“Yep,” Dinah said. Her smile was slight but confident. “But it was important. The words inspire people who need inspiration and who want to do something different but don’t want to leave the settlements. Which is most. Gary has the capacity to direct that inspiration to something they can do. The weeks that follow the resulting strike are ugly, but only two people die, and they’re people who would have died regardless. Mostly it would have ended up being about control, with the worst instances resembling hostage taking or tyranny, and the Wardens would have stopped those instances.”

“I don’t necessarily believe you,” Gary said. “It sounds too neat.”

“That’s fine, I get that a lot,” Dinah answered. “In the aftermath, fences mend, the worst villains are gone, a big disaster I can’t clearly see sits in the middle of where the city used to be, but the damage to the city is controlled. Nothing suggests it reaches further in the next five to ten years. Not in that course of events. Not so long as the most reckless villains are dealt with and everyone’s focused on cooperation.”

“That’s your goal,” Miss Militia said.

“It was,” Dinah’s voice had a touch of anger to it, even through the computer’s speakers. “She ruined it.”

“By killing Kurt Wynn.”

“Gary can’t take power, there are no numbers that scale those steep odds now. Violent anti-parahumans will precipitate the disaster you’re worried about in the center of the city. Now ask me what our new odds look like.”

“You want me to…”

“I want you to ask me, Miss Militia. It’s fine.”

“What are the odds?”

“Eighty point three six one five percent chance of mass death that extends across realities. That remaining nineteen percent? Fifteen percent of it is worse. Where we don’t even get to die. The other four percent isn’t pretty either. Do you see why I’m upset?”

“I run the risk of sounding overly aggressive by bringing this up, but someone could charge you with playing with fire, with a very incendiary group, and put yourself in a position where this sort of chain of events or disaster on this scale was possible.”

“I took every precaution,” Dinah said. “I double checked every major move I made. I triple checked they wouldn’t lash out, and I mitigated the damage if the anti-parahumans had to act, except when I was blinded. There were two instances where I had to let Teacher use them unfettered, because he would have found me if I’d stepped in. Those times excepted, I kept them out of your hair. I would have kept Kurt Wynn alive and Jeanne Wynn uninjured. I was as careful as you could expect me to be.”

Miss Militia wrote something down.