This week was a contest between personal values and professional ethics. At times, that can be a traumatic experience, and it was so for Diana Daggers in this past week’s strips.

Cricket Bro, brother Crypto Bro, and Diana were on location at the Peligroso Cave, currently closed because of the threat of flooding. Cricket Bro needed to visit the cave to fulfill his own agenda of providing thrills to his online followers in order to sell more Cricket Power Bars. Diana tried to talk Cricket Bro out of it, declaring it was too dangerous to enter right now. But he insisted on exploring, and Diana must come to video the event, else she would not get paid. The ethical debate was set.

Diana went over the numbers and realized she needed the money badly, but also believed this was a really stupid thing to do. Given who she was with, she should not have been surprised. In fact, signing up for anything Cricket Bro wanted to do is pretty stupid. I observed that Kelly Welly, who signed up to assist the two Bros in what turned out to be some kind of AI scam in New York, was not part of this group. Hence, Diana Daggers. Anyway, Diana had to weigh the possibility of personal danger against the near certainty of financial disaster. It was enough to make her put aside her own safety for the financial reward. Against her better judgement, she agreed to go into the cave with the two brothers.

There are things she might have prepared for, to mitigate the danger, such as bringing along safety equipment. Well, they do have backpacks, so it’s possible they have some of that.  The week ended with them cutting down the caution tape and entering the cave. And speaking of things associated with caves …

Here we are, once again, with bats. This is not the first time Rivera has devoted a page to them. With all of the other issues in our environment, I’d think that she could find other things to discuss. Like rabies.