I FINALLY caught up to the last 400 pages.
Mald was invited to the group to help JLU spy and infiltrate PN to figure out their raid plans before they happen
This is literally Mald's villain origin story.
He did gayops as a teenager and got BTFO so hard his ego never coped with it and that's why he went full in on the "epic haxxor" and "social engineering" image. He was 19-20 when this happened and should have known better, but he underestimated PN and thought he was smarter than them. His second error was not learning from that experience, he doubled down.
We might need a psychiatrist for this one. Or a good bullshit detector:
Not a psychiatrist, but to give some educational info to kiwis:
People with OCD don't necessarily have to be clean (hence the shitty bathroom), the core thing is feeling compulsion as the name says (some hoarders also have OCD). They have their own rituals and they're about appeasing this itch or pain something "wrong" causes them, the "wrong" thing can be rooted in cleanliness, religion, mathematics or any belief. A small example most people feel is going to the toilet and feeling that you're hands are dirty, you have an itch to wash them and refuse to touch a food item to not contaminate it. It's OCD if you feel pain/anger so much stronger about that and it interferes with your life and health.
Why does Mald's story sound unbelievable? He only has that one story about compulsion that doesn't end, can a kid really do that for hours with nobody noticing? Maybe, if your parents are careless, but usually from people I've worked with there is a GOAL to the compulsion, something you want to appease. Touch the knobs an even amount of times and you feel just right. Wash your hands 42 times because it's a holy number to you and you will feel clean. The story might just be a bad retelling so I won't dig into it further. But why did these behaviours stop with the years? If it's not a frequent occurence you don't have OCD, it's a disorder because if you don't control it, it affects your daily life.
Also, while catching up I noticed 2025 has been rough on him and his age and soon mald pattern baldness might be kicking in: