"Yeah. On the other hand, getting into dick measuring contests over whose atrocity is worse is probably less relevant than the fact that they happened at all."

"Yeah."

"I'm not nearly that close to the Bloodletter's reign. I sat in on a therapy session for a lizardfolk from the Valley once, otherwise it's just history class."

"I hope he does okay."

"He hatched after it was over, but there's lingering - stuff - and students get free access to the services, so."

"Makes sense. I've never had therapy about it--come to think of it, I don't think Dad's ever had therapy about it, he's...not the type."

"No?"

"He's the kind of hurt by the experience where he's...prickly. He wouldn't trust a stranger to psychoanalyze him. And God knows I love Papa, but he's not exactly a therapist."

"Well, it's common knowledge that if the patient doesn't want to be in therapy doing anything - at least anything ethical - is an extremely uphill climb, so that's up to him."

"He's doing okay, anyway, and I would know. He...did eventually hunt down and kill the particular man who murdered Grandmother, which I'm not saying was the wisest thing ever but probably helped in the long run."

Nod.

"Especially since the man was trying to start another atrocity. Honestly, the things some people will do. Actually, stopping him was how my parents met."

"Very adventuring-party-serial, that."

"I did say weird things happened to my family."

"Sounds kind of epic-level."

"Well. Papa is actually the strongest telepath we've found so far."

"That is exactly the sort of thing that on my world leads you to get into fights with equally epic villains and attract strange happenings."

"Dad actually almost went supervillain immediately after vengeance was achieved? And he has a telepathy-impermeable helmet, so it would have been a pretty decent match."

"If he had a telepathy-impermeable helmet why wouldn't he just win immediately, was your papa prone to telepathically dominating third parties with other powers or something?"

"No, but they had allies, and almost all of them sided with Papa when the two had their huge fight and Dad stormed off for a few months. He's immune to telepathy with that thing on, but not plasma blasts or screams that can shatter glass or anything like that."

"Gotcha. Well, mostly, I don't know what a plasma blast is."

"Extremely dangerous, which is the relevant bit. Anyway, when it became apparent that Emily--my sister--and I existed...I'm not one of those idiot who claim babies fix everything, but it did necessitate them being in a room together that they were forced to actually discuss their problems with each other like grown ups."

"That's good then."

"Yeah. I don't really like to think about what would have happened if they hadn't."