We’re back to fantasy hypotheticals, ladies, gentlemen, and others; people who don’t like these are invited to bite my shiny metal ass. Let’s see what I can bang out in twenty minutes.
So here’s the sitch. Some time again, during an adventure whose details I see no need no contrive, you made the acquaintance of Esme, the brainwashed slave of a supervillainous cabal. Esme bears an uncanny resemblance to Swin Cash, which I only mention so as to have an excuse to post the following NSFW links.
[spoiler]All right, this image is clean enough for church, but the next one ain’t.
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Using the power of friendship you free Esme from the villains’ mind control, and in return she rescues you from the grisly fate they were planning for you, then embarked on a campaign to bring down the entire evil organization.
As the above implies, Esme is extraordinary. She’s got strength, speed, and durability comparable to, oh, let’s say Spider-Man, along with a genius intellect; and when she freed herself from the villains, she helped herself to some super-tech: a flying car, a cozy subterranean headquarters, a collection of hand and rifle phasers, and such. (She does’t have any teleporters or time travel gizmos, though.) But she does have some emotional deficits. While she loves you more than ice cream, her attitude toward the rest of humanity is … guarded. She’ll fight to protect the innocent for reasons of principle rather than empathy; contrariwise, the worst thing she can imagine is you dying, and the prospect of losing your friendship has sent her into a panic attack.
Anywhistle–in the three years since you met Esme, her villainous erstwhile masters have continued their plot to cover the land in a second darkness. (Or third or fourth or tenth; I lose count.) Their campaign has recently moved from shadowy subterfuge to open war. The city you live in is under attack. In the middle of a running battle, you have been separated from your family and friends, but you know approximately where they are in the same building you are in right now. When you’re moment from being overwhelmed, ravished, and eaten, Esme arrives. She kills the orcs real good, then puts you in the passenger seat of her skycar and prepares to take off.
“Wait!” you say then. “What about my friends and family? Have you seen them, are they dead?”
“Not yet,” Esme replies. “As soon as I get you safely to the lair, I’ll come back and save as many as I can.”
“But that means you’ll be gone for at least ten minutes! How many people will die in the meantime?”
“Sensors say there are 1024 humans in the building right now,” Esme replies tonelessly. “No assistance save me is available within the next half hour. If I intervene now there is a 78% chance I can defeat the hostiles with a loss of 12 innocents while surviving myself, whereas the 10 minute delay will result in at least 200 innocent deaths. But–” (and her voice changes from toneless to terrified) “I must do get you to safety first. I must. The probability of your dying if I don’t take you away immediately is…is…I cannot say it. I can calculate it, but please, please don’t make me say it. Please. I cannot bear thought of endangering you, must less losing you.”
Now, before anybody goes all internet tough guy, let’s be clear. Esme can punch holes in concrete, and you’re a norm; there is no possibility of you physically forcing her to do shit. (Hell, you can’t even use the skycar’s weapon, as most of its controls are optimized for someone with super-strength.) But you can still affect her – if you play dirty. She can’t stand the idea of your being unhappy, so you can beg and plead for her to intervene immediately, she may well. And if that doesn’t work, you could blackmail her emotionally–threaten to end the relationship, to never so much as speak her name again, unless she goes and does her hero thing.
What do you do, and why?