"No. It's just - extra annoying not to have all the moral high ground talking to a rapist."

"I actually don't think he's going to press it past where he did today." Sigh. 

"I'll live."

"You don't have to interact with him at all, I will figure out a different way -"

"Don't consider that a hard constraint or anything. I'm - irritable, not breakable."

If that wasn't pushing the button I do not want to know what pushing the button does to you, he doesn't say. 

Instead he says. "so, I'm going to be trying to make friends with my evil rapist alt and probably challenge him to occasional games of Governor, it sounds like everyone else present will be varying degrees of a distraction from this goal on account of being bad at lying and hating my evil rapist alt, possible exception for Edie if he has a lovely progression on a redemption arc, possible exception for Tyelcormo if 'I love you and am going to strangle you with my bare hands' is a winning avenue, possible exception for Cam to the degree I can handle my evil rapist alt bothering Cam, I think this'll work but it might take years so if we instead want to just murder him we should do that now before he hurts Findekáno any further - oh, Tyelcormo, murderers get booted but not everyone from their dimension, so that's an option -"

"Is it what the Findekáno wants -"

"Don't know yet, haven't seen them together or seen him at all without a lot of oaths in the way."

"Well, if you can't handle your evil alt bothering me and you personally dealing with this project is the high percentage strategy presumably I should avoid him, is there a prescribed way to do that?"

"For the record, if we decide to kill him I can totally fork Ada and get the fork to do it, none of us here have to get kicked out."

"This might count as orchestrating the murder? I don't want to count on it not counting, anyway. And I don't know that Cam should avoid him, I phrased it a little absurdly there and don't actually think my annoyance is the bottleneck on this working out, but if you do want to avoid him I doubt he's going to walk up to a daeva in a non-Security monitored area so you could mostly hang out in those. An alternative to you avoiding him might be 'we try to have a relationship that is visibly more tempting than having a traumatized slave' but I think I need more of a feel for what he even wants -"

"I just had the most tragically hilarious mental image of you playing Governor with him, me seconding you and Findekáno seconding him."

He laughs. It's a little hysterical. "I could play him Governor for stakes but I don't think 'I win the traumatized slave in a bet' is the win condition we're looking for, here - though I guess if it got all the oaths removed -

- hmm, wonder if it's too late for that -"

"What would the other end of the stakes be?"

"Tech, obviously."

"You think he'd take the bet - he could get the tech from Bar, it'd just take longer -"

"I think he might take some electrical engineering lessons against one night with his boyfriend, if I played my cards right, where what'd really appeal to him would be levelling the moral high ground, and then I could get the oaths cleared - the problem with this being that all of you'd have to avoid me until I pulled it off, it would probably fuck with the Findekáno's head a lot, and a sufficiently well-worded 'swear to return him in the condition you got him' would be really hard to get around, not impossible with a bunch of people around who can overpower me but definitely really difficult - 

- actually, no, not difficult, just horrible -"

"- we'd have to avoid you because?"

"I suppose I could try to have it a secret that those were the stakes we'd settled on? It is implausible that you'd know and be okay with it. And he can read you all anyway."

"Ah."

"Well, it might end up being really convenient that you're not my summoner, then; I can render you unconscious all I like."

"The way to get around an oath to return him in good condition is to kill the me who swore it and fork from right before that."

"Well, that doesn't make it less convenient that you're not my summoner."

"I did say it was horrible."