Math Problems (Episode 14)

PerilousPennyPine: You there?

A_Boy_Named_Sue: No, this is an automated rage drone. Please leave your name and number at the tone and I probably won’t get back to you.

PerilousPennyPine: Funny.

A_Boy_Named_Sue: Did you find a k/c/q order for yourself yet?

PerilousPennyPine: No, why?

A_Boy_Named_Sue: Because you’d been babysitting the kid of OMG!OMG!OMG! werewolf.

PerilousPennyPine: Oh, no. Didn’t find anything, Thank God.

PerilousPennyPine: So. Infection, eh? I mean, Ishmael infecting those other girls? Damn, every time I think he’s the scum of the earth, he proves how much I’ve been underestimating him.

A_Boy_Named_Sue: Thought he was “sterile.” That’s why he’s the only one of his kind.

PerilousPennyPine: Everybody over here thought so too. But Larch says he’s tried before, back in the nineties, but it didn’t work.

PerilousPennyPine: Nobody knows who for sure, but she says it was somebody in Wyrd. A human agent.

A_Boy_Named_Sue: A promotion?

PerilousPennyPine: If yes, pretty sure it was unauthorized.

A_Boy_Named_Sue: What, and then he stopped trying for twenty years? Only to start up again now?

PerilousPennyPine: Dunno.

A_Boy_Named_Sue: So what happened?

PerilousPennyPine: No one knows. Probably died, since no one’s heard of her since. The agent he infected, I mean.

A_Boy_Named_Sue: No, he’s probably tried with others over the years.

PerilousPennyPine: Maybe.

A_Boy_Named_Sue: Not that I can blame him.

PerilousPennyPine: …

PerilousPennyPine: You’re kidding me, right?

A_Boy_Named_Sue: No.

PerilousPennyPine: …

PerilousPennyPine: All right, I’ll bite.

A_Boy_Named_Sue: No thanks. That’s what got Ishmael into so much trouble.

PerilousPennyPine: Why the hell do you think he’s above blame?

A_Boy_Named_Sue: I didn’t say that.

PerilousPennyPine: We spend our whole lives taking down people just like him, Sumac! What the hell!

A_Boy_Named_Sue: I didn’t say he was above blame!!!

A_Boy_Named_Sue: I said I can’t blame him, meaning I can empathize, even if I don’t agree with him! What would you do if you were the last one of your kind????

A_Boy_Named_Sue: Or the only one of your kind????

A_Boy_Named_Sue: Especially when you get ass kicked every time you turn around, just because you’re different from everyone else?!?

A_Boy_Named_Sue: Especially when you know there’s a way you can change that?! Make more of you??! Put an end to the loneliness?

PerilousPennyPine: Right, so it’s okay to grab somebody off the street and turn them into another you, just so you can be a little less lonely.

A_Boy_Named_Sue: Who says that he would have taken an unwilling victim????

A_Boy_Named_Sue: You said he tried to turn a Wyrd agent. She would have known what the risks were. And hell, it could have been an authorized promotion, for all you now.

PerilousPennyPine: Haberman said that Ishmael had turned eight or nine girls! What if this isn’t his first time then? He’s one of the sneakiest bastards in all of Wyrd.

PerilousPennyPine: You hear about the time he walked up to that hacker at the subway stop in New York in the middle of rush hour and slit his throat?

PerilousPennyPine: Crowd was so thick it wasn’t until the next train came in that the body even began to slump.

PerilousPennyPine: Guy like that can get away with a lot before anyone catches on.

PerilousPennyPine: A guy who embezzles millions of dollars could probably buy dungeons on every fricking continent and hide hundreds of victims away. Just visit whenever he’s in town and do whatever he wants with them.

A_Boy_Named_Sue: Then why did he get caught now???

PerilousPennyPine: Maybe he got sloppy?

PerilousPennyPine: Maybe something in him broke after that thing in Moldova, and that’s when he lost his edge.

PerilousPennyPine: Maybe that’s why he suddenly started turning victims again.

PerilousPennyPine: Hell, for that matter, what if he’s the one who caused the outbreak in Moldova, and Wyrd sent him over there to clean up his own mistake, and sent Jay along to make sure he did it?

PerilousPennyPine: Dayum…

A_Boy_Named_Sue: It doesn’t add up.

PerilousPennyPine: He’s been with Wyrd for almost forty years. He’s been alone since he was first brought in. We already know he tried with someone else. If he’s tried once, maybe he’ll keep trying over and over again, like you said.

PerilousPennyPine: He’s seen others successfully infect victims. He’s seen Wyrd agents successfully promoted to lycanthrope, and they always turn out just like the person who turned them.

PerilousPennyPine: What if he’s got a case of jealousy on top of loneliness?

A_Boy_Named_Sue: What happened to the Wyrd agent back in the ‘90s?

PerilousPennyPine: Dunno.

A_Boy_Named_Sue: Is Ishmael still the only one of his kind?

A_Boy_Named_Sue: The email from Haberman says he is.

A_Boy_Named_Sue: “As is well known among Wyrd Agents, Mr. Chase is unique among our kind.” His own words.

A_Boy_Named_Sue: You can’t be the only one of your kind if there are eight others just like you.

A_Boy_Named_Sue: No, something doesn’t add up.

A_Boy_Named_Sue: And as an accountant, that drives me batshit crazy.

PerilousPennyPine is typing…