisco, but yes, this is a problem. I'd suggest that they remand you to my custody but I'm a very busy man and you seem like you'd be prohibitively difficult to keep even if you aren't famous in Japan and especially if I supplied you with enough bodies to keep you happy."

[wormcan]

"If you can supply the bodies, you wouldn't need to worry about keeping me there. Especially if I've promised not to get my own.
No idea if I'm famous there or not."

[from_scratch]

"Well, but I have no idea what you'd do with them. Perhaps it would strike your fancy to invent plagues. Again."

[wormcan]

"I'd do art, obviously.
I don't like plagues. This one is just insurance."

[from_scratch]

"What kind of art do you like?"

[wormcan]

"The kind no one else can do! This one time I turned someone inside out. And you saw the combination of two capes. I could build a super-cape out of even more and use it to kill an Endbringer!"

[from_scratch]

"Well, that would be very impressive, but I do not think anyone wants you to build super-capes until you have a few years of good behavior under your belt."

[wormcan]

"Drat. Well, what do you want me to build?"

[from_scratch]

"I'm not trying to hire you, I'm trying to figure out there's conditions under which people will let you leave here alive."

[wormcan]

"How about if I tell you how to kill Crawler? Sorry, Ned."

[from_scratch]

"I don't really have to kill him, I can just leave him there. I don't kill people recreationally, you know."

[wormcan]

"You don't, do you. Weird."

"I'd want to know how to kill Crawler," Flambe interjects.

[from_scratch]

"Do you want it badly enough to let me take Riley home, give her a basement full of mindless bodies, and cross your fingers that she really doesn't like plagues that much?"

[wormcan]

"...no."

[from_scratch]

"So we have a conundrum."

[wormcan]

"What if you take her powers away?"

[from_scratch]

"With what, a copy of Hatchet Face? Does he even work normally on Tinkers? Anyway, I'd love to know how to keep her in his range and be able to maintain him without getting cruel and unusual."

[wormcan]

"Yeah, that. See if she can set up something to maintain him, then handcuff them together forever."