Letting one baby and a screened cape go is a bigger headache than getting a crowd of civilians and villains back inside containment? This time I'm genuinely questioning your logic here. The PRT is all about getting the best of a bad situation. So long as Genocide hasn't been declared, they should be open to alternative methods under the table.
I'm going to start with this one and move back to the other points as I think it will make more sense that way.
From the way Tagg talked about the Simurgh's attack on Lausanne and the restrictions on Simurgh victims as mentioned in the Migration arc, I got the impression that there was very much a Red Scare/McCarthyism flavor to the aftermath of her attacks. The people of Earth Bet, and the PRT even more so, were terrified down to their bones of what an unchecked Ziz-bomb could and would do, hence why Tagg was allowed to use a bunch of death squads on civilians.
In fact, let me track down that part of the story, one second…
"Maybe you don't really get what the Birdcage is. See, I hate it. I was in Lausanne in two-thousand two through oh-three. Fought a whole mess of ugly. People that couldn't be reasoned with, people who were hopeless, in the grand scheme of it. Victims, as much as anyone else."
I found myself listening, despite myself.
"We shot them, the people who heard too much of the Simurgh's song, who weren't just walking disaster areas, but who'd listened long enough that they lost something. Men, women and children missing that moral center that people like Miss Militia and I have. Hell, even you've got morals. They didn't. I'm sure you heard about it, you're not that young. Suicide bombers, dirty bombs. Terrorism, if you will. Eleven year olds and old men making their way to Amsterdam or London and opening fire in a crowded area. Just like that."
Tagg slammed his hand down on the metal table, coinciding with the 'that'. I jumped a little, despite myself.
He's just trying to rattle me.
"Once we realized what was happening, we had to act, contain the damage. Contain families. Had to act against people who went home from a day of trying to kill the rest of us and cooked a nice dinner, oblivious to just how fucked they were in the head. People who were otherwise good, who got warped on a fundamental level, left open to the preaching and the incitement of their angrier neighbors. Two years of fighting before we got the word down from on high, that they couldn't rehabilitate the ones they'd captured, the ones who'd listened too long. The poor assholes would play nice until they saw an opportunity, then they'd take it, do as much damage as they could. Two years fighting good people who'd been convinced they had to throw their lives away fighting an enemy that didn't exist. So we closed the perimeter, bombed them out, herded them and gunned them down."
Absolutely none of that sounds like calm, reasonable decision making. That sounds like decisions made by people who were beyond paranoid, justified or not, about what the individuals who heard the Simurgh's song would do. Killing likely thousands or even tens of thousands of people (real-world Lausanne had a population of ~130,000 people in 2012) was deemed a better choice than letting them go, all because of the chance that those who had yet to act out were affected and would when they got the opportunity to cause more damage.
So no, letting an unscreened and unscreenable baby go isn't a bigger headache than herding a bunch of civilians and villains back into containment. It's a bigger headache and bigger terror than just killing said baby out of hand, and her mother when Purity inevitably refuses to let that happen. The reason the heroes are trying to bring the civilians back is because it's a hard sell to get a bunch of generally moral people to massacre a large group of potential innocents without allowing to happen the kinds of tragedies that containment and the kill squads were designed to prevent. It's also why I made sure to mention in-story that if the heroes can't beat the villains non-lethally, they were told to kill any escapees who refuse to go along with the plan to put them back in Brockton Bay.
That falls flat because you can't put an infant through psychological screening in the first place. And New Wave doesn't like the PRT/Protectorate because of shit like this.
The fact that infants can't get screened and cleared of being Ziz-bombs is not a point in favor of letting them go. Quite the opposite. Again, the complication is people generally not being willing to support rampant infanticide without a
damned good reason.
As for New Wave's dislike/disagreement with the PRT, I believe it had more to do with capes getting special treatment compared to normal humans and having their misdeeds and mistakes swept under the rug. That's what made Victoria's late night accidents and Amy's willingness to cover them up so disturbingly ironic.
Nobody has any proof psychological screening or Thinkers work either, so they tack on the facism to released capes. I don't think the logic you present would work IU, even as propoganda.
We don't know what proof there is or isn't for psychological screening of civilians, but the fact that it's a thing in a world where Tagg's experiences also happened means that it was at least determined to be an appropriate compromise between security of the country at large and the rights of the people who were victims of the Simurgh's attack.
It's for Aster.
If Aster gets out and gets a good life, then it would be In-Character for Kayden to go with it.
If the PRT decides to screw her over, then we fuck them with no lube and you probably get some pissed-off players.
Like I said, you'd just need to convince her that her screening would be fair. If she believes you and the PRT would do right by her, yes, she'd go along with it. It's the convincing itself that could be the sticking point.
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