...and this is why I don't care for thinking of things in terms of "karma," it has a tendency to turn writing a story into something like balancing the cosmic checkbook. That's why I've tried to be careful to not take the position that the Sun-changes are "karmic;" sure, there are situations where, say, Ricky might not have been changed in the first place if he hadn't gotten himself involved with people like Julian, and sometimes there is a certain Circean logic to it (the boy who previously let his baser urges overrule all other considerations is now in a situation where it's crucial that she learn to control her instincts,) but it's not about meting out X, Y, and Z to the parties that "deserve" them.
With regards to Jeff: as chompy says, the big question here is what kind of person he really is. Not, obviously, an admirable person, but is he really completely depraved, or just selfish and a bit of a jackass/bully? Is it possible for his own conscience to win this one, or will it have to come down to Ricky either fighting off her own instincts or getting help from someone else?
Basically my issues with the idea of Lucas intervening are twofold: first, as we've seen before, it can have a tendency to short-circuit a story; the question of what the other characters would do just gets dropped in the wake of a deus ex machina. Even if that doesn't happen, the idea of her doling out punishment in addition to merely intervening to stop wrongdoing raises some pretty significant questions: who made her judge, jury, and executioner? To what extent is what she does a justifiable response to what was being done? (There's that problem of working out the balance sheet again.) It just really complicates things to take the story in a direction that raises a lot of the common questions about the ethics of vigilantism.
(Also, as regards Jon: she really didn't intend to do what she did, and she is doing the best she can to make sure that it's set right in a way that preserves any good aspects of the change...)
