“You know… the good bad,” Syx gave a helpless sort of shrug and waved a hand as he spoke, “Not I’m going to murder you, evil, just…” his gaze wandered to the direction his Uncle had left by, “The sort of bad where you have to decide between following the law or surviving.”
With a look of faint confusion, he tried to explain what to him seemed obvious, “Good bad is taking care of your family and protecting your people. It’s not giving up just because some jerk sheeple in a fancy suit tells you that you’re worthless. It’s rejecting the faulty ethics of a corrupt city where everything is stacked against you and making a life despite it,” he waved his hand around at the restaurant around them, “It’s surviving despite the law, and the government, and the corrupt cops, and the hateful assholes. It’s not letting them turn you into something you’re not. Not giving into them.”
He sighed, fidgeting with his fingers, “I… haven’t always been able to hold to that idea as closely as I’d like… but I always shoot for good bad and not evil bad,” because he felt like that might need clarification as well, he added, “Evil bad, not bwahaha I’m evil, like I do, but like… serial killers and murderers and sadistic thugs. True evil is the people who don’t give one fuck who they hurt. Not just that they don’t care, they enjoy it.”
His eyes were hard and distant, “In prison terms… if you know those? Good bad is min-sec, white collar or those that got jailed for drug possession or minor theft. True evil is ultra-max. None of my Uncles were ever higher than medium,” he bit his lip and looked back to his hands, “You’re already sitting with the only person in my extended family to ever be in max.”
Paige was quiet as Syx obviously struggled with whatever it was that he was trying to convey to her, brows slightly furrowed as she began to tap her tongue ring against the roof of her mouth without thought. She did listen to what he was saying, though she found his explanation a bit odd. Weren’t they all trying to make a life despite what the government tried to do? Weren’t they all stacked against…? It was something she certainly felt about herself, having gained a bad set of cards from the very beginning of her life. Struggling with an abusive household that held a hint of neglect, Paige had been surviving from the very moment she could walk…
All through his explanation she didn’t interrupt him, letting him talk as he saw fit, trying to figure it out in her own mind as he attempted to explain it. While it certainly shed some light on how it was this man thought, it still confused her to think that so many people in this world were apparently this… good bad combination? She certainly felt as if she was, but she had done nothing actually illegal in the process. Did that make her just good? She wasn’t entirely sure, and quite honestly the entire ordeal was giving her a headache.
Though his admission that he was in max prison had her frowning, brows furrowing, “Max? I thought you said you were good bad? Why would they put you in max prison..?” she was so damn confused, and that was evident in how she was looking to him. Didn’t he just say that true evil got the max? He wasn’t true evil though, that much she was for certain. She had lived with evil, lived with a cruel man… from what she saw, even on the news, Syx was not cruel.
“Heh… Well… technically? I mean-” Syx fluttered his hands about wildly “-I do keep escaping. Warden said I was up to…” he looked up in thought, “99 life sentences? Destruction of property, disruption of the lives of Metrocity’s sheeple, death threats against the city’s hero…” he ticked off on his fingers, “there was was a public indecency accusation in there somewhere but that was total rubbish. I wasn’t the one who was naked, Metro Man was. Yes. I caused it, but how was I supposed to know that was going to happen?”
“But mostly I’m in Ultra Max solitary for the escaping part,” he shrugged. He’d always just assumed that was common knowledge.
RP backup 