cthia wrote:City of Mendel
Mesa SystemCATHERINE MONTAIGNE WAS APPALLED.
-snip-
pg. 4
For a moment, her mind fluttered away from the chaos and the human agony and suffering that must have accompanied it. What would be the term for an expert on methods of destruction? Demolitionist? No, that would be the person who did the destroying.
How about destructionist?
She shook her head slightly, as if to shed those useless questions.
She knew the city bore other, lesser—but no less obscene—wounds left by the "small" nuclear detonations and fuel-air bombs attributed to Ballroom terrorist attacks.
Cathy goes on to muse that those were not Ballroom attacks. But I was shocked to learn that the Ballroom uses such methods.
1. The Ballroom has a reputation for using nuclear attacks?
2.
Fuel-air bombs or
Vacuum bombs? Aren't these the same
cruel thermobaric weapons that the Russians have
reportedly used against the Ukraine?
A
reputation for them; quite possibly. Actually use them; no, not in any sanctioned attack.
The actual Ballroom makes very carefully planned precision hits to inflict terror on those directly supporting genetic slavery.
However as a secret organization they can't really stop other folks from claiming credit for attacks in their name -- and we've seen on Mesa that Seccies are willing to lash out with nukes when they can get their hands on them. There's little reason to believe that other attacks against Mesa, Manpower, or genetic slavers couldn't have been far less discriminate than the Ballroom's own attacks. But how could they prove that they were only targeted assassins; and those other attacks weren't Ballroom? (Heck, in some cases the other attackers might well believe they were Ballroom -- it's not like they have formal membership roles where you can check that your recruiter is actually a member in good standing)
Plus Mesa/Manpower has a interest in pushing the narrative of the Ballroom as unhinged killers who are a danger to anybody around them; and so would be using their hooks into media to push that story for any attack they could blame in any possible way on the Ballroom -- and probably aren't above simply pushing "hearsay" of non-existent attacks.
And then Manpower, and definitely the Onion, have been known to use large attacks they can blame on the Ballroom as a way to clean up their own loose ends. I doubt Houdini was the first time they used that concept (thought it'd be by far the largest) -- so some of the reputation for mass attacks were probably false flag operations (serving the dual purpose of cleaning up loose ends and blackening the name of the Ballroom)
Basically a (public) reputation for such attacks isn't the same thing as actually carrying out any such attacks.