I don't claim to know what this place is about, or what it is supposed to be about. It was the first time in a long time I realized I didn't have to stand back and watch something happen.

That I could act. That I could do something that others couldn't, for several reasons. That it was safer for me to act than for most.

[Ben is, by and large, polite and standoffish these days. He's been called gentle, and sweet, and kind. But there's an edge that lives beneath all that, hammered into being by Manticore and honed by relentless training during his formative years, and it's there as he speaks. Just a glimpse of what he was intended to be from the start.]