mouseshift
>>3937009>>3937482Anyway, onto specifics, i.e., as applied to the Museum incident.
I like the idea that I had in
>>3926462 where Mera tricked him by exploiting the pity he would have for a pretty older girl to get him to do her bidding. I think, like in canon, she'd also sweeten the deal by appealing to his curiosity, dangling the possibility that he might be able to study this thing that's presently forbidden to study.
For his battle with Molly and Giovanni, he first hits them with the incapacitating sleep dust, since, as I said, he probably wouldn't take them all that seriously. When the dust doesn't work, he gets a little more annoyed than he initially was, especially with Giovanni calling him a kid, so he thinks, fuck it, why not, and just unleashes some Nightmare Fuel on them.
(I don't think he calls out any of his move-names in battle, but I'm sure he keeps a list of names in a notebook somewhere, because he's a nerd.)
But yeah, he gets a sense of their subconscious thoughts from his dust, and sensing that one of them is terrified of fire, he thinks, oh, this'll be hilarious, and makes that one imagine a ring of flame surrounding them.
Seeing that it's the little girl who's being affected, he thinks about pulling back: not only does this make him feel kinda bad, but what he was really hoping to do was make the annoying guy regret his insolence. But then he's like, I mean, it's working, I'll keep at it until they give up.
When they do defeat him, he's like ... so aghast. He never would have imagined that this could have happened!
Similar deal with Mera: unlike in AC, I imagine that she never presented herself as a fighter of any sort, so when he went to confront her, he was expecting to just talk it out and make her stand down. He was startled when she struck, especially because she apparently strikes hard!
