“Well, it’s been fun,” Rhyme said to Webmistress as she was being led, escorted by well armed and armored thugs, to a working exit from the Web of Shadows.
“Is everything a game to you?” Webmistress replied. A hard reboot had restored much of her mobility, but her cybernetics’ self-diagnostic and repair capabilities could only do so much.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Rhyme said. “Am I interrupting the serious business of being a supervillain sexpot ruling over a secret underground lair filled with minions and treacherous henchwomen?”
“I don’t know what you’re insinuating, but I’m a legitimate criminal power and all the various trappings I’ve accumulated around myself have firm reasons,” Webmistress said. “I’m not just some sheltered little girl hiding herself away from the world and playing at being a criminal mastermind.”
“It’s funny how you don’t know what I’m insinuating but you specifically deny it, anyway,” Rhyme said. “Is that the villain equivalent of the thing the hero does where a bad guy’s approaching him silently from behind and he just throws a fist up over his shoulder and backhands him anyway?”
“This isn’t a game to me,” Webmistress said. “I run a multibillion dollar business. I make decisions that influence world events.”
“And you never go out into that world to feel their effects yourself,” Rhyme said. “You stay here, sequestered away, a princess with her very own enchanted castle… never getting your hands dirty.”
“I think you’d be surprised at just how dirty my hands can get,” Webmistress said, remembering how she’d left Markham… she’d stabilized the dying Clevenger clone, but she hadn’t been able to bring herself to touch Markham’s body to even find out if she was… a body. “I’ve killed… and I’ve had even more people killed. I started a war once, for profit. How many grown up kids playing games do you think can say the same thing?”
“You must not follow the news much,” Rhyme said. “You know, my father told me something once. He said…”
She cut off… not trailing off into distraction but chopping the sentence short, definitively.
“What did your father say?” Webmistress asked.
“He said many things,” Rhyme said coldly. “But he was a fool and it got him killed.”
“Sometimes… sometimes you forget you’re not still a hero, don’t you?” Webmistress said, unable to hide a smile. “Sometimes it creeps up on you, the urge to reach out, to help, to reform… to save the day, and you start to do it before you remember.”
“I’m not exactly known for my impulse control,” Rhyme said. “But don’t read too much into it, Webby dearest… heroes and villains alike are just children playing a game, aping what they see on TV and living out their delusions of control, their desire to prove their own superiority… I am so far beyond that, so far above it, that you don’t even look like an ant from my vantage point. I invent little games along the way… sing my little songs, make my little rhymes, leave my little puzzles… to amuse myself for one passing moment, and I’m able to do this because I don’t have any deep-seated urge to prove to the world how very serious I am. I know I am. You, on the other hand, you know deep down inside that you’ve made yourself into something gaudy, something ridiculous, something as cheap and tacky as a discount fright mask picked up from a post-Halloween clearance sale at the corner drug store and you’re afraid that if you let your guard down, that if you take a moment to stop and laugh at yourself, everybody else will, too, and they won’t stop.”
“You know, Rhyme,” Webmistress said, “for a crazy genius who’s supposed to have all kinds of intuitive insight into the human mind, all I’ve ever heard coming out of you is a bunch of dimestore psychoanalysis.”
‘What makes you think the human mind merits anything more than that?” Rhyme asked. “I suppose we’re going to be parting ways soon… give my best to Janie and tell her I’ll be seeing her real soon.”
“That’s not likely, unless you manage to find a way to die,” Webmistress said. “There’s no way I can let her live.”
“Oh, there’s a way,” Rhyme said. “In fact, there’s almost no way you could do anything else… I’d explain exactly why, but there’s a decent-ish chance that would be the one thing that could make you actually off her, just to prove me wrong, and I’d really rather have her alive long enough to see what’s coming down the barrel, as it were. Of course, having introduced the possibility that you’d be killing her out of spite into your mind just muddies the waters even further…”
“Spinnerette is mine to do with as I please,” Webmistress said imperiously. “I will dispose of her when it pleases me to, because it pleases me to, not because of anything you said or did.”
“Oh, of course,” Rhyme said, smiling inwardly. Another direct hit for dimestore psychology.
« « 48: Bullet Time 50: Turnabout » »
Note: I'm trying out a new comment system. It's new and subject to jiggerypokery. It's moderated. Detailed guidelines to come but follow the general rule: be excellent to each other.
If you enjoy reading, please consider a financial contribution.
« « 48: Bullet Time 50: Turnabout » »