“Hot Mess asked me to train her to be a super-spy.”
“That’s interest – wait, isn’t she, like, that crazy pyrokinetic that --”
“Yes.”
“So …”
“Yes?”
“I was about to say that sounds like a horrible idea, or laugh it off as a horrible idea, but you are neither laughing nor glowering, which tells me you are thinking of it as a possibly good idea.”
“Yes.”
“Would it help if I said it sounds like a horrible idea.”
“Probably not.”
“Okay, Um … can you tell me why you are considering it?”
“Emma – that’s her given name – is an interesting individual. Very passionate. Very driven. Totally undisciplined, but with two potentially useful traits. Three, in fact: remarkable willpower, a weakness for being influenced, and she is in love with (and evidently loved in return) by a good person.”
“Huh.”
“…”
“By your pause, this is where I’m supposed to say something.”
“If you don’t see it, I’m not going to be the one to point it out.”
“Oh, I’m not that dim. But I’m too humble to call myself a good person. And I don’t think you have a weakness for being influenced.”
“Fèihuà! I am quite aware that I gravitate toward people to give me direction, even while I resist it outwardly. Father. Parker. You.”
“Since when have I ever been able to give you directions?”
“Direction. Guidance. Routing of my impulses. Giving me permission to be a better person. You serve as a check on the demons of my lower nature.”
“That’s … kind of poetical. And creepy. So … you see yourself in Emma.”
“In certain ways. And if I can take the opportunity to teach her discipline, following instruction, sticking to practices that are unpleasant or boring or even painful – which the sort of training she’s looking for absolutely requires – then I may be able to influence the direction toward which she is headed, away from self-indulgent destructiveness to something more … useful. To society, to Nono, to herself.”
“That sounds kind of manipulative.”
"That’s why I’m telling you. As a sanity check.
“‘Direction’?”
“Perhaps. But if I didn’t think Emma wants this, that it isn’t part of why she’s asking, I wouldn’t do it. I’m not – not proposing to act as military school for her.”
“This could also make her even more dangerous. Right now her being a – well, hot mess, uncontrolled, like that, that’s her major weakness. She defeats herself. And when she doesn’t, she leaves herself open. Adding to her skills … that makes her a bigger threat.”
“Grinding a blade can add balance, but also means it can cut things more easily. But that’s how you make a blade useful.”
“Huh. Yeah. Y’know, maybe it’s not a horrible idea.”
“Oh, it is absolutely a horrible idea. And my – my track record with reforming people – is not that good. But this is different. It’s – it’s something I can do, a difference I can make. If I succeed, I have done something good for the world – and, yes, don’t interrupt, for her. Something she wants.”
“And if you fail?”
“Then I’ll be in the best position to correct my mistake. Whatever that requires.”