Service With a Smile- AkA Some HCs about Messenger’s Conditioning and How it Effects Her Strategy

For Prime Verse

Sometimes I forget that Barbara has been under the Administrator’s thumb since she was 18. Despite starting to work directly under her at 21, the whole reason Babs got her original office job in the first place is that Helen discovered her coincidentally through recon on The Berserker.

The job description on the flier Barbara happened to find was specifically targeted at this particular desperate, naive woman.

It drew her out from her small town (and father’s protection but story for another day) into a coastal city, and into the dehumanizing conditions of her first job.

It was super bad to the point that whenever Mess feels overwhelmed, overworked, or stressed to the point of illness, she remembers the first office and her brain goes “okay well compared to that this isn’t so bad.”

Convenient, huh?

Even Hale treats her more like a person than her old bosses did, and offers the occasional positive reinforcement. Which is like crack to Messenger. Especially from a superior, or even just an older adult man. Validating her usefulness wins people major points, especially if you’re on relatively equal footing and she’s like “oh hey it’s not coming from a place of hierarchy, neat.”

Messenger is very easy to manipulate if she trusts or is loyal to you. But she doesn’t trust easily, and her loyalties are very difficult to shift, so she is also the perfect pawn to send out as a sort of Admin proxy/negotiator with allied and rival orgs.

Especially since she has also been conditioned to see herself as the most expendable asset in any situation.

After a few tricky hostage situations, Messenger underwent training and physical conditioning so that now, if the stress or pain levels she experiences get past a certain level, she will “check out” of the situation by passing out into a borderline comatose state. Because intel can’t be accessed without her, even on a drive or in a packet, this renders torture absolutely useless.

On a personal level, Barbara herself has always been highly loyal and a people pleaser, which was a lucky point for Admin. It also means that she applies her work logic of ‘most expendable asset’ to interpersonal relationships as well. Messenger will willingly, and cheerfully, die for anyone she loves or deems more important than her.

Which is p much everybody she doesn’t hate.

(Who she’ll kill for, though, is way more picky. She has yet to be put in that situation. She’s also got a hold on strategy and calculation, so her sacrifices are rarely spur of the moment, emotional “take me instead” moments. Rarely.)

But, and this is a fun point, this way of thinking has been around wayyyy before she ever even heard of Mann Co. Which in a way makes it sweet, because she really does put others first out of love, but on the other hand…trying to separate what comes from her conditioning versus her active, willful choices is…virtually impossible.

Not even admin knows just how lucky she got when she decided to hire this particular child of an ornery ex-employee.