Although Schiller knew that immortals in comic-book worlds were no different from ordinary old men aside from having lived for tens of thousands of years, Savage was the most typical example. The Great Monarch who had lived through so many generations could still go toe-to-toe with a bunch of brats from the Teen Titans.
But the old man who had brought Shivan there had still behaved abnormally, because he had not looked like an ordinary old man. He had looked like a deranged old man.
Most people's emotions might fluctuate now and then, but their overall patterns were traceable. Not to mention that happiness made people laugh and sadness made them cry—even emotions like anger and resentment, which were farther from instinct and closer to logic, had their own rules.
A person's anger could not arise for no reason. If someone got angry, there had to be something that angered them.
But that old man's reaction had not looked like anger. It had seemed more like a mixture of fear, anger, and resentment. In short, Armor Break.
"He's rattled, he's really rattled" was the perfect description of the underlying sentiment behind the words "You will never be worthy."
"If he were defining why you could not inherit his power, he would not have said you were unworthy. He would only have said you couldn't." Schiller looked at Shivan and said, "Of course, you might think he hated evil and got angry when he saw an immoral bad kid like you, which was why he said you were unworthy."
"But he said, 'You will never be worthy.' Is that a rational judgment? Obviously not. No rational judgment could include the word 'never,' because the more rational someone was, the more clearly they understood that nothing remained unchanged forever."
"Look at it