Grey looked back when he heard something, half expecting that it would be The Boundless come to tell him off. He was really thinking about having a battle, even if he’d lose, just to blow off some steam.
But it wasn’t the Boundless.
It was Brad.
"Oh." Grey said, looking away as the glow in his eyes faded.
"Well don’t look so disappointed." Brad said with a hollow chuckle. "Sorry that my tits aren’t the ones you wanted to see."
Grey waved a hand. "I was hoping you were one of the knights so I could stick a blade in something."
Brad was speechless for a moment and then started to laugh.
"You really are too violent. There are other solutions, you know."
Grey turned and glared at Brad, but he was already holding his hands up like he knew how Grey would react to that.
"I get it, I’m not much better. I did try to bash your head in a few times. But to be fair, I really did think you were a perverted, woman-killing psychopath."
Brad sighed and shook his head. Grey still hadn’t really told them how that happened, but when he and Amunet were having their screaming match just now, he had let some of it slip.
It had already become obvious enough to them that Grey probably wasn’t what the Producers painted him out to be. It was honestly a bit embarrassing that he had bought it hook, line and sinker like he had, but he guessed too many people were susceptible to that kind of thing.
Herd mentality and listening to authoritative voices was a very human thing.
"You know, I took a psych 101 class in first year uni that talked about this. They hooked up a bunch of people to shock collars or something and had another person sit across from them. That person had control of the shock collar and they were told to shock the person continuously.
"All the researcher had to do was calmly tell the person to keep shocking and 9 out of 10 people kept going even when it seemed like they’d kill the person. Humans listen to authority. Humans follow the crowd. It’s what we do.
"It takes a very special sort of person to not do that. And sometimes the person doesn’t even have to be special, they just have to have the right mindset on the right day."
Grey didn’t say anything to that, just looking out to the clouds below.
Was Brad trying to say that he was special? Grey didn’t think he was special, he just wasn’t an asshole and he had an intuition for certain things, he guessed. Though he didn’t know what that meant. He just slotted it the same way: not being an asshole.
"I’m not trying to say you’re special by the way."
Grey turned and glared at Brad again, but he was grinning.
"I dunno, I don’t think anyone is actually special despite what I said. I’m more of the mind that you need to have the right mindset on the right day to be that 1 out of 10 person.
"I was a 9 out of 10 person the day I thought killing you was a good idea. Stella is still a 9 out of 10 person. Mauve snapped out of it and led us down another path, so technically, she’s the 1 out of 10 person, and I’m still just the 9 out of 10 person following her lead. But maybe one day I can be a 1 out of 10 person too, you know?"
"Do you think you’re some philosopher or something? You sound like you stuck a few Kant textbooks up your ass."
Brad chuckled. "No, I don’t think I’m a philosopher. I just think that people make mistakes. I make mistakes. You make mistakes. Mauve makes mistakes. Amunet makes mistakes."
Grey turned back to the clouds, laying his forearms on the railing and resting his chin on the back of his hands. His eyes didn’t seem to have much thought behind them at all, or maybe they had more thought behind them than they had in a while.
"I think you’re right, by the way." Brad said.
"About what?" Grey asked, still looking out.
"That they shouldn’t just get to sit on their comfortable perches and screw with our lives."
Grey chuckled. "Is that so?"
"Yes. But that puts us as the 9 out of 10. Whether or not we become the 1 out of 10 would depend on whether we can keep saying fuck you even when we’re losing what matters to us most.
"Everybody would feel the way we do now. Everybody would want to say screw you and keep pissing them off as much as we can. But not everyone would decide to keep saying fuck you even as they’re losing everything.
"I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep saying fuck you if a knife is at my throat. How much longer can you keep saying fuck you, Grey?"
Grey didn’t reply, but the words that Amunet said that bothered him the most echoed in his ears at that moment.
~"Let’s say I couldn’t drag your mother out in front of you and tell you to choose between slitting her throat and slitting yours..."~
He had ignored those words and just kept steamrolling into his next insult, his eyes and expression probably didn’t even change when she said them, and honestly speaking, he didn’t even have a mother in the first place. His parents were already long dead.
But he did have a grandfather.
What would he do if the things he did started affecting his old man too? Would he be able to keep saying fuck you? Would he become one of the 1 out of 10 then?
Did he have that in him?
He didn’t care what happened to him. He could be pissed off and enraged if someone targeted him, but eventually he would bounce back with his own jokes and enough bullets for everybody.
But he hadn’t been this pissed off in a very long time.
Why?
Because his actions had affected others this time, and these were just random people he didn’t even know.
What if that person was his grandfather next time?