“The reason suffering has become Buddhism’s primary focus, rather than happiness, is that happiness, as we conceive of it, doesn’t really exist — at least not in the same way suffering does. What we refer to as happiness is really just what the absence of suffering feels like.”
—David Cain, “Good News: Happiness Doesn’t Exist”
Just how many siblings does Cass have anyway?
This is me compiling a list of characters who are Case’s siblings either by Cain taking them in or fathering them.
1. Mad Dog, male, adult. The first kid David Cain tried turning into the perfect killer. The training drove the kid insane and he became too mentally unstable to control. So Ra’s ordered Ubu to kill the kid. Ubu couldn’t bring himself to do it so he freed the kid. After growing up in the wild without any guidance, he was eventually recruited into Nyssa’s League of Assassins. When Cass basically divided up the LoA warriors, he’s the one who was hunting down his ‘sister’ and her group. He killed two group members and killed Cass, who protected the last surviving group member. She knocked him out with her last strength and that’s the last we saw of him.
2. Unnamed Children, boys, racially diverse. Cain had trained a bunch of children to make them perfect killers. It’s suggested they all either went insane or died.
3. Annalea, female, white, adult teen or teenager. Cain’s actual biological daughter and Cass’s half-sister. I honestly have no idea how Cain could have trained her and Cass at the same time but he must have (though I suspect Ra’s or Shiva had a hand in it). She became a mercenary like her dad until that evil-occ-Cass killed her in a fit of rage and had Tim take the fall for it. She was mentally stable enough to appear normal in the public eye. Though given that her dad is Cain, I sincerely doubt she was mentally stable. I theorize she might have Cain’s last attempt to making the perfect bodyguard before deciding to raise illiterate children.
4. Marque, female, asian, adult teen or teenager. Cain’s other biological daughter whose probably older than Annalea and Cass. While she didn’t end up like Mad Dog, Cain’s training made her twisted inside. Marque wanted to kill Cain for hurting her when she was a child. She had no problem killing her own siblings and anyone who got in her way to get revenge on Cain. Cass was her only conscience and Marque barley listened to her half-sister. When Cass stopped her from getting her revenge, Marque declared that Cass wasn’t her sister anymore and that they would forever be enemies.
5. Deathstroke and David Cain’s army, females, racially diverse, adult teens or teenagers. They were all nicely brainwashed and beefed up young women trained under Cain (and probably Slade). They were training to become an army for the superhero community to deal with. Like Cass, they weren’t raised to read or write either. There was an explosion that probably killed them all. Plus Marque killed some of them earlier so there might not be survivors.
Basically too much to count and not count. It tells us that Cass has piss-poor luck when it comes to having biological siblings. And here I thought Ra’s was the sociopath. But it’s very interesting how Cass turned out to be the only surviving and mentally stable one of Cain’s children. She could’ve ended up like her siblings at any point. Kudos for her that she has the bat-family to remind her of her humanity. And most of these siblings would have made pretty terrifying and fascinating villians if Cass made it to the reboot and had her own book because they are all just as strong as Cass. But since that’s never in a million years going to happen, I say it would be a good fanfic plot. I think Marque and Mad Dog would be scariest of the bunch.
