endbringer, meet gun

[peterxy]

...Very unseasonable rains can be seen in the distance from the shores of Acapulco.

The Brockton Bay Protectorate starts organizing volunteers to be transported or teletransported in batches to it. Heroes, rogues, villains, anyone's assistance is appreciated. A rendez-vous point is set for non-Protectorate capes wishing to volunteer, and Protectorate capes are informed of the situation via communication devices.

Comments

[mxglam]

Sigh.

"Yes. Alright. Well, your guess is- kinda right." They swallow and sigh again. "I really, really, really need you to not tell other people this, I might as well not have a power if this gets out."

[thinkering]

"Noted."

[mxglam]

"It's, um, belief. If I believe a thing exists, or should behave a certain way, then it does. If other people believe it as well, that's a plus."

[thinkering]

"And you can be canceled out? How's it weighted?"

[mxglam]

Glam looks around. Good, they're still flying. That's good.

"I'm not quite sure what the math is like. If anyone squints at the stuff I make hard enough, it goes away. Even if I squint hard enough, it goes away, though my squinting threshold is higher. As for weighting, I think everyone's the same, but since there's a lot of precedent for even the most outlandish powers, once someone's seen me do something, well, they believe I can do it, so that's two people believing already. Implicit expectations are somewhere in the mix as well."

[thinkering]

"Okay. So what you need to hit hard is a rep. Eidolon has never actually killed an Endbringer but if the news reported it everyone would believe it, because he's freaking Eidolon. Like that."

[mxglam]

"Yes. Yes, I do. And I think some of our past conversations should probably make more sense now."

[thinkering]

"I don't have time to read through all my transcripts; remind me?"

[mxglam]

"Well, when I said that I wanted to be famous, and talked about my wiki page, and mentioned taking on Purity. That kinda thing."

[thinkering]

"Okay, but you have the little problem of coming off as reckless and naive and completely green, not badass."

[mxglam]

[thinkering]

"...Come to think of it, I'm sort of surprised your power works around me and wonder if it takes my beliefs into account at all."

[mxglam]

...and now they're not flying anymore.

[thinkering]

Lorica catches them. "Whoa! Hey! I didn't mean to freak you out, I just have a secondary power that blocks mindready shit!"

[mxglam]

They close their eyes, then say, "You can let me go now."

[thinkering]

Lorica lets them go.

[mxglam]

And they're flying.

"...I really can't doubt myself, I come off as reckless because I need to be cocky, I need to believe I can do anything I want. It's- I bootstrap it some, it's easy to believe I can do something when empirically I actually can but in this case belief is the cause and not the consequence so I need to tie my head around in Escher-esque knots and not think too hard about it."

[thinkering]

"Gotcha. So. What I actually meant was, I have this secondary power which won't let powers that mess with people's heads mess with mine. Since your power is basically solid illusions it would have been not outside the realm of possibility for me to either not see the effects, or to see only the effects that were not, themselves, things you were creating. But apparently it's real enough that I'm not noping it. There remains the question of whether your power takes me into account at all or if, for its purposes, I am not even here until I say something the wrong way and throw off your game."

[mxglam]

"...well, there's an easy way to test it. Can you, like, not believe this Rubik's cube is here?"

There is a Rubik's cube in their right hand.

[thinkering]

Lorica squints at it. Not a real cube. Did they even bother to have the faces in the right orientations? It probably doesn't even have those internal mechanics, to the extent it's there, which it's not.

[mxglam]

The cube is not there anymore.

But... "Okay, now try, say, this." They're now holding a magic 8 ball. But they extend their arm away from her. "No squinting, though. Just try to believe in the abstract that it doesn't exist. Might be better if you don't even look at it."

[thinkering]

"All right..."

[mxglam]

The magic 8 ball...

...continues to exist.

"Are you doing it?"

[thinkering]

"Yes, to the extent that I can disbelieve things on purpose at all, which is limited."

[mxglam]

"Okay. Now let's try this." No magic 8 ball in their hand. "My hand is empty. Can you focus on that fact? Like, keep expecting it to be empty or something."