"Right then, there goes my hope that this could be conducted mostly in good faith. Answer all of my questions completely and honestly. You may warn me if this is about to cause you to disclose personal information of no legitimate interest to me. Who else knows my name?"

"Contessa. Number Man. The Doctor. Alexandria. Legend."

"And here I thought Alexandria and I had a cordial relationship. What are the predicable failure modes of sending you to find some amnesiac power and removing it from them?"

"Assuming I can find a power that would work on Alexandria, they might still manage to get away. Some of these are people who can compete with me directly."

"Do you know all their names?"

"No. Only Alexandria's and Legend's. As far as I know no one knows the real identity of the others."

"Why did you tell them my name? Alexandria sort of makes sense, now that I think of it, but I never met those other people."

"Is my entire personality one of her blind spots?"

"No."

"Why did she say my name?"

"You healed Alexandria. And killed Cherish by doing the same thing in reverse. That means you could, in fact, kill any of us by looking at us. It's ordinary paranoia."

"Does Contessa's power think it is safer to have a Master with several hundred vassal supervillains unable to kill her directly but finding it a very motivating proposition to get creative with indirection, than to be among the literally billions of people I could probably kill if I felt like it but would never dream of harming under any normal circumstance? Did that seem safer? She thought I was so dangerous that she'd rather have your little cabal all join an elite coterie with the rapists and torturers who give me nightmares, because that seems safer?"

"Maybe them not telling you was a more deliberate decision than I thought."

"But I found out anyway. Now. It is not a first or even a second resort to have them all assassinated. But I might just stand here and brute-force all their names, the ones you can't tell me. Any good reason from my own perspective I shouldn't do that?"

"If you do that you'll have to assume Contessa knows you did. As long as we know you never use the names, nobody retaliates, but no precog is perfect."

"So they'd still be able to order me if I didn't order them not to, which is really the problem here, I am not so much concerned that they will decide to physically injure me. And you all know that there are billions of fairies, some very vulnerable, who could just rescind any such order; so it would have to be tighter; so it would look more hostile still... Are you a valuable hostage against their cooperation? I don't particularly like this plan but I'm a little short on ideas and apparently your ideas include 'go to Fairyland to fight sorcerers'..."

"I'm valuable to the Protectorate, certainly. Whether I'm valuable to the others as a hostage depends on what you have in mind. Threatening not to release me wouldn't carry much weight."

"...Can you think of any safe way to deliver all of the people in your group who know my name the instruction 'never give me an order that I do not expressly request of my own uncommanded will, or that you do not sincerely without mental contortion believe to be in my best interest as you genuinely understand it, except the reciprocal of this one if you so desire'? It's a little wordy but the first part is the important bit."

"As long as you aren't planning any other orders, Contessa might not even object. As far as I know none of her current plans rely on giving you orders. Everyone else would object, but if Contessa says it's the safest way to deal with you with the fewest casualties, they'd go along with it. You might not need any plots for that."

"You say 'might'. What happens if she does object?"

"What's her overarching goal?"

"Save the world. There's a, a threat coming. We're trying to build up as much of a defense as we can, and hoping for a weapon that will work. Most orders from you would interfere with the number of capes available to fight; this one wouldn't."