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Maybe Ahren isn't really cognizant of just how far Six-Four has fallen. He's awfully concerned about Six-Four striking out on his own and seeking vengeance instead of operating within the "family unit" of the Ghosts, while he's not visibly concerned about any of his actions. The reader is left to infer the meaning of "We need to talk", but the one thing it does not imply to me is "you've become as bad as the people we fight and I'm placing you under arrest". My only problem with that is that even if Ahren doesn't learn about the torture and attempted murder, there's simply no way that he or the rest of the Ghosts can be ignorant of what Six-Four did to Daniel and Elizabeth Rose once they start putting two and two together.
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Six didn't fabricate anything. He convinced the DA to arrest them based off of existing circumstantial evidence. Possible embezzlement, fraud, aiding and abetting (all of which are most likely a weak link to Bonnie/Ebony Rose). And to top it off, someone died, they benefitted from the death (a promotion).
It's barely enough to arrest (they would have the ability to flee the country so arresting and detaining would be the logical next step pending further investigation/trial), but most likely not enough to convict, it is way too circumstantial. Since it is public knowledge, it is clear that the Ghosts are aware of that much. What they are not aware of is Six's motivation and his goal.
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why hadnt he taken advantage of the offer of help Ahren had made? Because he know [u]if[u] the Ghosts understood what hed [u]intended[u], [u]they would have stopped him[u]. These were people he respected, and every one of them counted Ebony Rose and the Shades among their enemies, but they would [u]never have tolerated his actions[u]. He knew many of them would understand his need for revenge. Several of them would be willing to turn away while he enacted it. But he suspected that none of them would approve of the way hed gone about it.
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At the end of the story, all Ahren knows is that Six-Four went to St. Martial to recover suspects that have fled the country, and was soundly beaten before returning to the base. What Ahren is not aware of is that Six went there to confront and murder Ebony Rose.
I agree, that Six's actions were motivated by revenge and his goals were of a villainous nature. However, the way he went about it was at worst border-line legal. Further, considering that the Rose's fled the country, it implies their guilt, and it is unlikely that there would be any sanctioned investigation into the 'legality' or 'appropriateness' of the Rose's arrest.
"Goodbye, Jean-Luc. I'm gonna miss you... you had such potential. But then again, all good things must come to an end..." -- Q
This is really interesting to me...
This story provoked quite a discussion the first time I posted it, but that time, the conversation revolved around Ebony Rose becoming a sympathetic character and a victim, despite her past actions.
This time, the conversation is about Six-Fours SG and their knowledge.
I have learned one thing from this about my own writing. As a reader, I HATE it when the author spoon feeds the story to me. I prefer it if I get to draw my own conclusions occasionally. I think, based on the reaction I'm getting here, I may over correct by not giving enough information, by forcing to reader to drawn too many of his own conclusions. I've received a similar criticism on one of story arcs. The story IS logically consistent, but I guess I didn't provide enough information for the player to follow.
IF the Ghosts knew everything, Six would have woken up in a jail, not in the Ghosts infirmary. They do know he crossed the line. They don't know how far.
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Six didn't fabricate anything. He convinced the DA to arrest them based off of existing circumstantial evidence. Possible embezzlement, fraud, aiding and abetting (all of which are most likely a weak link to Bonnie/Ebony Rose). And to top it off, someone died, they benefitted from the death (a promotion).
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You base this opinion on what evidence?
Maybe Sooner is right and she didn't provide enough details, but in the story as presented, there is no evidence that Daniel Rose was anything other than a respected pillar of the community.
DA's don't arrest a man for murder on the say-so of some hero just because he "benefitted" from somebody's death. They run an autopsy and determine if foul play was involved. They gather evidence. Embezzlement? Fraud? Aiding and abetting? These things require piles of evidence. If it's not an outright sting, then it's something caught by the firm itself. It's an embarassment and an admission of poor governance. These charges are not brought based on "circumstantial" evidence. I don't care if the city is crawling with mind-readers: you don't arrest someone purely on the say-so of someone else. You sure as HELL don't arrest the person's spouse as an accomplice without some SERIOUS evidence.
To say that Six-Four walked into the DA's office, said "These people look suspicious. You'd better arrest them before they can run away and make a public spectacle of the arrest while you're at it." and the DA or one of his assistants said "Dang, you're right! Take care of this for me, Six-Four!" is stretching credulity beyond belief.
There was nothing "quasi-legal" about it. Six-Four framed them, and he did it well enough that they both lost their jobs and had their reputations destroyed. Circumstantial evidence? Pshaw!
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but most likely not enough to convict, it is way too circumstantial.
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A pillar of the community. Someone with ties to the community. Someone with money and, therefore, power. Someone who has a good lawyer(s) and would certainly sue and win if a mistake was made.
"Way too circumstantial" isn't going to fly in that situation.
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Since it is public knowledge, it is clear that the Ghosts are aware of that much. What they are not aware of is Six's motivation and his goal.
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If that's true then the Ghosts are fools. I submit that anyone who knew about his vendetta with Ebony Rose would have to be stupid to not draw the connections when Six-Four blatantly humiliated her parents and then it turns out that all of the evidence was actually "way to circumstantial" to have justified the arrest in the first place. Waving your hands and saying "they fled" (when they actually did no such thing, but let's assume the authorities don't realize it) is not going to stop the investigations.
Daniel's firm undergoes an audit to find the missing money, and they announce to their shareholders that it was all an accounting error: there never was any embezzlement. It just LOOKED like the money was missing (how this could be, I can't imagine). What an unfortunate error, we apologize to Daniel Rose wherever he might be, and our new accounting practices to avoid this in the future will be blah, blah, blah.
The police investigate the rest of the Rose family to ascertain if THEY were involved in any "aiding and abetting" and lo, their lawyers discover that the police don't really have any solid evidence that the parents ever did any "aiding and abetting".
I won't even get into the idea that someone would be charged with murder just because they got a promotion when someone else died.
The only way this works at all is that Six-Four planted false evidence and framed them completely.
As for the Ghosts, if they let Six-Four join without doing a thorough background check and discovering his origin story, then they really are fools.
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At the end of the story, all Ahren knows is that Six-Four went to St. Martial to recover suspects that have fled the country, and was soundly beaten before returning to the base. What Ahren is not aware of is that Six went there to confront and murder Ebony Rose.
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O Rly?
"When a man goes seeking vengeance, he should begin by digging two graves"
Ahren knows. I'll allow that he hasn't put all of the pieces together yet. When he does, he's going to have a decision to make.
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the way he went about it was at worst border-line legal.
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"At worst". I like that. In my opinion, it was so far across the line that Six-Four couldn't even see "legal" from where he was standing.
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Further, considering that the Rose's fled the country, it implies their guilt, and it is unlikely that there would be any sanctioned investigation into the 'legality' or 'appropriateness' of the Rose's arrest.
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This is just plain wrong, as I've already demonstrated. Investigations don't end with the "flight" of the wrong-doers. Especially when money and murder are involved.
Maybe I'm being too demanding and I should just wave my hands and say "It's a comic book world. Don't examine this too closely." like Donald Belissario used to do when the _Quantum Leap_ fans caught the writers contradicting themselves. Ostensibly, though, Paragon City is a "real" place and it should be consistent with the world we live in when it comes to situations like this.
If you disagree, then I'd ask you to remove the super powers and imagine the protagonists as members of U.N.C.L.E. and S.M.E.R.S.H. or Six-Four as a Double-Oh and Rose as the Mastermind of the Month. The super powers are just window dressing. If you remove them and the premise becomes ridiculous, then it ought to be considered ridiculous when the super powers are included in the equation.
I acquiesce to your position that the story does not conform to real-world legal and criminal statutes.
"Goodbye, Jean-Luc. I'm gonna miss you... you had such potential. But then again, all good things must come to an end..." -- Q
My good friend Major T likes to stimulate conversation. 
He's pretty good at it.
The bottom line: The Ghosts know Six-Four crossed the line. They don't know how far he went over it. The assumption of Ahren and the other Ghosts is that he went off on his own, made some pretty serious mistakes, and nearly got killed for it. They believe, and to some extent are correct in their belief, that he will have learned a lesson from the experience. Six-Four is not going to jail, and he will appear in at least one more story.
This story was about Choices and the consequences of them. Rose chose friendship over parents and gained a new, if rather uneasy, alliance from it. Conall chose to save his rival rather than let her die because of his own rather unique sense of "honor." And Six-Four chose to throw all sense of right and wrong to the wind when he saw an opportunity to get revenge on an enemy. And from that, he gained a new enemy and lost the respect of someone he admired.
Now... the last thing I'd say is that Six-Four is NOT my character. Which means when I'm done with him, I have to leave him in the condition I found him. Were he a character I created for this story, I would have killed him at the end. There wouldn't have been any jail for him, Conall Cian and Bounty-Killer would have killed him - and done so rather gruesomely. But since he is the character of a friend, killing him or sending him to jail is not an option.
I'm often curious about the origins of stories that involve the writer's in-game teams.
What was the inspiration and how much did Six-Four's "owner" have to do with it? What does s/he think of the story? How closely does the outcome of the story reflect the outcome envisioned by "Six-Four"?
Where the H. E. double hockey sticks is Ice9 when you need him? 
Point of interest...
Conall Cian, Ahren, and Six-Four are all Ice9's characters.
Ebony Rose is the only character that got significant "screen" time in this story that belongs to Sooner.
"Goodbye, Jean-Luc. I'm gonna miss you... you had such potential. But then again, all good things must come to an end..." -- Q
I don't remember exactly what started me thinking about it... but Rose is a very interesting character to me. She's a villain, but not by choice, and many of her actions are based on expediency, not evil.
One day I was thinking about Rose's relationship with her family. She was innocent of the crime for which she was sent to prison, but the case was solid against her. It made sense that even people that cared about her would believe the charges.
So... what would Rose feel about that? And what would she do if something threatened those parents?
So, I asked my friend Ice9 if any of the Ghosts were ruthless enough to go after Rose by threatening her parents - many of Ice's characters are more of the dark hero type, vigilantes who are rather grey in their morality - and he suggested Six-Four, describing him as "one ruthless [censored]."
We did work up the history of what had happened between Rose and Six between us to make Six hate Rose as much as he did. However, I wrote this story, Ice9 did not suggest these actions.
I will say Ice does not consider this one of his favorite of my stories, despite the fact that more of the major characters are his rather than mine (a fact I hadn't really noticed until T just pointed it out).
haveing read all your storys, i am inclined to belive that the villians(those in the RI) are not totaly without compassion, while those in PC well lets just say are of a more nefarius nature, had any of my heros seen or heard of what Six did it would have been hunting seasion on him and i can vouch for all my hero and villian friends it would have been a world wide hunt for him, i understand what he whent through(sence i love a good background for toons) but the ends by no means justifies the means, i would like to think that six will be handled at a later date lol.
Hey... Thanks for the comment. It was quite a surprise to see this pop back up on my subscribed threads list.
I think you'll see Six-Four growing with time as the stories progress. There's a section in the story I'm posting right now in Protector forums that was written under the "working title" of "The Redemption of Six-Four."
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I don't think the city has such an attitude. I'd say it's implicit in accepting a license that the hero is committing himself or herself (or itself) to at least the same code of conduct that the police operate under and preferably a more stringent one from a moral perspective.
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According to the game background, specifically the Citizen Crime Fighting Act, this is indeed exactly how heroes are expected to behave if they expect to keep their license.
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