A Lewd Cultivator in Brockton Bay 43 (Patreon)

A Lewd Cultivator in Brockton Bay
Chapter 43

-VB-

No good deed ever goes unpunished.

Despite the fact that I had more or less wiped out a branch of the Fallen that had tried to infiltrate Brockton Bay and make mockery of everything we held dear, I found myself in a tribunal held by the older generation of the New Wave team.

“Displaying a dead cape’s costume in Boardwalk is not -” Sarah glared at me. “- how New Wave operates, Alan.”

The Pelhams and the Dallons thought that it would be rude for me to be lectured within my own house, so we held this tribunal - sorry, meeting - in the Pelham’s new house.

“I beg to differ,” I replied back to her. “As petty revenge as it was for me, I don’t think I have done anything wrong, morally, legally, or ethically.”

“You had the public stab the belongings of a dead man!”

“A dead man who made mockery of everything good and true of not just American ideals but common human decency,” I countered. “I think the public agrees with me in that there is no need for us to give those anarchistic bastards common decency and respect when they don’t give nor acknowledge it.”

“This is not about their issues but your lack of accountability!”

“Accountability? Sarah, I have been accountable with you lot since I took my mask off. I never shied away from fighting and have paid all of my dues.”

At this point, I pulled out my smartphone - some brand called Melon - and showed her my bank statements under the Expense tab.

“Ignore the groceries.”

Crystal leaned in just after I said that. “Those are some expensive groceries.”

“It has to do with my power.”

“Expensive groceries?”

“Don’t detract us from the topic at hand, Crystal,” Neil told his daughter sternly, but allowed Sarah to pick the conversation back up instead of doing it himself.

“... You’ve been using your share of the donations on repairs?”

“Of course,” I replied. “Just because the law states that I can ignore any and all ‘reasonable’ collateral damage in the pursuit of law and order doesn’t mean that I should ignore the people and the infrastructure that I damage. I paid for a quarter of the repair bill for the damages my actions cause. In the same way, displaying the cape costume and letting the people take out their own frustrations for their powerlessness is another one of my ways of being accountable.”

“How is that being accountable?” Carol - still suspended but still part of the team - asked me with a raised eyebrow and a glare of her own.

“Because I understand how the regular people feel.”

My statement earned me a lot of glares.

“Need I remind all of you that I haven’t been a parahuman last year? That I had to watch capes destroy parks, roads, and businesses every weekend as if it was some sort of sports?” I asked them.

My question softened their responses a little.

“Being accountable by myself does jackshit. Sure, it makes me feel great about not having anything to hide, but why are we even superheroes if we are not the ones to bring justice for the people?”

“Because that is not the scope of our responsibilities.” To my surprise, it was Mark (Flashbang) who responded to me. We turned to him as he spoke again. “New Wave is an independent hero team, and - legally speaking - have limited duties, responsibilities, and liabilities. That limit is what actually keeps us from being sued to kingdom come for the damages we cause Victoria.”

She chuckled nervously.

Collateral damage barbie, she was no longer, but she made regular newspaper articles for the damages she caused.

I would not be surprised if the next time she caused a big enough damage, which could be a car thrown at her, she might make the headline that questions whether or not she was back at being CDB.

“I have to agree with Alan in how accountable he is being by actively not hiding behind the laws, but I can’t agree with encouraging violence like you did.”

Huh? What violence encouragement?

“There is a reason we don’t encourage people to fight back against capes just like we don’t encourage regular people to fight a soldier. The difference in scale of conflict is different. A riot is different from a military skirmish just as the limits of a single person’s violence is nothing compared to a single cape’s limits of violence,” he explained. “By allowing the people to feel comfortable with ‘sticking it’ to the capes, literally, you were encouraging people to go out there and do the same in real life.”

“And shouldn’t they have the choice?”

“Individually, yes,” he nodded wisely. “As a society, I’m not so sure.”

His words surprised everyone, including Carol.

“Our society is not just the public as we say it. It includes people like Skidmark and Kaiser. We can’t keep people out of society just because they don’t fit; we either include everyone or exclude everyone, barring those who have legally lost their rights.”

No one had anything else to say to that so far, and waited for him to continue.

He visibly struggled to get the words out, not because he didn’t what to say but because we could see his depression start to set in as he thought about the darker parts of life. Or had he been pushing and just losing steam while already in his depressed state?

“People can be … impulsive,” he just noted before falling silent.

“And I incited the people instead of the individual, are you saying?”

He nodded.

I supposed that my action wasn’t as … great as it could be. Funny and full of petty vegenge, yes, but great?

Not quite.

“Just don’t do it again,” Sarah sighed.

“Alright, I won’t,” I accepted.

And that was that.

-VB-

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