Warning: Death, violence and spoilers!
There are many ways to have a bad day; one of which is to have your parents murdered right in front of you. Well, the logical thing to do after that is get super into CrossFit and gymnastics, don a black cowl and cape, and become a dark crusader for justice in a seemingly never-ending battle against crime. But what happens if you were the murderer? The second and final volume of TISTA unleashes a psychological torment on her origin story, and it’s only going to get even more twisted when even her own psyche tries to facilitate her own actions.
Clarifying Some Context
“We Do Not Selfishly Desire Happiness.”
First off, this writer believed that Tista’s optical eyes or cross eyes were surgically implanted, her adopted father being the previous owner before his untimely demise. It turns out that the power of the eyes stems from a curse through emotional trauma. It looks like it was the process that the organization was manipulating Tista into imbuing the eyes with her trauma, which was the ‘operation’ that they were referring to.
However, with the revelation of Tista’s confession to one of her childhood friends, Susie, she was the one who killed her own parents. It was not omitted that the reason for the killings, but the trauma alone was enough to gain the attention of Father and the organization to nurture said trauma into constructing the next successor. Tista received only one eye from Father, which means she’s essentially skewed; being a righteous tool for vengeance by assassinating the very thing she began as.
The Duality
“Am I a Bad Girl For Wanting to be with Daddy Forever?”
Tista’s demented psyche had bred a split personality, an alter ego that exists very one-sidedly inside her head, calling itself Death. It only manifests itself either when Tista is facing a near-death experience or is facing a psychological dilemma, and berates her into finding a way out of it. At times it works, but not without further solidifying her madness, which ends up with her almost killing herself at one point.
A Little Detective Work
“Show me what your eyes are saying.”
Snow is on the prowl, and pardon the pun. Still, she is ungodly at her job, from tracking down Tista’s old apartment, to interrogating/psycho-analizing Arty in a bar to get him to give up critical details to the museum killings that left Arty with only a bullet hole in his hand. It wasn’t until she met up with Detective Mac again at a children’s hospital, where they both shared insight on a circulating photo of Tista, which prompted Mac to remember a drawing of a girl in Arty’s exhibit. That was the link Snow needed to apprehend Tista finally, and put an end to the organization’s killings by tailing Arty in hopes of finding her through him.
A Promise is a Promise
“I Won’t Give Up Until You Smile!”
It all finally came to a head at a children’s choir starring none other than Tista’s childhood friend Susie. In her backstory, Susie lost her voice when she was Tista at the hands of her father, a malicious act that prompted Tista to exact revenge for her friend and thus started her on her journey towards spiritual bloodshed. But how does Arty fit into all this? His father was a deadbeat gambler who killed himself rather than paying his debts, leaving Arty at, you guessed it, the same orphanage as both Tista and Susie. It’s all revealed that they were all friends at the same place and time. Arty finds a drawing he made of the three of them, reminding him of the promise he made.
While all this was going on, Tista had been demoted from her position as a Monastic Knight and tossed into psychiatric care until she could be deemed helpful to the organization again. Her stay was short-lived when she had been given a choice: kill Arty and reclaim her position, or face her own demise.
To top it all off, Deacon Proco took over as Tista’s handler after Father died. He’d been trying to keep Tista’s mental breakdown under wraps, which made him suspect in his own devotion to the organization’s cause, unfortunately painting a target on his back as well. Even as the organization gave Tista one final task at a chance for redemption, they still sent out their ‘cleaner’ to make sure there were no more loose ends that could trace their dealings back to them. Frére, a fellow Monastic Knight with the same power as Tista, as well as the one who killed Father for attempting to steal Tista from the organization all those years ago, enters the fray again.
The Finale
With both the FBI and the organization open and at odds with each other, Tista is now forced to either remove Arty or save him from Frére by putting herself in harm’s way. Unable to choose, Tista went for a third option: to kill herself. Even though her devotion to the organization is spiraling due to the task in front of her, she can’t bring herself to kill Arty. But before she could finally join her adopted father, Frére shoots Arty first, in the leg, in an attempt to suss out Tista for her failure to complete the mission. A quick skirmish between snipers ensues until Tista makes the final blow, taking Frére out of commission, but not before sustaining heavy wounds herself.
Cut to two years later, Deacon Proco testifies to the FBI about the dealings with the organization to gain not a lighter sentence for himself, but to have mercy on Tista, who is now serving 120 years behind bars. With the organization losing its grip on the city, they still manage to take out Proco by Tista’s replacement, Scar, mentored by none other than Frére after losing an arm and a good portion of his body was burned. Alas, after all the bloodshed, chasing and eluding, both Tista and Arty finally unite, with Arty fulfilling his promise and getting Tista to smile.
Final Thoughts
Overall, this volume felt like it was 80% backstory, so there was a lot to catch up on, from introducing a latent character to going a little more in-depth with the main characters, to really defining how Tista had been fundamentally manipulated into being the elite assassin that she was.
The fact that they plugged in the backstory of Arty, Tista and Susie all being orphans in the same orphanage at the time felt like such an afterthought, like it didn’t really drive the story in any particular way. Arty could’ve used the drawing he made of them all together back when they were kids to influence Tista to change her ways, but didn’t. So, it was really more for Arty to make that connection in the end rather than to reach out to Tista and snap her back into reality.
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